For years, VLC has been my gold standard for media players. It'll happily open every weird file format I throw at it, and it doesn't cost a dime. It has only crashed two or three times in the decades I've been using it.
More recently, I ran into a problem when I tried to play a high-bitrate 4K HDR file on a mid-range laptop. I had a weird issue with dropped frames, stuttering, and colors that looked washed out no matter which setting I tried in the Preferences menu. When I swapped VLC for mpv, the same file played on the same hardware without a single complaint.
Mpv is a free and open-source player that is derived from MPlayer and mplayer2. It has been in active development since 2012 and takes a fundamentally different approach to the user interface. VLC tries to be everything to everyone (and largely succeeds), whereas mpv focuses on being as minimalist as possible.
Some of the performance jump comes from having less software between the file and the screen. VLC carries a massive amount of legacy overhead, but mpv is noticeably smaller. It uses GPU rendering through OpenGL, Vulkan, or Direct3D. Using the gpu-next output driver allows it to handle modern workloads without anything else in the way.
You can notice a difference in image quality the moment you upscale a video. Rather than a default bilinear stretch, mpv uses scaling algorithms like Spline36 or ewa_lanczossharp. Furthermore, its HDR tone mapping prevents SDR displays from looking grey and flat—the exact issue that I've run into with VLC repeatedly.
It does more than just playing audio and video files.
When hardware decoding is enabled, mpv puts significantly less strain on the CPU during high-bitrate 4K playback. And it can handle playback in almost any format. Because it uses FFmpeg for decoding, its format support is effectively identical to VLC’s. Whether you are dealing with HEVC, VP9, AV1, or some ancient DivX file you have sitting on a hard drive from 2005, mpv can handle it.
The most noticeable difference is the interface—or lack thereof. There is almost no UI; a small on-screen controller appears when you move your mouse and vanishes when you stop. You won't find a traditional settings dialog here. Instead, configuration lives in plain text files: mpv.conf for behavior and input.conf for controls.
You should try it if you frequently watch 4K or HDR content, care about high-end scaling and subtitle rendering, or are comfortable editing a text file to change settings.
On the other hand, you should probably stay with VLC if you rely on a graphical settings panel or need to play DVDs and Blu-rays with full menu navigation—VLC is still superior for physical discs. If you are setting up a laptop for someone that isn't tech-savvy or who rely on VLC’s built-in streaming and transcoding tools, mpv will feel like more trouble than it's worth.
The most practical answer for most people is to keep both, which is what I've done. Use mpv as your default for files to get the best possible picture, and keep VLC around for discs and odd jobs.
The minimalism of mpv isn't without its drawbacks. The most jarring change is that the settings are a text file. There is no preferences window, and there likely never will be one.
Typically, you can find those by entering %APPDATA%mpv into a File Explorer address bar or the run bar. If nothing is there, you'll need to manually create a file. You can reference mpv's templates on GitHub to get an idea of what settings are available.
You'll also have to learn a few keyboard shortcuts, as there is no media library or complex playlist interface to click through. If you need your files organized with cover art and metadata, you should probably try out a different app.
On Windows, the installation can be slightly cumbersome because it doesn't set up file associations by default. If you use the prebuilt shinchiro builds, you must run the mpv-install.bat script to add the "Open with mpv" right-click entry.
