ProTuner Lite - Chormatic Tuner app review: tune all manner of musical instruments

Introduction

Whether you’re a guitarist, bassist, violinist, pianist, or play any brass instrument, this app is designed to act as a simple chromatic tuner set to the key of B, with a high degree of accuracy and simple, easy-to-read display to quickly get your instrument in tune.

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Right off the bat, the spelling error in the title didn’t exactly fill me with confidence, but I trudged on to see if this was a reliable tuner and even as a musician with over 15 years of experience I must confess, I’ve found myself ever so slightly confounded by this app.

Bum Note?

Before I comment on this app, I would just like to mention that I’m writing rather sheepishly because I’m not sure if I am being dense or if it genuinely is difficult to use!

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I’ve been singing and playing guitar, piano, bass, and even a little violin for over a decade so as you can imagine, I’ve used all manner of handheld tuners and tuner apps. Short of tuning forks, I can’t recall ever coming across a tuner that only enabled you to tune to one note; it seems a little redundant to only be able to tune to B, except perhaps for slightly more advanced musicians who can tune the rest of their instrument from a single string.

There is a paid version of this app available for $1.99 which enables you to tune your instrument to any note, but there are tons of chromatic tuners available in the App Store that will offer this kind of functionality free of charge.

 

I never like to deter people from at least trying out an app and ProTuner Lite does work absolutely fine with the features it offers, but honestly, it just seems like a subtle ploy to lure users into downloading the app, realizing its limitations and thinking “Oh well, I’ll just sink a couple of bucks on the full version.”

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I have no complaints with developers charging for quality apps, and this is certainly a well-developed app, but with this kind of tactic becoming increasingly superfluous and equivalent apps available free of charge, I would have to urge you to look elsewhere for a full-octave chromatic tuner.

 

Pros and Cons

Pros

• Tune your instrument to the key of B
• 25-cent range fine-tuning display
• Additional wooden visual theme available by tapping the “ProTuner” logo

Cons

• Only tunes to B
• You must purchase the paid version of this app to gain access to a full octave

 

Way Off Key

To reiterate, this isn’t a poorly-developed app by any stretch of the imagination; the user-interface looks great, I’ve tested the tuning capabilities on a couple of instruments with pleasing results, and the app itself is stable and fast-running.

I can’t, however, recommend this as a go-to chromatic tuner for musicians, unless you rarely play in keys other than concert B, because there are countless other tuner apps available that will offer a full octave along with other features such as built-in digital tuning forks – and these apps are typically available for free.