Parrot is an Android app that’s yet another voice recorder app, but unlike the multitude of other voice recorders on the Play Store, Parrot aims to be different. Parrot is free, with no ads at all, and Parrot is designed to be simple, yet slick. It allows you to record from your Android Wear watch, replay your recordings and share them nice and easily. With support for high-quality MP3 and WAV recording up to 44,100 kHz this ticks all the right boxes. With it being free, with some effects thrown in for good measure, is Parrot the simple, no nonsense voice recorder app that you’ve been waiting for? Read on to see.
To get started with Parrot, you’ll need to head on over to the Google Play Store, or Amazon’s App Store. Then, all you need to do is to launch the app.
To start recording, all you need to do is hit the mic button. Or, you can go ahead and make some changes, like the format and sound quality.
You can even add some effects, like echo cancellation, and even add some gain if you’re a little further away than you’d like to be – like in a big lecture hall, for instance.
When recording, you’ll see a slick and smooth sound wave appear on the screen, and it really does correspond with what you’re recording. This isn’t essentially, but it certainly is a nice touch.
You get the usual options to rename your recording after you’ve finished it and you can play them all back from within the app.
As you’ll have noted, different months have different colored icons to them, making it nice and easy to organize. All the usual boxes here are ticked, so what makes Parrot stand out? Aside from a pretty slick Material theme? The first of those features is clever Android Wear integration:
The other is a refreshing take on a free app. Parrot is free, without ads. That’s all there is to it and that’s just great.
Parrot is a refreshing voice record app. We all have one installed on our phones, and for those that really make good use of them, Parrot is going to be a joy to use. Not only does the Material theme blend in with the latest version of Android, but it’s so simple and slick that it just works. It records with good clarity and the added effects might be of some help depending on the sort of situation you’re recording in. It’s not the best app out there, but what more do you want from a voice recorder? It’s free, with no ads, and I personally can’t think of something else I’d need in a voice recorder, let alone one that works well from Android Wear. I’m seriously impressed with Parrot, and it’ll be the voice recorder I keep on my smartphone and recommend to friends.
Ratings
- Speed (4/5) – Parrot is a speedy app, it’s not lightning quick but it’s a pleasant experience overall.
- Features (5/5) – Different format choices, it organizes your recordings well, features effects to help clean up recordings and more all for free. This ticks every box going.
- Theme (4/5) – I’m a big fan of Material design and it’s nice to see an app like this use it so well. It’s not pushed in your face, and it’s a nice middleground between the new Material style, with a touch of the older Holo style for users on KitKat and below.
- Overall (4/5) – For a free app, there’s little more we could ask from Parrot, especially as there are no ads and it’s so well packed with features.
Pros
- Works well with tablets as well as phones, and blends in with the latest version of Android.
- Offers some nifty effects to help keep your recordings clean and help boost faint speakers.
- Decent library side of the app makes it easy to replay your recordings and renaming things is simple, too.
- Simple, effective selection of different formats to choose from.
Cons
- I didn’t find that Auto Pause worked all that well, but the button is always present along with stop.
- No standalone app on Android Wear makes the integration not quite as good as it could have been.
Parrot is an app that does a simple task, does it well and doesn’t ask the Earth for it. Nor does it throw out silly ads at users just because it’s free. The app has a lot of great features for essentially nothing, and Lollipop users have a voice recorder that fits in with the rest of their device. I’m impressed with Parrot, I like simple apps that still look the part and get the job done to a good standard. Parrot ticks every box I can think of for a voice recorder and then some.