Panels - Comic Reader Reviews

Ive been using Chunky app for a while, and is a great app, but this app push the boundaries further with its awesome Library view, editing and import support. There were some minor bugs on iOS 12 or older. I contacted the developer by email and the response time was no joke. Not only they make sure they understand the issue, they asked me more input about Panels updates. I was going to give 4 stars because of just one issue that I think could be improved (in my two cents of opinion), but the communication with the developer was so fast and satisfactory that that alone is worth two extra stars if there were more to give. this app is elegant, organize and Panels aesthetics (which is backed by its performance) just wants you to read more.

This is one of the better readers from a basic UI standpoint, but probably one of the worst from a technical one.

You can add files through iTunes, but not whole folders. As for retrieving them from Panels , you might as well forget it. You must create the folders in Panels separately, either to import into or add to later. These folders also become part of Panels and cannot be managed anywhere else. It’s an overly tedious design that hints at poor development or excessive attempts to force subscription without first building the trust that it will be any less tedious.

Subscriptions meant to cover the cost of services make sense. After all, some do charge the developers. Lumping in services that the developers don’t pay a dime to maintain should be a separate, one-time fee to cover the cost of publishing Panels . I can’t see paying this app monthly to cover the cost of using my local server, unless they plan to send out techs to maintain it. After my experience importing files, I wouldn’t want to pay for that experience again.

There is almost no animation to reading beyond the generic slide. For one of the most expensive apps to own, it is sad to fall short of the stock Books app included by Apple.

Overall, I like the basic look of the UI and hope that one day the functionality catches up. Until then, I will continue to sync with Chunky and import the files here to organize when I get to it. If not for the UI, I probably wouldn’t bother at all.

Update:
2.4.4 - the last few versions I’ve had trouble other comic names. I’m importing via airdrop to my iOS device (latest software) and two comics had the end of their file names cut off. File names are the exact same length of other comics in the series that did not have naming issues. When I use the “rename” feature and save, the file name reverts to what it was and never changes.
//
Update:
2.2.2 - I’ve updated my iOS device hardware and am on the latest softwares for my device and Panels . I’m unable to airdrop directly to Panels (was able to do this in ver. 1 and iOS 12) and my Files app recognizes CBZ files to share with this app, but it does not recognize CBR files as sharable with the this app app.
//
Update:
2.02/3 fixed the crash upon app start. Comics read fine now as they did before. Tested the search feature and THAT crashed Panels 3-for-3 when I tried it.

Good thing Panels loads up and reading comics is normal, not good that standard features still cause app crashes.
Also, I liked starting at the Library page in the old app. I recommend letting users choose their landing page upon opening Panels . As someone who uploads comics on devices with smaller storage spaces, all the “READ NOW” features are pretty useless for me as I keep no more than 20 comics loaded in (usually less).
//
Old:
App doesn’t even load up now. It just crashes.
Should have waited to move to version 2 until after testing was complete.

edit to review:
Turns out you need the premium version to do vertical scroll… I tried the premium trial and the reading works very well now and I think I’m buying the full premium version… Panels is great and worth it for me right now…

Still looking for selecting a part of the comic as a snapshot, putting my notes on it and sharing it to other platforms to be native in Panels… I can work around it but I’ll appreciate if I can do it natively!!!
——————————————————
Everything about Panels is great except the most important feature which is Lock Zoom… I’m reading Solo Leveling (a webtoon) on it… the page is long and narrow so I have to zoom in to get it on the full width… the problem is the page keeps moving left and right when I try to scroll so I tried the zoom lock… it turns out that it locks on the view l’m on and don’t scroll any more… so I have to unlock the zoom, scroll down further on the long page (which is longer than standard page), lock it again and so on… I was about to buy the premium version but I don’t see the benefit of doing that now… please fix this!!! One more issue… some comic reading apps allows me to take a snap shot (select a part of the page) and add comments to it and even share it with other apps… it seems this app lack this as well!!!

It can be a little daunting when you first are attempting to put your own downloaded and scanned books and comics, but it’s actually quite simple. Apple’s folder function makes things even easier. Convert individual scanned pages into a pdf or other comic reader type file (very easy, it’s literally a click of a button to do so using one of many apps) and then share that file with this app. That’s it. You can arrange them how you like and display them based on different criteria you choose from. I can’t vouch for all of the other reader apps that allow you to add your own content, but I have had varied success until I used this app. I hope Panels is supported for a long time to come.

I’ve read tons of comics and manga with convenience due to Panels. For years, I was looking for a somewhat decent reader to read my collection on the go, in my phone, but whichever one I tried, none of them felt convenient. Panels has an outstanding one hand touch zoom feature that was a dealbreaker for me. It made reading so much easier, so much engaging but then they took it a step further and released the panel view. Although, it still needs a bit of work, they’re on the right path and I know that feature will make Panels one of the best. I just now purchased the premium plan after months of being happy with Panels and it’s totally worth it.

There are a number of apps for comic book collectors to organize and read in. Nothing comes remotely close to this app, whose developers always respond to user questions and implement user suggestion quickly if the idea has obvious merit. They have a forum site set up just for communicating with users.

Panels itself is stellar. There are no folder icons because the devs understand how important cover art is when you’re trying to find something. Instead you create stacks of cross-referencable comics which look like a stack seen from above. Everything stays where you drag it if you don’t want auto alphabetization - so you can separate artists from writers, or new stuff from the permanent part of your collection, or what have you. i could go on and on as to what make Panels the clear winner in its field.

My collection is vast (over 500gb) and Panels scrolls smooth as glass. I’ve been able to organize that much content sensibly and quickly. They’ve provided tools to help people on phone screens read panel by panel instead of page by page. With the last update it can even read to you.

Excellent elegant software.

It’s a very useful and minimalist app but this comes with its limitations. For example, I have not found a way rename or delete a collection once it’s been created. I cannot create sub folders to sort comics this leaves me with like 100 collections when they could be just 10. I can’t rename comics. The title of a comic isn’t shown in the icon/cover view. Needs to be a back or home button instead of always clicking a collection header and scrolling through my long list of collections. Really could be better.

Edit: Thank you for the reply. I did not realize that was how to delete collection I kept on holding and going through settings. Wish you the best

I would like to say that this is the best looking comic book reader on the iPhone hands down. Everything about it is beautiful. The navigation is extremely well done, and it doesn’t add a bunch of stuff that gets in the way of reading. After two days of usage I bought the ad-free version because I loved it so much.

If I had one criticism of Panels it would be that I would also like to have double tap to zoom option either in the settings that you can turn on or, just on by default. Other than that, Panels is perfect for my needs.

The importing of issues from Dropbox, and possibly other cloud services leaves much to be desired. Having a rather large collection and many folders, it takes a lot of hunting around and navigating through many folders to find the one issue i want. Once that is done, I am taken out of it and if i want to import another issue i have to redo that all over again. Should be a way to pin folders so you go right to the folder you want. Also, don’t take me out of the import process once i select one to import. Importing needs to be faster and much easier and right now, it’s a pain. Reading issues are a joy so it’s great there.. fix this issue and my rating will go up! Thanks

I've been using a lot of comic readers for my phone and I believe this app is the best one out of all them. Why? Because of how simple and sleek the design is and how smooth Panels runs. Very easy to import my files from google drive and I haven't encountered any problems this far. However my only complaint has to be that I wish there was a feature where we could double tap to zoom. I find this feature to be a necessity whenever I want to really get into fine details. And finally PLEASE PLEASE add a feature where we can read comics from top to bottom. Other than that AMAZING app.

TRY it. If you like it, buy it, because the FREE version after trial has ads, ads,ads,ads. Animated Ads play at the bottom of every page after trial period. And a must watch 15 second video ad appeared after every 4th page read. This is way OVER-KILL and renders the FREE app useless. Developers should get paid but this is nuts.

Also: You can not put collections inside of folders.
So one shots, v1 issue 1-10, v2 1-60, etc can not go into individual folders and then into a group folder.

+. On the positive side I like the large folder/group icon with “choose you folder cover option”

+. The feel of the ap is very nice, especially compared to other cbr readers on the IPad.

+ You hold down and you can reorganize the order of your books.

+ a lot of import options.

-apple- It appears Apple has removed any form of wired sync to computers, so if you do not have internet your screwed. Way to go Apple (not dev. fault. But, the more people complain, the better chance of fixing the problem). This is why I’m leaving this review.
Thank You.

The UI will often not zoom correctly. And if you zoom out too much or tap on the screen the menu shows up and it’s really annoying, breaks the flow when really into reading. Simple fix: make it so that the menu only comes up if you swipe up or down on the screen when you are zoomed out to show the full page. An app called iComix does that and it’s much more enjoyable to use. I only used Panels because the iComix app icon is ugly af.

One great feature it has over iComix, however, is the progress bar. Really helps you realize if you should put down the phone because you still have another 150 pages to go.

Absolutely love Panels. Its beautiful, fluid, and clean. The web server feature is not something you can find in some other apps and definitely makes importing much easier if you don’t have access to AirDrop. Honestly impressed it was made by such a small team. Keep up the good work!

If I could leave one suggestion, it would be to allow the user to jump to a specific page. I know we can tap then quickly swipe to a page. But manually entering a page would definitely be a plus (in my case this would have helped when switching readers).

If you’re looking for an app to read .cbr files with, use this one. Panels is amazing, while there are a couple features I would LOVE it to have
—specifically, a greater level of control over the thumbnails (just an option for them all to be the taller/larger way the first few in a collection or the smaller/wider way the next few appear would be AMAZING) and the ability to create sub-folders would be nice—
It in no way NEEDS those things. It works BRILLIANTLY already and I am incredibly impressed.
THANK YOU FOR Panels !

This is by far the most streamlined and aesthetically pleasing reader on ios. the ui is great, and Panels just works. there are a few things i feel could be implemented to make Panels even better:
1. Reading directly from the “Files” app. It’s kind of annoying to have to have the same file stored locally twice: both in the files app and in this app.
2. The ability to set reading right to left automatically. i read mostly manga and would like the ability to set that as the default.
3. The built to drag covers over collections in the library to add them. this is a simple thing that would make organizing more fluid.
4. there are still some bugs in the library especially when adding new files. mostly glitching covers.
overall, you won’t find a better reader on ios. no forced ads or essential features hidden behind a pay wall. if you read comics on ios, there is no better way to do it.

It does what it needs to do and the UI looks cleaner and better designed than other similar apps. I like that you can change the icon and the theme colors. The layout of the library is nice too. However, some of the navigating gestures are a little weird and unexplained, and could use a back button when navigating a collection. I really like the vertical scrolling, and use it all the time. But, one thing that REALLY annoys me is when I’m reading a comic and the screen gets tapped by accident, by my finger or palm, and then goes into a overview mode of the comic. It happens to me all the time, and it would be really nice if I could turn it off.

Slick app - but without some necessary features it’s only good for very small collections. We need to be able to:

1) Put collections into larger collections, so we can put titles into publisher folders, for instance.

2) Autogroup. When importing several issues of the same title, Panels should automatically group them into a collection.

3) Auto-Sort. When importing issues, Panels should automatically place them into their respective collections.

Without these features, I find myself still using ComicZeal, which, although it hasn’t been updated in a long time, is still better for the ‘serious’ comic reader. Having said that, Panels shows promise, so I paid to remove ads anyway. I just hope at least these features get implemented soon.

Also - it’s very neat that Panels offers an option to compress images, but very little is said about it. Will it only compress new comics when they’re imported or will it compress the current library? No clue.

Does a decent job, but only decent at best. I really want to like this and I’ve been trying, but lots of little tedious items make me wonder why I’m not using something that just works ,ore effortlessly, like Chunky.

For example, I can’t alphabetize my library because it insists that the manual order and alphabetical order are the same arrangement, even though my collections are clearly not in order.

Also, you have to back out to the main library in order to select the next book and advance to that issue. In both comic rack and Chunky you just simply tap the side of your screen and it’ll take you to the next issue. But what’s really annoying about this is that they want you to pay to be able to tap to the next issue. I understand having pay options for improved features, but this seems bit like nickel-and-diming.

There’s other little things, too, but I just want to give a snapshot of my impressions. If I can’t make it more enjoyable I’ll be switching back to Chunky within the next few days.

It’s a little annoying when, if already at the top or bottom of a page, scrolling up or down respectively, it opens a menu to share the file with other apps. In my opinion, this functionality doesn’t need to be there. I wouldn’t use this while trying to read a comic, but would instead use it from the list of files view. Hope that makes sense.

I would also like it if I had the option to make security exceptions, related to the SSL certificate, when trying to connect to my Ubooquity server.

If you’re as big of a fan of comics and graphic novels as I am, then this is Panels for you! It allows you to store a pretty large quantity of works all in one place, sort selected works into different collections, and read/flip through comics in multiple different styles. The only thing it’s missing is an option to rename individual files and works as part of a collection. I’ve found a way to rename collections themselves, but would really like to update individual file names as well. I hope this is something that is implemented soon!

Coming from the iPad (where I use Chunky comic reader) I was looking for a good comic book reader for the iPhone because there were never any good comparable options. Panels is awesome. The reader is beautiful, intuitive and works like you want it to. Navigation between comics is smart. And they made it easy to organize comics and also beautiful in the way it displays digital comic covers. Once trial was over I paid the 4.99. If you’re like me and hate ads, it’s not that much they asking for (especially compared to what you’re getting).

nice idea for the panel view, you just have to work on the old comics. I’m reading now the 40’s comics and the old paper doesn’t catch the panel view, it consider it as one paper, you should work on not only high resolution scanned images. My second note is about the pinch to zoom feature, when I zoom in and press the right of my screen to read the paper, the direction will be from left to right but ended by going down to the right of page not going back left to continue reading correctly, I hope you get this point, thank you.

If you can afford to pay for a one time only purchase to upgrade, it's worth it. Panels is beautifully designed with minimal aesthetic. After upgrading to premium you can choose different modes to read your comics, I personally love the scrolling mode which let you read your comics vertically while the whole page is enlarged to fit the screen. Very elegant. Easily import files from your computer thru airdrop or 5 other ways. Would recommend. 10/10.

I tend to use Chunky on the iPad to read manga, but I was curious of the offerings that exist for both phone and tablet. Syncing progress is fast and responsive, even after waiting only a second or two, it’s impressive!

Adding my ubooquity server was a breeze, but one thing that I noticed was that I needed to manually categorize each series into its own collection. This can be a serious time sink if you have a medium to large collection, especially because this has to be done for EACH device

I know it’s not a simple thing to add, but on Chunky it Just Works, and would really make improve this app.

Lastly, the ability to set which page is the cover/crop the cover are minor things that would be nice to have as well. It also doesn’t seem to be possible to set right -> left reading as the default, so it has to be done manually for every book.

I’m really upset that the « continue to next comic in this collection » button which has been available for over a year is now only available if you have a paid subscription.

I really like this app, it’s probably the best mobile comic book reader I’ve found, but this behavior is more than a little bit predatory. I’m upset because I had previously paid to remove ads (absolutely fine, the developers deserve to be paid for their hard work) but now I feel like they are trying to extract more money for the things they had previously provided for free. Not cool, especially given how incredibly simple this functionality is to implement.

Almost the perfect comic reading app, but a few problems worth mentioning.
No auto sort feature that has been previously mentioned.
Glitch where changing from horizontal view to vertical view (in vertical scroll) takes you back to an older page. Extremely annoying when you’re on page 300 and it skips you back to page 70. Happens consistently every time I accidentally turn my phone.