Splashtop review

With no extras, Splashtop provides reliable remote control across platforms.

With a focus on just providing solid remote-access tools, Splashtop ( go.macworld. com/sptp) is far less expensive than its closest competitors, which include features that many users

may not need, such as file storage, password management, and full-blown conferencing tools.

That approach appears to allow Splashtop to offer pricing that makes sense to individual users as well as some

categories of business user. Splashtop Business Solo at $5 a month (billed at $60 a year) lets a single user access two computers. It offers a range of expected remote-access features, including remote printing, playing remote audio locally through client software, and managing a system with multiple modems.

A small bump up to Business Access Pro at $8.25 a month (billed annually at $99) allows remote access of up to 10 computers. With multiple accounts, each user can bring up to 10 computers into a group set, allowing fairly massive numbers of desktop systems to be managed inexpensively. (Splashtop offers a

Personal flavor for one’s nonbusiness use that doesn’t include internet-based access, which is a $13 a year add-on.

I’d recommend Teamviewer for personal use instead.)

SOLO VERSUS PRO

The main difference between the Solo and Pro flavors are with multiple monitors. With Solo, you can view all the monitors on a remote system, but have to switch among them. With Pro, you can have a large view onto the entire multiple-monitor desktop (as with Apple’s Screen Sharing app), or map multiple remote desktop monitors on multiple local displays on the client.

Splashtop has a relatively modern interface that’s simple and largely free of frustration, even if its macos version doesn’t feel much like a Mac app. The desktop client software provides dropdown menus inside its floating window that are more common under Windows (and older Windows app, in particular), but they’re crisply delineated. You can control the video-frame rate and scaling, as well as start a screen recording.

The IOS version is somewhat better, offering a fresher look, while also offering a high degree of clarity about what each tool’s function is, and hiding tools while not in use.

Splashtop has desktop support for macos and

Windows, and clients for macos, IOS, Windows, Android, and Chromeos.

BOTTOM LINE

Splashtop is a solid remoteaccess tool, but it’s licensing and intent seems best suited for when you have either a very small deployment—yourself and two or a few computers—or share many desktop systems, particularly cross-platform, with a relative handful of users. ■