Comparison

BananaPaint vs A«iD

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

BananaPaint

Experience the 1980s computing era with this app, designed to recreate a groundbreaking classic. It offers a nostalgic interface with modern enhancements for a unique creative tool.

Highlights
  • 1980s computing nostalgia
  • Modern iOS enhancements
  • Creative design tool
  • Simple interface
Features
Read full description

BananaPaint lets you relive the 1980s- when life was simpler, and using a computer with mouse and windows was definitely thinking different. BananaPaint is an homage, and labor of love; it painstakingly recreates one of the most groundbreaking applications of the last century, fixes some bugs, and bridges the past to the present with many cool modern features savvy users expect of a cutting edge iOS App. Coming soon: BananaWrite & BananaDraw!

About

A«iD

This app synthesizes video in real time, reacting to audio input. It offers a modular chain of effects to manipulate visuals, allowing for custom masks and intricate distortions. Create unique, psychedelic visual experiences inspired by vintage video synthesizers.

Highlights
  • Audio-reactive video synthesis
  • Modular effects chain
  • Customizable masks (SVG, PNG, PDF)
  • Real-time feedback and distortion
  • Color manipulation and remap
  • CRT phosphor and DV tape emulation
  • Edge detection and raster effects
Features
Read full description

A«iD is an audio-reactive video synthesizer inspired by Eric Siegel's legendary EVS Electronic Video Synthesizer from the 1970s. ——— THE CHAIN ——— Modules process the video signal in real time. Stack them in any order, tap to open controls, drag to reorder, long-press to bypass. GEOMETRY SOURCE — Generate a synthetic shape and composite it over the signal. Circle, diamond, bar, cross, ring, triangle, hexagon — or load your own SVG, PNG, or PDF as a custom mask. Position, size, hue, and edge softness are all independently audio-modulatable. FEEDBACK — Route the processed signal back into itself. Pinch and rotate on the canvas to control zoom and spin in real time. KEYER — Unified luma and chroma key in a single module. Cut foreground from background by luminance or isolate a color as a matte. Tap the eyedropper to sample any color directly from the screen. Pairs visually with COMPOSITE in the chain — the signal knows where it's going. COMPOSITE — Layer the processed chain behind a clean camera cut using luma and chroma mattes simultaneously. COLOR MATRIX — Rotate, invert, and cross-channel the RGB color space. Strange colors guaranteed. HUE LFO — Oscillate the hue channel at tempo-synced rates. Psychedelic pulsing locked to the beat. PHOSPHOR DECAY — Emulate CRT phosphor persistence. Past frames linger like burned afterimages. BURN ECHO — Additive frame echo that saturates toward white. Motion leaves a scorched trail. DV TAPE — Analog dropout and compression artifacts from the era of consumer DV camcorders. HALATION — Film halation glow on bright areas. Warm blooming on highlights. CHROMA SMEAR — Horizontal chroma bleed and compression fringing. SCAN DISPLACE — Rutt/Etra-inspired raster displacement. Each scanline shifts horizontally by audio frequency content mapped to vertical position — bass warps the bottom, treble the top. The entire frame becomes a spectrum warp field. EDGE OUTLINE — Sobel edge detection with colored glow, inspired by Stephen Beck's Direct Video Synthesizer. Flat areas go dark; edges light up in the chosen hue and bloom outward. COLORMAP — Remap luminance to color. Five palettes: Thermal (heat vision), Psychedelic (full hue rotation, classic Siegel PCS), Phosphor (P1 green CRT), Ice, and Neon. Every pixel's brightness becomes a new color. RASTER BEND — Distort the scan lines. Warp the geometry of the image itself. MIRROR — Fold, flip, and tile the frame into kaleidoscopic symmetry. TILE — Repeat, scale, and rearrange the frame in a grid. POSTERIZE — Reduce color depth. Hard edges, flat planes, screen-print aesthetics. TRANSFORM — Rotate, scale, and reposition with full affine control. CHANNEL MIX — Blend and cross-route RGB channels independently. ENCODER — NTSC-style composite encoding. Color bleeding and luminance separation. ——— AUDIO REACTOR ——— Every knob can be wired to the live audio signal. A»iD listens constantly and extracts amplitude, bass, mid and treble bands, beat phase, BPM, onset triggers, and spectral centroid. Seven LFOs run at BPM subdivisions. Open the Patch Bay to wire any source to any parameter in any module. Stack multiple sources on one knob. Set amount and polarity per patch. ——— RANDOMIZE ——— Shake the device (or hit the die) to randomize the whole chain. Palette Lock freezes hue and saturation through dice rolls. Sleeper Mode locks each module's bypass state — sleeping modules stay asleep, active modules stay awake. Everything re-rolls around your intention. ——— SYNC & CONTROL ——— ABLETON LINK — Lock BPM and beat phase with Ableton Live, AUM, Loopy, and any Link-compatible app on your network. MIDI — Auto-learns CC from any wired or Bluetooth MIDI controller. Long-press any knob to assign. OSC — Receive /aid/ messages from TouchOSC or Max/MSP over Wi-Fi.

Screenshots

A«iD4 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: A«iD at Free against BananaPaint's $1.99. A«iD also leads on rating (5.0 vs 3.7) and review sentiment (100% vs 62%). BananaPaint's advantage is ratings volume (15 vs 3) and iOS requirement (11.0 vs 17.0). On ads, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

A«iD is free to download; BananaPaint costs $1.99 up front. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.

ReceptionRating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings

A«iD holds the better App Store score, 5.0 against 3.7. That said, the two scores are not equally well evidenced: BananaPaint has 15 ratings behind it against 3, so its average is the more settled of the two. Written reviews point the same way: 62% of BananaPaint's written reviews are positive against 100% of A«iD's.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

BananaPaint ships an update every 4 months, A«iD every 8 days. The most recent releases landed on October 5, 2026 and October 7, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard7 real differences · 3 level
BananaPaint versus A«iD: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterBananaPaintA«iD
Price$1.99Free — better
Rating3.7 (15 ratings)5.0 (3 ratings) — better
Positive reviews61.9% of reviews100.0% of reviews — better
Number of ratings15 — better3
Update frequencyEvery 4 monthsEvery 8 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNoNo
MonetizationPaidFree — better
DevicesiPadiPhone, iPad — better
Requires iOS11.0 — better17.0
Further details — not scored
Size2 MB68 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperAmalgamated Coders IncJOEL CHRISTOPHER RAKOWSKI

Customer experience

BananaPaint

All ratings15 ratings
Positive66.7%
Neutral6.7%
Negative26.7%
Written reviews21 reviews
Positive61.9%
Neutral9.5%
Negative28.6%

A«iD

All ratings3 ratings
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%
Written reviews3 reviews
Positive100.0%
Neutral0.0%
Negative0.0%

In-app purchases

None

BananaPaint

No in-app purchases

None

A«iD

No in-app purchases

Questions

Is BananaPaint free?
BananaPaint costs $1.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is A«iD free?
A«iD is free to download, with no in-app purchases.
Which has better reviews, BananaPaint or A«iD?
A«iD is rated higher. BananaPaint averages 3.7 out of 5 from 15 ratings, while A«iD averages 5.0 from 3 ratings.
Do BananaPaint or A«iD have ads?
Neither BananaPaint nor A«iD shows ads.
Which is updated more often, BananaPaint or A«iD?
BananaPaint ships an update every 4 months, and A«iD every 8 days. Most recently, BananaPaint was updated on October 5, 2026 and A«iD on October 7, 2026.

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