HD Widgets review (version 4) + Colourform and Kairo

Functionality

Okay so what is HD Widgets? HD Widgets is an app that provides you with a number of clock, weather, indicator, toggle, and other widgets that you can use to adorn your home screens. It’s one of the most popular and consistent widget packages in the history of Android and it’s only been getting better. It provides a number of widgets in various sizes that you can customize a whole bunch.

With the release of version 4 comes a lot of features. Most notable are a few new widgets such as the 7 and 10 day forecast widgets, location based widgets, single-column widgets, and smart weather stat widgets that are now included. There is also a new interface with sidebar navigation as well as an hourly bar graph for your weather if you choose to use it.

Along with version 4 came an update to the Colourform add on. It’s mostly things to make it compatible with HD Widgets version 4. If you’re not familiar with Colourform it is a theme pack that contains a lot more bright colors to give you more options for your widgets.

Also new with the HD Widgets version 4 release is their new Kairo theme. This is a flat and minimal theme to help augment the Kit Kat experience. You can apply the Kairo theme to over 60 widgets across HD Widgets and with it comes a huge array of colors and potential options. It was specifically designed for the new widgets that came with version 4 although it does work with most widgets that are already present as well.

In short, HD Widgets version 4 is a huge step up from what it used to be. It has always arguably been one of the best widget packs of all time and with the version 4 release, the Colourform update, and the Kairo launch, it’s added hundreds of new options and they all look really good.

Design

It’s hard to judge the design of HD Widgets because you can make the widgets look pretty much how you want. They come in a plethora of sizes from one by one to gigantic tablet sizes if you need those. To use Colourform and Kairo –after you purchase them of course- you use the button at the top to access them. Most widgets have Colourform and Kairo support.

Colourform has been around for a while and it’s nice to see it get updated as well. It definitely adds some unique and very colorful options for those who prefer their experience be a little brighter. Kairo packs a lot of that same punch but with everything flattened out, you can give your widgets a more sophisticated, minimal look that works really well with existing Kit Kat theme elements.

The app that comes along with the widgets has changed as well. It used to be a solid weather app that showed you some good information and it was clean. With the update, HD Widgets sees a UI change that conforms better to the Android design standard as it now contains a pull out menu.

For the most part, it’s essentially re-arranging the old information. You can still collect weather from WeatherBug, AccuWeather, and Weather Underground but it actually displays more weather data than it used to. You can get weather alerts in the widgets now and there is now a graph available that shows the weather on an hourly basis.

Overall, if you like widgets, HD Widgets is what you want to get. It has a bunch of sizes in a bunch of colors and styles and they perform a bunch of tasks. Personally, I’ve been using HD Widgets for years and it’s usually among the first apps I download when I get a new phone. If you’ve been watching my review videos for a while, you know I don’t say very often.

Kairo and Colourform do a phenomenal job to augment an already solid experience. Between those two themes and the stock themes, you should have no problem finding exactly the kind of widget that you’re looking for. Yes, there is a problem here and there, but you can’t name an app that doesn’t so in the grand scheme of things, HD Widgets is a serious win and if you’re into widgets, click the button below to check it out.
To download Colourform, click here.
To download Kairo, click here.