Features:  

WinAce supports most of the common features we’ve come to expect from file compression software. It can integrate into Outlook, encrypt your archives, split archives and create self-extracting archives.

With regard to compressed executables WinAce will allow you to run the application or setup form within the program before completely extracting it to your hard drive.

We really liked that you could batch compress archives from the new archive screen and the information box that is displayed in the left-hand side of the screen will display everything you need to know about an archive like its type, compression ratio and the number of files in the archive. However, we did have some difficulty finding the information feature. In the menu it’s quite nondescript. You have to go to “view” in the menu and select “extra information.” We actually just stumbled upon it while searching through WinAce’s menu.

We also found that although WinAce doesn’t have a thumbnail viewing option it does include its own quick viewer for most graphic and image files.

Unfortunately, we found that WinAce is constantly encouraging you to use the ACE archive and the convert archive feature only gives you the option to change an archive to ACE.

Compression:  

We were a little disappointed in how WinAce performed in our ZIP compression test. Although WinAce’s compression of pictures, PDF and music formats was similar to the other software we evaluated, it’s compression of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets was just average.

WinAce’s native ACE format compression proved moderately better. The ACE format compression was better than most of the other ZIP tests we performed.

Compression Formats:  

WinAce’s compression options aren't the most impressive selection we’ve seen but with support for ZIP, ACE, TAR and a few others it should get you by. But in the end it is mostly built and designed to work with ACE.

Extraction Formats:  

WinAce supports a number archives and file types including ZIP, RAR, TAR and ARC. It doesn’t have the largest list of support but it is unlikely WinAce will leave you high and dry when trying to extract a specific archive type.

Ease of Use:  

Admittedly, we had some difficulty using WinAce. The software feels a bit dated and there is a learning curve to the program. We found WinAce isn’t particularly intuitive with remembering where you saved your last archive to and the drag and drop functionally is specific to adding files to an already created archive. The addition of a Wizard would considerably help WinAce with its user friendliness.

With most file archivers, if you drag and drop a file into the application it will prompt a new archive window, but with WinAce the file is just moved, not even copied, just moved completely from your Window’s Explorer folder to the WinAce application.

WinAce is a pretty program if you are already familiar with file compression software and want something different than WinZip or one of the more popular file archivers. However, we don’t suggest WinAce for casual archivers or newcomers. The software can be really frustrating if you don’t know what you are doing.

To learn more about file compression software see our top three reviews, WinZip, WinRAR and ALZip.