Meitu is a photo editing and AI art app from Meitu (China) Limited, a name pretty well known in Asia for camera and beauty tools. You mainly use it to touch up selfies, apply creative filters, and generate AI-based artwork from your photos or text prompts. It sits somewhere between a standard photo editor and a full-on AI image generator, so it's not just for quick fixes. A lot of people download it from Google Play or the App Store because they see someone online getting cool results with the AI features, and the install count is huge — over a hundred million downloads on Android alone, last I checked. It's free to download and launch, though you might run into registration prompts if you want to save stuff or access the cloud. First impression after opening it is a bit busy, honestly. There's a ton of stuff on the home screen — trends, challenges, a create button — and it's easy to feel a little lost. But the interface is colorful and polished, so it doesn't feel cheap. Just overwhelming at first glance.

Once you get past the initial splash, using Meitu is actually pretty smooth. The onboarding is light — it just greets you with a quick tutorial popup for the main tools. For typical use, you'd snap a selfie, hit the retouch tab, and start playing with skin smoothing, face shaping, or makeup layers. It's pretty intuitive: tap on the area you want to adjust, swipe left or right to tweak intensity. The AI art section is where it gets interesting. You upload a photo, pick a style like anime or cyberpunk, and wait a few seconds. The results are often surprising, sometimes in a good way. One thing I noticed is that the app uses a lot of in-app purchases for premium filters and tools, and occasionally ads pop up between actions, which breaks the flow a bit. A practical tip: if you want to avoid the clutter, just use the "AI Art" tab directly from the bottom bar instead of the home screen — it's cleaner. The app runs fine on my mid-range phone, no major lag, but it does heat up if you batch-process many images at once.

After using Meitu for a few weeks, I'd say it's best for casual users who want quick, flashy edits without learning Photoshop. If you're into selfie culture or just like experimenting with AI-generated looks, you'll probably enjoy it. But if you need precise manual controls or raw photo editing, you might find it too gimmicky. Compared to something like Snapseed, Meitu is way more fun and stylized but less serious for real photography. Picsart is closer in vibe, but Meitu leans harder into beauty retouching and AI art, while Picsart is more about stickers and collage. What makes Meitu stand out for me is the AI art generator — it's not just filters, it actually recreates your face in different styles, which is kind of addictive. I kept it installed because it's fun for social media content, but I could see someone uninstalling it if the in-app ads annoy them too much or if they don't use the AI features regularly.

• 🎨 AI Art Generator: Meitu's standout feature is its ability to turn your photos into AI-generated art in styles like anime, oil painting, or 3D cartoon. Unlike Picsart, which uses more generic filters, Meitu actually reshapes facial features to match the style, giving results that feel more personal and less like a preset.
• 📸 Beauty Retouching: This is the core of the app. You get tools for skin smoothing, face slimming, eye enlargement, and even virtual makeup. Compared to YouCam Perfect, Meitu is less aggressive and more natural-looking — you can adjust the intensity down to 1%.
• 🖼️ Background Removal & Replacement: Meitu has a solid AI-powered background eraser that works great for portraits. It's faster than what I've seen in AirBrush, but sometimes struggles with complex edges like hair strands. Still, for most selfies, it does the job in under a second.

• 👍 Easy to Use: The app is designed for quick, one-tap edits. No confusing menus or sliders — just tap and swipe. This makes it way more approachable than something like Lightroom for people who don't edit photos daily.
• 👍 Fun AI Styles: The variety of AI art styles is huge, from fantasy to retro. You don't see this kind of diversity in Snapseed or even in most dedicated AI art apps. It keeps the experience fresh.
• 👍 Regular Updates: Meitu adds new filters and AI models often, sometimes weekly. That's more frequent than Picsart, which can feel stale after a while. This means there's always something new to play with.

• 👎 Heavy on In-App Purchases: A lot of the interesting filters, AI styles, and even the "pro" retouch tools are locked behind a subscription or one-time purchases. YouCam Perfect is more generous with free features, while Meitu feels paywalled after the first few uses.
• 👎 Ads Are Intrusive: Full-screen ads pop up often, especially when you switch between tools or save an image. Picsart has ads too, but Meitu's are more persistent and sometimes make you wait 5 seconds before you can close them.
• 👎 Privacy Concerns: The app asks for access to your photo library and camera, which is normal, but it also uploads images to its servers for AI processing. Compared to Snapseed, which edits everything offline, this is a potential turn-off for privacy-conscious users.
• 👎 Occasional Performance Issues: On older phones, the app can lag or even crash when generating AI art. AirBrush runs smoother on the same hardware, likely because it doesn't push as much server-side processing.