Acronis True Image 2015 Brings Overhauled Interface, Huge Focus On Simplicity

At some point between the release of Acronis’ True Image 2014 and the past month, the company overhauled its corporate image. Not only was its official website given a fresh coat of paint, but its logo was updated, as well. While the double-lined “A” in Acronis’ updated logo does little for me, the overall aesthetic is very modern, and has enough color to satiate any blue-lover’s appetite.

Not surprisingly, the visual upgrade didn’t end with the website and logo. True Image 2015’s UI has been dramatically upgraded, and overall, the change might be welcomed by some, but not by others. Admittedly, I’m still getting used to it, and deep-down, I prefer the older style. “Simple” was an obvious goal here, and that of course will have its pros and cons, and won’t be able to please everyone. What I can say for sure is that it looks great, and it’ll be much easier to use with a touchscreen.

As before, you’ll be able to create backups of your entire PC and / or specific folders, and save anything and everything to your own storage or Acronis’ cloud service, including your full PC backups. With this new True Image version, Acronis is boosting its cloud storage to “unlimited”, which will run you $99.99 per year. Price-wise, that aligns itself with Dropbox’s recent upgrade to 1TB of cloud storage.

In addition to the upgraded space, Acronis says that it offers the fastest upload speeds possible – 20% better than average. Further, continuing the aesthetic and usability upgrade, the Web UI has also been redesigned.

Interestingly, Acronis has rid the special “Plus Pack” that was required to restore an OS to dissimilar hardware – now that feature is included with all versions of the software. On the Mac side, a catered version was released earlier this year, but 2015 brings a native interface.

Also new with True Image 2015 is a subscription model. For $99.99-per-year, you get access to the software on a single PC, which includes the cloud service (in effect making the software free). For new customers, TI 2015 will be purchasable on the 23rd. For current customers, upgrades will be available beginning today for $29.99.

Due to a fairly overwhelming workload, it’s unlikely that I’ll be able to dedicate enough time to testing this latest version of Acronis in order to produce a timely review, but after some use over the past two weeks, I can say that the latest version is quite good, and visually pleasing. I still think I prefer the older style UI, but it’s understandable why Acronis would want to simplify things overall, while at the same time improving its “pretty” factor. A solid release overall, but with so much time in 2015 being dedicated to a redesign, I admit I can’t wait to see what 2016 brings in terms of features.