Toros.co

Introduction

There are so many torrent sites out there to choose from these days. It can be downright stressful to try and figure out which one is right for you. There are so many different factors to take into account. How large is the community? How active is that community? How many torrents does a given site have to offer? Are any of those torrents verified? How safe is this torrent tracker? Is it designed in an intuitive, user-friendly way? Will I be able to use this torrent site on my mobile device?

With so many different things to consider, and new torrent search engines going up all the time, how on earth are you to be expected to choose the best one? Well, maybe choosing just one isn’t necessary after all … what if I told you that you could access all of the best torrent trackers from one convenient location? Would that make your life a little easier? … I thought so … Well, prepare to have your torrenting experience simplified, my friend, and allow me to introduce you to the wonderful world of the torrent aggregator site.

Like Google but for Torrents Only – Torrent aggregators, or put more simply, torrent search engines are essentially the Google of torrents. What I mean by that is that, instead of existing as a self-sustaining community of users who upload and download torrents from a single server, a torrent search engine draws from several different torrent sites to provide its users with every single high-quality torrent that the internet has to offer.

Torrent search engines do all the work for you. Well, the good ones do anyway. As you probably could have guessed, not every torrent search engine is made equal. There are some that draw from much more credible original sources than others. There are some that have fewer ads. And there are some that have all of the features and design perks that you would expect from a potential go-to source for downloading torrents.

Toros – The torrent search engine that we will be taking a look at today is known as Toros, which is Spanish for “bulls,” but also likely a play on the word “torrent.” Toros is a public torrent search engine that allows users to easily browse files from all of the top torrent trackers around the world.

The bull is known for his strength and fierceness. Does Toros live up to this reputation? Let’s test it out and see, shall we?

Design

The design of Toros has a lot of potential. I was immediately impressed, for instance, and hopeful when I landed on the site’s splash page.

Splash Page – It’s very well designed. They make great use of white space in a minimalistic flourish that is stylish, neat, and modern. From the moment you land on Toros.co, you will be greeted by a really cool and striking logo: a blue origami bull.

Below that, find a search bar and a few categories with free indie content to choose from, to jump right into browsing: Movies, TV, Games, Music, Software, Anime, eBooks, and Adult. The site, though, goes through some turbulence once you begin to explore it further.

At the very top of the page, you’ll find a small menu, too. Here, you can access pages such as Trending, Top 100, Torrent Sites (no relation), News, and Uploads. Unfortunately, the splash page is the only convenient place from which to access these pages.

Inner Pages – As I said, this site has its ups and downs in terms of design. Once you click into the site proper, you’ll notice a very cluttered and let’s say a somewhat half-baked layout. There is too much stimulus. The pages are extremely cluttered and the eye does not know where it wants to land because of this.

At the top of the page, ever-present, is your search bar – a nice touch, of course. To the left, you’ll find a somewhat oddly sized menu, again offering a way to browse by free indie content type. Below that menu, though, is the poster of a featured movie, appearing somewhat randomly and with no caption indicating why it is there. Then there is an empty section labeled “Check this Out.” At the very bottom of the left-hand side of the page, you’ll find a list of links; “Friends,” Toros was nice enough to label this section.

Browsing and Filtering Torrents – To the right of all that, slightly off-center for some reason, you will find a cool torrent browsing tool and a bunch of torrent files that you can filter out with certain parameters. Here, you can browse by category by choosing All Torrents, Recently Added, or Verified Only. You can also simply select a letter (they included the whole alphabet here). Or browse by torrent uploader.

Torrent Info Pages – When you click into a torrent, prepare to be bombarded with information and media. There will be plenty of file info, but some content info as well to be enjoyed, such as a trailer (for movies), screenshots, credits, etc. Again, I think these pages are a bit cluttered and could benefit from a little makeover.

Content and Features

One thing that Toros definitely has going for itself, though, are some cool and unique features. I cannot fault this site one bit when it comes to the amount of effort that apparently has gone into it.

In-site Streaming – This is something that I have never seen before on a torrent search engine … the ability to stream free indie movies, free indie TV shows, and free indie music right on the site, no download required. Well, at least no download onto your computer. The free indie movie will have to download from the peer network, so to speak, to allow it to stream on your device … but you could, if you wanted, treat Toros entirely as a free streaming site and probably be quite pleased. This takes a little longer than I would prefer, though, to buffer.

Huge Archive of Verified Torrents – Because of the fact that Toros draws from so many other torrent tracker sites, you can expect an enormous library of free indie content. If it exists and people are torrenting it somewhere on the web, chances are you can find it here. Finding torrents should not be an issue here.

Comments and Community – Toros has enabled comments for every single torrent that they link to. The only problem here is the fact that the peers on this site do not seem to take advantage of this as much as you might like to see. Comments can be a great way to discuss trickier torrent files, any potential problems with files, and just to feel a little more confident in your community of peers. However, the users of Toros appear to be a little less sociable than those of other torrent search engines.

Mobile and Desktop Experience

This is where the site begins to lose me. On both the mobile and desktop version of Toros, there are far too many ads. In fact, I would say that there is an unacceptable number of ads, not just for a torrent search engine, but for any site, period. The ads are literally everywhere you look on this site. At the top of the page, in the margins, popups in the corners, overlays, etc. Every kind of ad you can imagine, it’s here.

But then there is the nature of the ads, too, that could be an issue. Suffice it to say, this is not a family-friendly torrent search engine by any means. Blatant porn ads are some of the most prominent features of this site. Don’t pull this one up in front of the kids!

Suggestions that I have for Toros

I would love to see Toros find some way to generate revenue other than pimping themselves out to porn companies. I mean, there are other ways to tap into revenue streams online. Please find one that makes for a better user experience.

Other than that, I think that Toros is overdue for a whole site design makeover. Make the rest of the site as inviting and easy on the eyes as that splash page, and I might consider coming back for my torrents.