Microsoft plans to release a major feature update for Windows 11 later this year. Release 23H2 is expected to introduce several quality of life improvements and new features, including a File Explorer redesign. While there are concerns about performance and bugs, in this article I want to focus on the positives and take a closer look at one of the best new features the redesigned File Explorer will bring: RAR, TAR, original 7Z and other supported file compression formats.
Before Windows 11 version 23H2, ZIP was the only natively supported archive format. Therefore, users had to choose third-party applications to work with RAR, 7Z, etc. And while there’s no shortage of free and premium file compression applications, native support is always good for the average consumer—you don’t have to search for a program to extract a single, randomly downloaded archive.
However, the change raises a question: Can the updated File Explorer replace WinRAR, 7Zip, NanaZIP and other applications that often work with archives?
To answer the question, I decided to try the updated File Explorer winrarArguably the most popular app of its kind (respected by Change), and NanaZIP, a great fork of 7Zip for Windows 11. I downloaded the massive 24GB Windows 11 virtual machine from Microsoft for free and packed its files into three previously unsupported formats: RAR, 7Z and TAR, with compression ratios up to 50%. Now it’s time to unzip the archives and measure how long it takes File Explorer, WinRAR and NanaZIP on Windows 11 to complete the job.
Each app went through three tests to determine the average score on my desktop PC with a Ryzen 5 2600 (I’ll upgrade to a 5600 in a few days), 32GB DDR4-3200, NVIDIA RTX 4060, and a Samsung 980 500GB SSD. I then repeated the process on my laptop with an Intel Core i3-1125G4 processor, 16GB of DDR4-3200 memory and a 500GB NVMe SSD.
Mind you, my goal was to see performance differences between applications, not to find another reason to upgrade my PC, which I did anyway because the Zen+ architecture was slowly aging and I needed a better CPU for the future. Forza Motorsport get started
Test… ATTENTION!
Tests showed that File Explorer had no problem extracting TAR archives, and rivals WinRAR and NanaZIP: all three finished in about 80 seconds.
Next comes RAR, which immediately disables File Explorer and completes the process in about six minutes—three times slower than WinRAR and twice as fast as NanaZIP. Whoops!
And the 7Z made matters worse: File Explorer took about nine minutes to extract, while WinRAR and NanaZIP finished in about a minute.
Tests on my Intel laptop showed almost the same results, proving that third-party applications can decompress files much better and faster than the updated File Explorer.
Is it a problem? Rarely if ever will you need to extract a RAR file or any other file type not previously supported. However, those who often work with archives are unlikely to give up WinRAR, NanaZIP, 7Zip and other applications. And it’s not just because of poor performance, File Explorer is also significantly less convenient. For example, it doesn’t show a proper status bar (good luck guessing how much time you have left to figure out your “homework”), it can’t open a password-protected archive, and zip remains the only supported format if you pack files into an archive. Bunch needed. (Not to mention many other features like splitting files, adjusting compression ratio, etc.).
While Microsoft could have made archive support a bit more comfortable, we probably shouldn’t tighten it up in the current implementation. That would be enough to make Windows 11 better for the average person without putting WinRAR and other companies out of business Actually, WinRAR, it’s good.
