Due to the use of the LZMA and LZMA2 compression technology, 7-Zip can produce a high compression archive format. 7z extension for the best compression ratio.
7 Zip can also compress files in 7Z, BZIP2, GZIP, TAR, WIM, XZ, and ZIP archive formats and it can unpack or decompress most popular archive formats like 7Z, ARJ, BZ2, BZIP2, CAB, CHM, CHW, CPIO, CRAMFS, DEB, DMG, DOC, EXE, FAT, GZ, GZIP, HFS, HXS, ISO, LHA, LZH, LZMA, MBR, MSI, NTFS, PPT, QCOW2, RAR, RPM, SQUASHFS, SWM, TAR, TAZ, TBZ, TBZ2, TGZ, VDI, VDMK, VHD, WIM, XAR, XLS, XZ, Z01 & Z02 etc., Z, ZIP, and ZIPX.Īlthough 7zip supports many file formats like ZIP, TAR, it is recommended to use. The archive format produced by 7-Zip is called 7z. 7Zip is completely free for both personal and commercial use. It has a simple and user-friendly interface. 7 Zip is a very lightweight but powerful program. 7-Zip integrates well with Windows Explorer and Shell to support a wide range of file formats. Moreover, the simple interface allows you to navigate the program with ease. Since the tool comes with a quick installation process, you can start using it within seconds. With the help of WinZip, you can open any 7z file extension on Windows or macOS. It supports Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10, as well as Linux via the command line. If you constantly work with large-sized files, 7-Zip will be a great choice for your PC. This is especially helpful when transferring or downloading larger.
It is one of the most popular free file compression and decompression software capable of a very high and better compression ratio than regular compression software. Pros: Solid performance potential to produce more efficient zipping.Ĭons: Unspectacular overall slower than some rivals.Ĭonclusions: As good if not better than any other free product and certainly worth trying before splashing the cash.Download 7 Zip – The Best Free File Archiver:ħ-Zip is an open-source file archive and compression software created and developed by Igor Pavlov and was first released in 1999. But whether any of these limitations are enough to be a problem given it's a free application depends on how often you'll be using it. It's decent but not great in every category: for example, its menu system and integration with Windows Explorer works well enough but aren't particularly smooth or intuitive. Indeed, that's largely the story of 7-Zip. It's not as lightning-fast as some of the commercial options however.
The program is quick enough to zip files: on a decent-specification Windows 7 machine it managed to process around 180 Megabytes in a minute. In practice its zipped files are indeed consistently smaller, though by how much is very variable and dependent on the type of file concerned. 7-Zip is notable for its high compression ratio. This Windows file compression program is available in a wide variety of languages and includes a number of different features.
The main selling-point of the application is a custom 7z format which is billed as creating files up to 40 percent smaller than those of more common zipping techniques. 7-Zip is a free open source utility that was developed in 1999 by Igor Pavlov and since that time has been constantly updated. It's also capable of working with a wide variety of formats, including a couple that are mainly used on Linux computers, making this a handy utility for those with a dual-boot set-up. There's certainly nothing to complain about with the software: it works reliably and doesn't cause any performance problems or crashes. 7-Zip certainly holds its own but it struggles to stand out on anything but price. As faster internet connections and bigger hard drives mean files sizes continue to increase, the world of zipping utilities is a crowded market.