Quibi’s tech lives up to the hype. The shows? That’s up to you.

If you have an unquenchable thirst for streamed content and a few bucks to spare each month, Quibi would like a moment of your time.

An actual moment, in this case. The short-form video app is launching Monday in the U.S. and Canada after months of attention-grabbing headlines involving its star-studded original shows. Don’t get it twisted, though — this isn’t just a Netflix competitor. The Quibi app is mobile-only, so you won’t be watching any of these shows on your TV.

If you think that seems like unfortunate timing given everything happening in the world right now, you could be right. A mobile-only streaming service may not be able to fully shine during a lockdown when hardly anyone one is particularly, well, mobile. The good news is Quibi does everything it sets out to do.

What you get

Let’s lay out the facts: Quibi (a portmanteau of “quick bites”) costs either $4.99 or $7.99 per month, depending on whether or not you’re cool with watching short ads. Those who subscribe before the end of April, however, get 90 days free. There doesn’t appear to be any other difference in terms of features or content between the two pricing tiers. It’s available on Android and iOS, though it’s only built for phones and not tablets. 

For the money, you get dozens of short-form shows that run the gamut from fiction to reality television to daily news bites. Mashable’s entertainment section compiled a list of everything available at launch, and you should give that a look. 

The most eye-catching choices on day one are probably going to be what Quibi calls “Films in Chapters.” These are original films that are broken up into five- to 10-minute chunks for easy viewing on the go. They pack plenty of star power, such as Sophie Turner in Survive and Liam Hemsworth and Christolph Waltz in Most Dangerous Game. 

In fact, everything on Quibi right now is less than 10 minutes long. It’s a smart choice for a mobile-only streaming service because in a functioning world, you’d probably be watching these to pass time on your morning commute or your lunch break. None of that would matter if the tech powering Quibi weren’t up to snuff, but it is.

How it works

By far the most interesting thing about Quibi on day one is how it tries to take advantage of its mobile-only format. Every show and movie on Quibi can be watched either vertically or horizontally. You can also switch between the two as quickly as you would on any other video app, like YouTube.

The adjustment is impressively instantaneous, and it’s even more impressive that everything was shot to be watched either way. I would never dream of watching films or shows vertically because I’m a purist about aspect ratios (my coworkers are probably tired of me grumbling about The Simpsons on Disney+), but it’s cool that the choice is there. It’s even cooler that everything seems to be watchable that way, as far as I can tell.

You may not get the whole picture while watching vertically, but the important stuff should always be in the frame. If you do feel like watching things that way, the timeline for scrubbing through episodes will be rendered vertically on the side of the screen, which is a nice touch. An even nicer touch is that there’s a “Left-Handed Mode” in the settings, which puts the timeline on the left side of the screen.

In terms of discovery, Quibi doesn’t blaze any new trails so much as follows in the footsteps established by every other streaming app. The “For You” tab shows a vertically-scrolling selection of shows and films, but I didn’t get enough time with Quibi to get a feel for how the recommendation engine works. The “Browse” tab breaks things down into pretty conventional genre pages, as well as normal streaming categories like “New Releases” and “Trending.” That tab also has a standard search feature and a “Continue Watching” section for anything you started but didn’t finish.

After that is the “Following” tab. It’s pretty self-explanatory. You can choose to follow any show, and new episodes will show up in that tab. If you want to stay hyper-focused on just a few shows, you’ll probably get a lot of use out of that one. One thing to note is that all of the shows start with a handful of episodes on launch day and new ones will be added each weekday. 

The last tab is for downloads. You can download anything on Quibi, limited only by the amount of storage space on your phone. That’s how you do it, folks. One thing to note is that I wasn’t able to test Quibi streaming in an environment with poor internet because I’m stuck home like everyone else. There is a data saver mode that automatically reduces the quality of streams, but the effect isn’t really noticeable on a phone screen like it would be on a large TV.

From a tech perspective, it’s tough to find anything huge to complain about in the early days of Quibi. Its dynamic aspect ratio system works as advertised and it has all the typical discoverability features you’d expect from a streaming app. Of course, none of that matters if there’s nothing good to watch.

Is it worth checking out?

A new streaming service needs a healthy heaping of eye-catching content on day one to take off, but Quibi didn’t really do it for me in that regard. I’m not going to write lengthy reviews of every show since I’m a tech writer by trade, but nothing I watched grabbed my attention.

The first chapter of Most Dangerous Game mostly involved Liam Hemsworth and Christoph Waltz talking in a poorly lit conference room. It kind of looks like a fake movie someone would watch in a real movie. There’s also a revival of MTV’s Punk’d with Chance the Rapper in the role of celebrity tormentor. The first episode involves Megan Thee Stallion being led to believe her car is under attack by an angry gorilla.

If you’re not old enough to remember the first iteration of Punk’d, it was originally hosted by Ashton Kutcher and was almost solely responsible for trucker hats being fashionable for a few years in the early 2000s. This period was a bewildering time for culture and some things are better left in the past.

That said, there’s a huge variety of content on Quibi at launch. I can’t and won’t dismiss its entire catalog because tastes vary from person to person. My one worry is that the coronavirus cloud hanging over our entire existence right now is going to render Quibi useless for some folks who might otherwise find it appealing. I personally don’t want to watch shows on my phone if I’m within spitting distance of a TV. There may be plenty of people who won’t find that to be a deal-breaker, though, and are starved enough for content while they’re stuck at home that they’ll use Quibi regardless.

If you can afford the relatively small monthly fee and anything on the list of launch content sounds appealing to you, giving Quibi a month of your attention is probably worth it. If you do that, I can tell you that it works smoothly and won’t waste much of your time.