Aloha browser review: Privacy focused browser with VPN

Aloha is one of the few Android and iOS browsers that offer a VPN utility. It has 5+ million users, a rating of 4.5, and around 50k reviews on the Play Store and iTunes app store. Aloha’s APK size is 54 megabytes. It supports Android 4.4 and iOS 9.0 devices.

Review

UI

The interface of the Aloha app is similar to that of UC Mini and UC Browser. The app flaunts an option to enable its built-in VPN/Proxy service on the left side of the address bar. If you tap this option, the Android OS will display a popup box that boasts an option to give the Aloha app permission to run a VPN service on your device.

The VPN connection remains active as long as you are using the app. It disconnects automatically when you quit the browser. You are not allowed to change the VPN location. According to the developer, Aloha doesn’t log the user’s browsing activities. Aloha features a QR code scanner utility in addition to the free VPN module. The homepage of Aloha flaunts icons of the following websites:

  • Bing, Amazon, Wikipedia.
  • Twitter, Booking, Facebook.

Let’s call this section the bookmarks area. You can add new bookmarks or remove the existing ones by long-pressing the icon and tapping the close button. Below the bookmarks section, Aloha boasts an option to make it a default web browser app on your mobile device.

Below this option, you’ll find a list of trending stories in your country. The app doesn’t allow you to remove the news feed from its homepage. In between the list of news, you’ll find advertisements. To turn off in-app ads, you’ll have to pay a $1 tip to the developer.

Download Manager

Downloading large or small files with Aloha is easy as the app provides a download manager tool. Aloha creates a private folder on the user’s device. The folder is inaccessible to other apps. Users can save the downloaded files to this folder. They can also change the folder’s name.

Aloha browser

Aloha enables you to download media files embedded in web pages.

Settings

The default search engine in Aloha is Bing. You can switch to another search service provider from the app’s setting utility. The browser displays search suggestions when you enter a letter or word in its address bar. If you find this feature annoying, you can turn it off from Aloha’s setting interface.

The settings interface of Aloha allows users to turn on the passcode and ad-blocker feature. When you set a passcode, unauthorized users won’t be able to use the browser, and when you enable the ad blocker, you won’t see advertisements on pages.

Other features:

  1. Private browsing mode.
  2. History section.
  3. Night mode.
  4. Support for different languages.

Things I didn’t like about Aloha

Speed: The app took 20 to 30 seconds to open up on my Android device. While using Aloha, my connection speed was 2/3 Mbps. The browsing speed in Aloha is slower than Chrome, Firefox, and UC Web.

Shortcuts: Although Android OS created a shortcut to Aloha on the home screen, the app prompted me to create a home screen/desktop shortcut.

Homepage: You can’t change homepage settings in Aloha.

Things I liked

Downloads: Aloha’s download manager utility lets you resume/pause file downloading tasks.

VPN: This feature is helpful for users who live in a country where popular sites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube are blocked. The VPN service is free. Furthermore, there’s no download/upload restriction.

Final thoughts

Aloha is more than a browser. Some of its features may disappoint users searching for a fast/responsive browser application. On my device, Aloha consumed 150+ MB RAM in three hours. It also crashed a couple of times. Because Aloha consumes a large amount of RAM, it may not provide a great experience on mobile devices with 512 or 256 MB RAM.

1 thought on “Aloha browser review: Privacy focused browser with VPN”

  1. Armchair Critic

    Being a privacy-minded user, I’ve found myself quite interested in Aloha Browser. I particularly like that it allows you to download just about any video with ease. That is a very cool feature. A few things concern me, however, primarily the fact that they try to sell you “Premium Features” as a monthly subscription. Why would I pay a monthly subscription to use a BROWSER??? Any browser offering in-app purchases strikes me as a bit suspect. I can’t help the nagging concern that my data, if I were to use this browser extensively, would be sending my data off to some disreputable source. Its design has a classic Chinese look to it, and there seems to be very little information on it here in the States. If folks are interested in a REPUTABLE, SAFE privacy-oriented browser, I think they would be better served by looking at Brave, a Chromium-based browser founded by the former CEO of Firefox. Privacy is at the core of its mission statement, and I feel more confident about the security of my data using it. For me, the jury is still out on Aloha browser. It may be fine, but I have serious concerns & reservations about it. As such, I will use it only sparingly until I’ve found out more about it.

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