Additional Google Reader Replacement Suggestions: Not Reviewed At All

I came across this article on The Verge, which discusses the hiccups the popular Google Reader alternatives have been experiencing, and how they're improving on the original product. Plenty of people chimed in on the comments with their own products and suggestions for alternative replacements. I have not checked these out yet, but am listing here for future reference.

• SwarmIQ - Free, I think.
• Feedbin - $3 a month, has beta Android app. 
• Tiny Tiny RSS - a free, self-hosted, open source solution. There's also an official Android client. 
• Rivered - Different from other Reader alternatives in that it's just a "river" of updates - no unread items, no categories, no tags, etc. 7 day free trial, "Less than the price of a coffee per month after that". (Ugh, just name the damn price.)
• Fez - Social, smart tags, view your feeds a few different ways, there's also a self-hosted version. Pay what you want, starting from $2 a month. If you pay for 6 month or yearly subscriptions, you'll get at least one month free. 
• SubReader - Currently in private beta. Free to sign up. 

Quick & Totally Unfair Reviews Of Google Reader Replacements

In case you haven't heard, Google Reader is shutting down soon. Because of this, there's been a flurry of competition to become the next big feed reader. I've been trying out...a lot of them. These were my basic requirements:

• Must be able to grab my feeds in a timely manner.
• Must be decent to look at. (I can't stand ugly designs.)
• Must have a compatible Android app, that's fairly intuitive to use. 
• Must have decent sharing options. 

Here are the ones I tried, and what I thought of them:

• Feedly - This is a popular choice, and looks pretty, but I really disliked many of their UI decisions, especially on the Android app. I could not figure out what I was doing, and I also didn't like the original requirement of installing a Chrome extension. 
• CommaFeed - Advantage of being open source; it looks pretty much like an even cleaner Google Reader. However, there's no app. 
• TheOldReader - A Google Reader clone. Slow as molasses, and kind of ugly. 
• Flipboard - I don't like Flipboard. It doesn't work as an RSS reader, and the UI is baffling. A lot of the feeds I read are text-heavy, and valuing images over text is not a priority for me. 
• Bloglovin - Big with fashionistas, this feed reader is pretty but inadequate.
• TinyTinyRSS - Self-hosted solution - too complicated for me to set up, and I wanted an app, so this one didn't happen. 
• Inoreader - Tried this one out, and forgot about it. I think it was too slow for me. 
• Hivereader - This one comes from Francis Cleary, one of the original "sharebros". This reader is slick and pretty, and contains the internal sharing feature we all loved so much in the original Google Reader. It's still a little buggy, though - for example, I can't figure out a way to indicate the last post is read, and it doesn't seem to update feeds very often. I really the Pocket integration. There's no app, though it's on the way. 
• FlowReader - FlowReader is the current winner for me. It's pretty, it grabs feeds, and it'll grab my Twitter feed as well as my Google Reader feeds. It could grab my Facebook feeds, too, but I don't feel like granting Facebook more access to my life. Also, the Android app works really well, and they've worked out the syncing issue that was bugging me earlier. It's still a little buggy, though - the "save for later" feature on the site doesn't seem to be working. However, it's working on my phone, and I'm happy about that. (Update: looks like site's been hacked. I might have to wait this out.)

Want to try other readers? Here's a short and incomplete list:

• ReplaceReader
• LifeHacker's suggestions

Conclusion: currently it's a tossup between Hivereader and Flowreader. The biggest reason Flowreader is edging out Hivereader for me is because the Android app works fairly well.