#Airserver vs reflector mac#

I do like, however, how Reflection handles the animation of multiple devices connecting to a Mac. In terms of frames per second and graphic performances, both apps handled four devices similarly, with my wireless network being the primary reason behind occasional drops in frame rate and sound. I did not experience a single crash with AirServer – not even with Real Racing 2, Ski Safari, Tweetbot, and Safari being mirrored at once – and the app never confused its AirPlay receiver for Reflection’s.

In my tests, whilst capable of handling multiple streams efficiently, Reflection crashed on a couple of occasions other times, Reflection also incorrectly forwarded video and audio streams to AirServer. There are some implementation details that made me prefer AirServer’s solid all-in-one solution. Things obviously got more complicated when I connected four devices at once to a single Mac, yet even after some initial hiccups due to orientation adjustments, even those four devices managed to run decently on my Mac’s display.

#Airserver vs reflector mac#

There are always some artifacts (in terms of sharpness and color reproduction) when iOS is mirrored to a Mac (as a reminder, something that Apple isn’t officially supporting) and I experienced some slowdowns on my less-than-perfect wireless home network yet in spite of my network’s flaws, both AirServer and Reflection allowed me to play Ski Safari and Temple Run side-by-side without any noticeable lags that negatively impacted the experience. In mirroring two, three, and four devices at once to my Macs, I found AirServer and Reflection to be comparable in terms of performances and image quality.

This is especially nice for apps that send data alongside the AirPlay stream, such as Rdio for iOS, which sends an artist’s information and cover art alongside audio. For instance, while Reflection will play your iOS audio on the Mac, AirServer will do the same, but it will also highlight the menubar icon to show that audio is being sent, and it will try to display a Growl notification. While Reflection is capable of turning your Mac into an AirPlay audio receiver (without any video) in spite of the app’s main focus on Mirroring, AirServer is clearly a more complete solution for all kinds of AirPlay streams with dedicated features for audio, video, and Mirroring. While Reflection and AirServer have become very similar utilities, in my tests I have found some important differences that are worth keeping in mind if you plan on using AirPlay Mirroring for more than just demoes to your friends and family members. The photo above, for instance, shows an iPhone 4S and three iPads being mirrored at the same time to OS X Lion with AirServer. At the same time, I figured I hadn’t used Reflection much since it came out two months ago I installed both the latest AirServer and Reflection on my iMac and MacBook Air, and tested multiple iOS devices with AirPlay Mirroring enabled at the same time.īoth AirServer and Reflection now allow you to mirror an iOS device’s screen on your Mac, and both apps let you mirror multiple devices at once with separate channels for audio and video. Recently, the AirServer team made some major changes to the way AirServer handles AirPlay Mirroring (our overview) on OS X with multiple iOS devices, so I thought it’d be appropriate to give the app a second try. From games enhanced with AirPlay to enable new controls and interactions, to several desktop utilities that are now connecting Macs and Apple TVs with AirPlay, there’s plenty of options out there to beam images and audio to devices running iOS or OS X.ĪirServer was one of the first applications to bring proper AirPlay support to the Mac, initially only with audio and video, then iOS 5 and Lion, and, around the time Reflection also came out, AirPlay Mirroring. The past few months have indeed seen a surge of AirPlay-compatible desktop utilities and apps that take advantage of Apple’s technology for audio and video streaming. From tools to turn Macs into AirPlay receivers for audio, video, iOS Mirroring sessions, then a combination of all them, to more or less Apple-approved “AirPlay audio receivers” sold in the App Store, then pulled, then released in Cydia, the past two years have surely been interesting for AirPlay.

In my review of AirFoil Speakers Touch 3.0, I wrote about AirPlay:Įver since developers started reverse-engineering the AirPlay protocol that Apple introduced with iOS 4.2 in November 2010, we have seen all kinds of possible implementations of Apple’s streaming technology being ported to a variety of devices, for multiple purposes and scenarios.