Ashampoo WinOptimizer 25 Review

Key Features

• (New) Full Support for Windows 11!
• (New) Improved 1-Click cleaning tool
• (New) Fully upgraded cleaning tools
• (New) Up to 75% faster cleaning
• (New) Deeper Windows Update / cache cleaning
• (New) Improved user interface and home screen
• Well designed & easy to use
• Powerful scheduling and automation
• Game Booster (live tuning to optimise video games)
• Powerful real-time optimisation tools
• System analysis & benchmarking tools
• Extensive web browser & cookie cleaning tools
• Plus many more useful tools built-in!
• Single licence supports use on up to 3x PCs!
• 30 Day free trial available!
• Priced at a one-off $49.99!

WinOptimizer 25 Usability

In this section of my review I will be assessing the usability aspects of WinOptimizer 25, this starts off with a look at some of the many new and upgraded tools and features which Ashampoo have incorporated into this latest version of the software before moving on to testing some of the many tools and features which are included.

What’s New in WinOptimizer 25?

WinOptimizer 25 brings with it plenty of new features and improvements over the previous version (version 19) of the tool which was released last year. Some of the most notable new features and improvements in this latest version include:

• Full support for Windows 11 – One of the biggest and probably most notable improvements for many PC users will be the full support for Windows 11, support which is now implemented across all tools and features which make up the entire WinOptimizer suite.
• Fully upgraded cleaning tools – Version 25 of WinOptimizer sees some big improvements made to the underlying cleaning tools and cleaning features which make up the application! Not only does the software now perform cleaning up to 75% faster than in the previous version, but the latest crop of tools are now much more powerful and provide much deeper cleaning performance overall.
• Windows updates and versions cleaning – Even more specialist cleaning tools are now available within WinOptimizer 25 which are specifically designed to deal with old versions of Windows as well and any stray files and caches which might result form use of the Windows Update service itself.
• Super fast 1-Click module – Along with all of the underlying cleaning tools, the 1-Click automation tool (which makes cleaning extremely quick and easy) has also been upgraded to run faster.
• New interface designs – Amongst many other small tweaks found in this latest version, we also see some big improvements to the actual user WinOptimizer interface itself. These changes are particularly visible on the main application homepage which provides an initial system analysis as well as within other core tools including the Uninstall manager and the Process manager amongst others.
• Extended homepage analysis – In this latest version of WinOptimizer the homepage analysis screen has been extended so as to provide easy access and status information on more tools and areas to be cleaned than was available in previous versions.

Out of the many new tools, features and improvements which are found in this latest version of the software (which are listed above), one of the biggest and most noteworthy changes includes fully re-optimising the entire suite of tools to be fully Windows 11 compatible! Not only is compatibility with the latest versions of Windows1 clearly taken very seriously within WinOptimizer, but with up to 75% faster cleaning than in previous versions, the newly improved cleaning modules now help to make WinOptimizer the leading PC cleaning tool that is has become known for!

Installing WinOptimizer 25

Installing WinOptimizer begins at the Ashampoo website where a 30 day free trial of the software can be downloaded. With an initial download size of just over 34MB during my own testing, this was a very quick and easy download and I had the installer up and running on my own PC just a few moments afterwards.

Upon completing the install, the software will need to be activated via either a licence key or the 30 day free (a free Ashampoo account is required for making use of the free trial). With the software now registered, the main application can be opened up and the new and improved homepage can be accessed for the first time.

And with that the installation process is complete and the latest version of WinOptimizer will be ready to use. I will continue my review in the next section where I will be focusing on some of the excellent cleaning tools found within the suite, up to and including the excellent 1-Click Optimizer which is without doubt one of the biggest selling points of this software!

Remember – Ashampoo offer a full 30 day free trial of WinOptimizer 25 via their official website should you want to try the full set of cleaning tools and features for yourself!

PC Cleaning Tools

One of the core aspects of WinOptimizer 25 is, of course, the wide range of cleaning tools which are included as a core part of the suite, a set of tools which are becoming ever more sophisticated and effective as Ashampoo continue to refine the WinOptimizer product.

One of the best places to start when cleaning a PC using WinOptimizer is in the “Clean” section of the app which can be found via the main (left side) menu as can be seen below.

Upon initially entering this “Clean” page, WinOptimizer will automatically start an analysis scan of the current system which will cover any installed web browsers, the Windows registry as well as any unnecessary files such as temporary files and windows log files which might be found upon the device. Clicking on “Show Details” for any of these three main entries after the analysis will show in-depth what each cleaning tool here is actually doing, this details view will also allow the cleaning process to be easily customised, when applicable, by turning on or off selected elements as is shown below within the file cleaning tool:

Once any cleaning adjustments have been made, each tool can then be set to clean its respective area by simply clicking the “Delete” button found next to it:

Before moving on, I also want to point out that as well as the basic adjustments which can be made to the cleaning tools shown earlier on, we can also (optionally) make further adjustments to how each of these tools cleans via the main application settings menu which is accessed via the cog icon towards the top of the window:

As can be seen above, all of the main tools found on the main “Clean” page can be fine tuned here to a very advanced level. Such settings allow (amongst many other things) the ability to specify which parts of a web browser are to cleaned or left untouched, which files or file-types are excluded form the file cleaning tool in addition to which parts (if any) of the Windows registry are to be excluded form cleaning:

Whilst these core cleaning tools are indeed very powerful and allow for a basic clean of the system to be completed on demand, WinOptimizer 25 also offers a lot more functionality including the newly upgraded homepage form which we can easily perform additional cleaning and analysis of the entire system (and I will be looking at in the next section).

WinOptimizer Homepage

Having now seen some of the core cleaning tools which are found within WinOptimizer, it is now time to look at the main application homepage and the very informative overview it provides as to the performance and current cleanliness of the system as a whole.

As can be seen above, this newly reorganised and improved homepage shows 8 key areas of the PC, each of which being represented as a tile alongside its current state and whether it requires optimising or not. Clicking onto any of these tiles will bring up more details as to what parts of the system make up the tile and what will be cleaned when pressing on the “Optimize” button found towards the bottom of the screen.

Another useful widget found on this new and improved home screen is the newly improved CPU speedometer which can be found in the top right corner of the window. This tool allows for an easy visualization of how stressed a PC is at any given time in addition to showing the current hardware configuration making up the device.

Finally, as was mentioned a little earlier on in the new features section, we see a new “Extended” part to the existing homepage design in WinOptimizer 25. This new “extended” page includes even more cleaning tools and cleaning areas (tiles) than has been available as a part of the homepage in previous versions of WinOptimizer, thus increasing the amount of cleaning which can be done within just a few clicks from opening up the software.

As can be seen above, this new “Extended” page can be accessed from the main (left side) application menu and contains analysis on even more areas of the device which, in-turn, backs-up the core areas fund on the actual homepage itself. Such areas found here tend to be slightly more advanced and the page overall offers more in-depth cleaning, this can, however, be very useful to have easy access to such cleaning (especially so from an easy to use window styled in a similar fashion to the main application homepage).

REMEMBER – Ashampoo offer a full 30 day free trial of WinOptimizer 25 should via the official Ashampoo website should you want to try any of these cleaning tools out for yourself!

1-Click Optimizer

Without doubt one of the most useful and most powerful cleaning tools found within the WinOptimizer 25 suite is the newly updated and improved 1-Click cleaning tool!

As can be seen above, we can easily access the 1-Click cleaning tool via the “All modules” page within the application itself or via the dedicated 1-Click icon which is placed on the Windows desktop for us automatically after installation has completed (and in-turn makes running the tool whenever you like as simple as just clicking on the icon). Once in the 1-Click cleaning tool for the first time it will automatically scan the system in three key areas (Internet, Drive and Registry) and automatically clean and optimise each of those areas without the need for us to do anything else (it is called the “1 click” cleaner for a reason!).

Whilst the 1-Click tool will, by default, automatically analyse and clean various parts of the system with just a single click, this automatic behaviour can be turned off by toggling the switch labelled “delete automatically after scan” which is found towards the bottom of the 1-Click page (and highlighted in the above image).

Other settings for the one click tool can be found within the special 1-Click settings page, a page which is accessible by clicking on the “Settings” button also found towards the bottom of the main 1-Click page. It is from this settings page that we can, amongst many other things, specify which parts of the 1-Click tool should be run and whether or not the automatic deleting element of the tool should be activated or manually triggered by the current user instead.

And with that, there isn’t too much else to really say about the 1-Click tool, it not only makes use of the most powerful cleaning modules found within this latest version of WinOptimizer, but also makes doing so very easy regardless of whether it is accessed via the main application’s “All modules” menu, the desktop icon or via the scheduled cleaning service which we will cover a little later on in this review.

Optimising PC Performance

As well as deep and thorough cleaning of the PC in question, WinOptimizer 25 also features several tools specifically designed for helping to keep a PC running at its optimal speed as well (including tools specifically designed to assist in improving performance for video gaming applications amongst many other things).

Starting off in the “Automatic” page (as can be seen above) we have access to the Auto-Clean, Live-Tuner and Game-Booster optimisation tools, all of which are designed to run automatically in the background and automatically optimise the system once in real-time once activated.

The Auto-Clean module is designed to help in keeping any attached disks both clean and optimised and will, amongst other things, work to automatically remove any browser traces after web browsers are closed as well as removing any other unnecessary application files as required (thus enhancing personal privacy in the process). The Live-Tuner tool is designed to improve application performance and keep the system running fast and as responsive as is possible thanks to this tool working in the background and adjusting and terminating background processes as is required to do so.

Finally, the third and most powerful of these three live performance optimisation tools is the Game-Booster tool, a very aggressive optimisation tool which is designed to significantly boost the performance of video games by closing or otherwise limiting any Windows background processes or services deemed unnecessary for the running of such games. Whilst this tools is undoubtedly very powerful, it is also very intelligent and will attempt to reinstate any terminated services once any running video games have been stopped.

With these three core performance tools aside, WinOptimizer 25 also brings with it many other specialised performance boosting tools for managing Windows services, background processes, optimizing internet connections and optimizing SSD drives (amongst many other things) as can be found in the “All modules” screen which can be seen below:

As can be seen above, with the core live tuning and optimisation tools aside, WinOptimizer 25 brings to the table several other useful tools for optimizing a PC, some of these tools include:

SSD Wizard:

Whilst SSD drives are undoubtedly fast (much faster than their mechanical counterparts) they still often require maintenance, correct configuration and specialist optimisation in order to get the best performance out of them!

Thanks to the SSD Wizard tool (seen above) which can be accessed form the “All modules” page, we have a tool which brings together multiple configurations and settings which could be having a detrimental effect on the operation of an SSD drive. Once listed, such features can be studied further and turned on or off as is required with guidance form within the tool itself (note the “recommended settings” button pointed out in the prior image which will help to tune these settings as is required for the current systems configuration).

Boot Center:

The Boot Center is a specialist tool which can be used to analyse and optimise the Windows operating system booting process. This optimisation primarily works by looking at process which are set to boot automatically alongside Windows itself and then allowing for said processes to be easily turned on or off as might be required to increase performance.

Internet Tuner:

The Internet Tuner is another specialist optimisation tool which comes bundled with WinOptimizer and can help with improving both the speed and reliability of an internet connection.

As can be seen above, whilst the Internet Tuner does allow for network settings to be tuned manually as might be required, the application also features an auto-optimize function to assist with finding the correct (and best optimised) network settings when required.

Scheduling & Automation

So far we have seen some of the many powerful cleaning and optimisation tools found within WinOptimizer 25 and how they can be utilised to help keep a Windows PC running at its best. One of the key features of WinOptimizer and a feature which helps make the tool so powerful overall are its scheduling and automation abilities.

Opened (again) via the “All modules” page which was seen earlier on, the “Task Scheduler” tool is where we can both set a schedule for automated cleaning whilst also specifying the type of cleaning to take place. The 1-Click Optimiser can be run (and is the default choice) whilst configuring a schedule or, alternatively, the set of system maintenance tools found on the main app homepage can also be set to analyse and clean the system automatically whenever the schedule is triggered to run.

Enhancing Privacy

Ashampoo have clearly put a great deal of emphasis on protecting user privacy within WinOptimizer 25, not only through specialist privacy enhancing tools as we are about to see but also through the deep and thorough cleaning provided by many of the tools which, whilst doing their regular cleaning jobs, will also help to keep personal and PC usage data private and secure in the process.

Whilst cleaning a system of unwanted or unnecessary files will, by default, also help in maintaining user privacy, Ashampoo have also included some very powerful privacy enhancing tools within WinOptimizer 25 which can help take the privacy protection already provided even further:

Privacy Manager Tool:

Starting with the powerful Privacy Manager (seen below) and Ashampoo have included a tool which is capable of bringing together several key areas and settings found within Windows which could in various ways have a detrimental effect on user privacy.

Once within this tool we can see and importantly optimize several key setting relating to Windows telemetry, location data, the Windows Update service, the Cortana service and the permissions of individual apps amongst many other things.

Browser Extension Manager:

The Browser Extension Manager provides a quick and convenient method for viewing and managing any plug-ins which might be installed across any of the main browsers on a device (including Firefox, Microsoft Edge and Google’s Chrome browser).

Keeping a check on browser plug-ins installed across any of the browsers on your PC can be a great way of helping to maintain and improve web browsing privacy. Not only does the Browser Extension Manager make spotting and uninstalling any potentially unwanted plug-ins both quick and easy, thanks to the community ratings which are also provided against many plug-ins it can help quickly identify any plug-ins which might require further attention or removal straight away!

File Wiper:

The File Wiper tool, as the name suggests, provides a quick and easy method for permanently and securely deleting any personal or otherwise private files in order to make sure they cant easily be recovered.

Not only can individual files be added to the wiping tool by simply dragging and dropping them over the interface itself, but the tool also features several pre-set functions for wiping various areas of the device including the Windows trash can plus the option to detect and wipe any free disk space amongst other options.

Other Useful Tools

With the core cleaning and performance optimisation tools aside, WinOptimizer 25 provides many other additional tools which can help in monitoring and managing a Windows system and help to keep it running at its best. As with many of the core tools already covered during this review, these additional (but still very useful) tools can be found within the “All modules” page accessible from within the main (left side) application menu already seen earlier on in the review.

Below are just a few of these other useful tools mentioned in just a little more detail, if you want to see and test out the full set of additional tools for yourself then remember that Ashampoo do offer a fully functional 30 day free trial of WinOptimizer 25 via their official website!

File Manipulator (File Encryption Tool):

The File Manipulator tool is a very useful addition to WinOptimizer 25 and allows for a file to be encrypted (or decrypted) as well as supporting the splitting-up of large files alongside the subsequent re-joining of such files back into a single file (when required).

By providing pre-set options to split-up large files up into smaller files (including into pre-set 650MB, 700MB or custom sized sections), this tool can provide a great way for splitting up large media which is to be stored on CDs, DVD or any other fixed-sized archive media which might be in use. The ability to also easily encrypt such files can also help to ensure the security of file contents which are been stored, an especially useful option when making use of optical media for archival storage as was mentioned above!

System Information:

The System Information tool provides an insight into the hardware specification of the current PC alongside any peripheral devices which might be attached to the system. Whilst not especially unique to WinOptimizer 25 this tool does make it easy to access a huge amount of system information in a single place!

HDD Inspector:

The HDD Inspector tool provides an easy to use and useful view of the status of all attached hard drives including the SMART self diagnostic status which could, in certain cases, help in identifying any problems which might exist with any installed disks.

System Benchmark:

The System Benchmark tool allows for a performance benchmark of the current system to be taken and can be very useful when evaluating new components or configurations which might be put in place.

Context Menu Manager:

The Context Menu Manager is a very useful addition to WinOptimizer and can help in removing any unwanted or excessive entries from any Windows context menus. Keeping these menus tidy and uncluttered can not only mean they are easier to navigate but can also help reduce the slowdown sometimes seen when opening context menus on unoptimised systems!