Best office apps for Android, round 2

We live in an increasingly mobile world — and while many of us spend our days working on traditional desktops or laptops, we also frequently find ourselves on the road and relying on tablets or smartphones to stay connected and get work done.

Where do you turn when it’s time for serious productivity on an Android device? The Google Play Store boasts several popular office suite options; at a glance, they all look fairly comparable. But don’t be fooled: All Android office apps are not created equal.

I spent some time testing the six most noteworthy Android office suites — DataViz’s Docs to Go, Google Apps, Infraware’s Polaris Office, Kingsoft’s WPS Mobile Office, Mobile Systems’ OfficeSuite 8 Premium, and Microsoft Office, which finally joined the official fray late last week — to see where they shine and where they fall short. I looked at how each app handles word processing, spreadsheet editing, and presentation editing — both in terms of the features offered and regarding user interface and experience. I took both tablet and smartphone performance into consideration.

Click through for a detailed analysis; by the time you’re done, you’ll have a crystal-clear idea of which Android office suite is right for you. The shocker is that the obvious choice — Office — isn’t the right one. Microsoft’s iOS version is quite good, but not the Android version.

Microsoft’s Word for Tablet is full of functionality but lacking in finesse, with a UI that often isn’t intuitive and doesn’t feel like it was designed for Android. The app lacks advanced features present in other word processors, too, like real-time collaboration, automatic saving, save-to-PDF support, and password protection — and it requires an ongoing monthly subscription if you want access to all of the features. On smartphones, meanwhile, you’re forced to used Microsoft’s oddly separate Office Mobile app, which delivers a pitifully lackluster experience that’s missing even the most basic editing tools.

Infraware’s Polaris Office is a decent word processor held back by pesky UI quirks and an off-putting sales approach. The app was clearly created for smartphones; as a result, it delivers a subpar tablet experience with basic commands tucked away and features like table creation stuffed into short windows that require awkward scrolling to see all the content. Polaris also requires you to create an account before using the app and pushes its $40-a-year membership fee to gain access to a few extras and the company’s superfluous cloud storage service.

Kingsoft’s free WPS Mobile Office (formerly Kingsoft Office) has a decent UI but is slow to open files and makes it difficult to find documents stored on your device. I also found it somewhat buggy and inconsistent: When attempting to edit existing Word (.docx) documents, for instance, I often couldn’t get the virtual keyboard to load, rendering the app useless. (I experienced this on multiple devices, so it wasn’t specific to any one phone or tablet.)

DataViz’s Docs to Go (formerly Documents to Go) has a dated, inefficient UI, with basic commands buried behind layers of pop-up menus and a design reminiscent of Android’s 2010 Gingerbread era. While it offers a reasonable set of features, it lacks functionality like image insertion and spell check; also, it’s difficult to find and open locally stored documents. It also requires a $14.99 Premium Key to remove ads peppered throughout the program and to gain access to any cloud storage capabilities.

Microsoft Excel for Tablet has a respectable set of features, but it suffers from the same UI flaws as the company’s word processing application. The most pressing issue, however — as with Word — is that the full Excel app is available only for tablets; from a smartphone, you’re stuck with the inexcusably poor Microsoft Office Mobile app instead.

Google Sheets (part of the Google Apps suite) lacks too many features to be usable for anything beyond the most basic viewing or tweaking of a simple spreadsheet. The app has the Function command for standard calculations, but it’s hidden and appears in the lower-right corner of the screen inconsistently, rendering it useless most of the time. You can’t sort cells or insert images, and its editing interface adapts poorly to tablets. Its only saving grace is integrated cloud syncing and multiuser/multidevice collaboration.

WPS Mobile Office is similarly mediocre: It’s slow to open files, and its Function command — a vital component of spreadsheet work — is hidden in the middle of an Insert menu. On the plus side, it has an impressive range of features and doesn’t seem to suffer from the keyboard bug present in its word-processing counterpart.

Docs to Go is barely in the race. Its embarrassingly dated UI makes no attempt to take advantage of the tablet form. Every command is buried behind multiple layers of pop-up menus, all of which are accessible only via an awkward hamburger icon at the top right of the screen. The app’s Function command doesn’t even offer descriptions of what the options do — only Excel-style lingo like ABS, ACOS, and COUNTIF. During my testing, the app failed to open some perfectly valid Excel (.xlsx) files I used across all the programs as samples.

Microsoft’s PowerPoint for Tablet provides a strong set of tools for creating and editing presentations on the go, but it’s missing features like password protection, the ability to export to PDF, and the option to sync with any cloud providers beyond Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. Crucially — once again — the full PowerPoint app is available only for tablets, leaving you with the barely usable Office Mobile app for any smartphone-based editing.

Google Slides (part of the Google Apps suite) is bare-bones: You can do basic text editing and formatting, and that’s about it. The app offers predefined arrangements for text box placement — and includes the ability to view and edit presenter notes — but with no ability to insert images or slide backgrounds and no templates or transitions, it’s impossible to create a presentation that looks like it came from this decade.

WPS Mobile Office is similarly basic, though with a few flourishes: The app allows you to insert images, shapes, tables, and charts in addition to plain ol’ text. Like Google Slides, it lacks templates, transitions, and any other advanced tools, and the results won’t look polished or professional.

Last and again least, Docs to Go — as you’re probably expecting by this point — borders on unusable. The app’s UI is dated and clunky, and the editor offers practically no tools for modern presentation creation. You can’t insert images or transitions; even basic formatting tools are sparse. Don’t waste your time looking at this app.

The results are clear: OfficeSuite 8 Premium is by far the best overall office suite on Android today. From its excellent UI to its commendable feature set, the app is in a league of its own. At $19.99, the full version isn’t cheap, but you get what you pay for, which is the best mobile office experience with next to no compromises. The less fully featured OfficeSuite 8 Pro ($9.99) is a worthy one-step-down alternative, as is the basic, ad-supported free version of the main OfficeSuite app.

Microsoft’s new Office apps could be a close second, but the requirement of an ongoing monthly subscription for a complete set of features is difficult to justify — especially when that set of features is less robust than what you’d get with a one-time purchase of OfficeSuite. The fact that the proper Word, Excel, and PowerPoint apps won’t work on Android smartphones — leaving you with only the shamefully subpar Office Mobile substitute — is indefensible and takes a serious toll on Microsoft’s scores.

If basic on-the-go word processing is all you require — and you work primarily with Google services — Google’s free Google Docs may be good enough. The spreadsheet and presentation editors are far less functional, but depending on your needs, they might suffice.

Polaris Office is adequate but unremarkable. The basic program is free, so if you want more functionality than Google’s suite but don’t want to pay for OfficeSuite — or use OfficeSuite’s lower-priced or free offerings — it could be worth considering. But you’ll get a significantly less powerful program and less pleasant overall user experience than what OfficeSuite provides.

WPS Mobile Office is a small but significant step behind, while Docs to Go is far too flawed to be taken seriously as a viable option.

With that, you’re officially armed with all the necessary knowledge to make your decision. Grab the mobile office suite that best suits your needs — and be productive wherever you may go.