Stocks, Rates, exchange rates, commodities, and financial news are always changing, and in today’s interconnected atmosphere, this news is relevant to more people than ever before. With the MSN Money app, users can stay up to date on news, stats, prices, and rates with a beautifully designed and responsive app. However, the app does more than provide updates and news; with their mortgage calculator, you can estimate monthly payments while adjusting variables.
While the MSN Money app is essentially an update from the Windows 8 built-in Money app, it has good and consistent design while delivering exactly what financial watchers want to know. Also the live tile may be one of the most useful by showing real time stock and commodity prices.
User Interface
From a UX standpoint, this app falls in line with the other MSN branded apps coming from Microsoft. In the desktop version of the app, the hamburger bar covers the left side providing access to home, markets, favorites, exchange rates, mortgage calculator, world markets, and the ever present feedback smiley face. At the bottom of the left side bar is settings and account sign in or out, which is consistent across all the Windows 10 MSN apps.
The home page offers a mix of financial headlines, and data for commodities, stocks, personal watchlist, currency rates, and world markets. Under the statistics there are more articles which are all related to money either by markets, personal finance, business news, or government financial policy. At the top of the home page there are more refined categories which can be selected for more focused information. The last category is for videos, which can be nice if you aren’t in the mood to read, but be warned, the videos do have pre-roll ads.
Features
Each section follows the same general layout with more refining categories at the top, and some sections do have extra features like the ability to pin that page to start or add the company, commodity, or currency to your personal watchlist. The watchlist serves as a one stop where all the favorited rates are shown. Adding items to the list can be done from the watchlist page or the page of the relevant stat.
There is a persistent search box where users can search for companies or commodity from any section. This can be nice for a quick check in to see how a certain company is doing. Search is fast and pages load right away which makes the search box pleasant to use. Every once and awhile a section will fail to load but selecting it again will usually solve that issue right away.
The currencies section gives rates and provides a converter for quick calculations between currencies. Recent data such as open price, change, percent change, and 52 week high and low are shown above a one year trend graph. For quick access to the currency converter, pin it to start or add it to your watchlist. Below the currencies section the mortgage calculator provides a useful tool when estimating costs associated with getting a mortgage.
The last section dedicates itself to the world markets status and stats. At a glance see what markets are open, where the markets are currently or ended, as well as the percent change. For more specific regions, there are options to look at just the Americas, EMEA, or Asia Pacific. From these pages, more markets are shown in that region. Clicking on any particular market will take open the summary page for the market giving more data and options.
Summary
All things considered, the MSN Money app for Windows 10 provides a huge amount of news, data, and tools for anyone. The live tile provides updates at a glance which are perfectly suited for live tiles. The design of the app is instantly understandable by sharing design elements with the other MSN apps. Pages are neatly laid out with a balance of information with the controls to get more details or data.
As nice as the app is Microsoft has chosen to support their MSN apps with ads which cannot be removed. This has been happening since the apps were first introduced on Windows 8 and can be understood for the most part. The more annoying part would be how the ads cannot be removed by upgrading the app to a paid version. The apps do stand out and so far MSN has not used native ads such as sponsored articles to support the costs of their apps. The ads are not a big issue but they do keep the app from feeling like a professional tool.
If you haven’t already, check out the MSN Money app and share your thoughts in the comments below.
