Review of MyTrip for Windows 8, 10 : Plan Your Trips better

MyTrip is a very useful travel planner app for Windows 10 device. Some of you who don’t like the cold might be wanting to go to warmer climates for the winter vacation, and such a trip requires lots of planning and a strict schedule. From the transportation, to the tourist attractions, to local weather and other information, all of this information has to be taken into account.

This amount of information however, is hard to keep track of in a notebook, so what would be the next best thing? If you said an app, then you are right! Apps are easy to use (most of the time), reliable (with some exceptions) and they are always present with us, on our devices. One such app is MyTrip, a Windows 8 and Windows 10 travel planner that allows you plan your trip and set a schedule for what you will visit.

Using MyTrip – What do we think about it

I had high hopes for this app, being a travel app, it has to offer lots of planning features and most of all, detailed information about each country and every place that you might want to visit. But as I said, this is what the app should have. Unfortunately, it doesn’t! What does have is a collection of seemingly random places (they are grouped by country at least) with some Wikipedia information on the side.

When you start planning your trip, you have the possibility to add as many places as you wish (right click when a place is opened and click on “Add to Trip”), and when you are finished selecting all the places you might want to see, you can start by creating the trip calendar, where you categorize the places you want to visit on days.

As I’ve mentioned, the app has its information stored on countries, so first of all, you select a country, then what you are interested in (museums, building, landmarks etc), add them to your list and you are done. Also, there is a map integrated in the app (powered by Nokia Maps) that shows you a pretty detailed view of any city.

However, the search option on the map is far from good, results show but it takes approximately 20 clicks and 2-3 minutes to go to the selected place and there are no Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons. Also, throughout the app, the “Back” button does not change color, and most of the time it is barely visible and hard to click. Also, the map allows you to show diseases, or rather areas where some diseases are present – this could be a good idea, but I highly doubt it can be too accurate.

The Wikipedia information on each element has not undergone any change (just plain copy/paste), and sometimes, the developers did not copy the entire paragraph and you end up reading and the text abruptly ends in the middle of a sentence. Also, there are no outside links for the information provided (and in some places, there are “more info” texts that do not have links – probably a result of the copy/paste from Wikipedia) and the pictures used for the places of interest or regions have unbelievable poor quality.

One time, the app crashed during the tests and all the planned trips disappeared and there was no way to bring them back. Although the places that were added to the Favorites bar were still there, the entire trip (in this case trips) had to be remade.

Quick recap of MyTrip

• It features lots of places around the world (although many missing)
• Map with detailed information
• Information not edited (copy/paste from Wikipedia)
• Intuitive UI (however it does present some drawbacks and design flaws)
• Unreliable – crash and loss of data
• Too many low resolution photos
• Hard to navigate map
• Hardly any information on hotels
• Add places of interest to Windows Start Menu

Final thoughts

After using the app and checking its every feature, it left me with a feeling of sloppiness. I can’t help but think that the app was created as a weekend project and the developer had no serious intent on making it a good and reliable app, but only as something to pass the time.

I do hope I am wrong and the app is having a major upgrade as we speak, but until then I can’t say this is a good app (long from it). The potential is there, the idea is good, the design is simple and very well thought of, but the execution of the app is poor. So, would I use the app to plan my next trip? Definitely not! At least not until it will receive updates that will make it better.

Update

As promised by the developer of MyTrip, the app has gotten a major overhaul. Although there are a few other places where it needs touching up, MyTrip much better than what it was at the time we reviewed the original app. With a bit more work, we think it can become one of the best holiday planning apps of all. Keep on the good work!

However, if you are looking for another app to plan your trips, we suggest you to consult our list of best trip planning apps&software.