Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Angular Material VS Select2

Compare Angular Material VS Select2 and see what are their differences

Angular Material logo Angular Material

Angular Material is both a UI Component framework and a reference implementation of Google's Material Design Specification.

Select2 logo Select2

Select2 offers customizable select box with support for searching, tagging, infinite scrolling, and many other used options.
  • Angular Material Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-01-24
  • Select2 Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-09-25

Angular Material features and specs

  • Consistent Design
    Angular Material provides a set of reusable, well-tested, and accessible UI components based on the Material Design specification, ensuring a consistent look and feel across your application.
  • Pre-built Components
    Offers a wide range of pre-built components including forms, navigation, buttons, and data tables that significantly speed up the development process.
  • Responsiveness
    Components are designed to work smoothly on various screen sizes and resolutions, making it easier to create responsive applications.
  • Integration with Angular
    Tightly integrated with Angular, making it easier to implement and maintain. It also leverages Angularโ€™s features like reactive forms and change detection.
  • Theming and Customization
    Supports extensive theming and customization options, allowing developers to tailor the look and feel of their applications to match brand requirements.
  • Comprehensive Documentation
    Comes with detailed and comprehensive documentation, providing examples and guides to help developers get started quickly.

Possible disadvantages of Angular Material

  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to the extensive feature set and the intricacies of Material Design, there is a learning curve involved which might be difficult for beginners.
  • Large Bundle Size
    Integrating Angular Material can add to the bundle size of your application, which may affect the loading time and performance, especially for smaller projects.
  • Limited Customizability
    While it offers theming, there are limitations on how much components can be customized compared to creating bespoke solutions.
  • Performance Overhead
    Some components come with additional performance overhead due to their complexity and the use of multiple dependencies.
  • Dependency Management
    You need to manage and maintain additional dependencies that come with Angular Material, which can complicate the build process and dependency management.
  • Opinionated Design
    Being based on Googleโ€™s Material Design, it might impose design choices that might not align with every project's design requirements.

Select2 features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Select2 offers a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface, allowing for easy navigation and selection with features like search functionality and nested options.
  • Extensibility
    It is highly customizable and extendable, with numerous configuration options and events that can be tailored to meet specific needs.
  • Tagging Support
    Select2 supports tagging, which enables users to add new items dynamically to a select list, enhancing flexibility and usability.
  • Accessibility
    The plugin is designed with accessibility in mind, ensuring compatibility with screen readers and compliance with accessibility standards.
  • Multiple Selection
    Allows for the selection of multiple items from a list, providing enhanced functionality for use cases requiring multi-select capabilities.

Possible disadvantages of Select2

  • Complex Initialization
    The initialization and configuration of Select2 can be complex, particularly for beginners, due to the numerous options available.
  • Performance Issues
    May experience performance issues with very large datasets, as all items are loaded client-side, potentially slowing down the interface.
  • Learning Curve
    There is a moderate learning curve associated with implementing and customizing Select2, especially for developers unfamiliar with JavaScript and jQuery.
  • Dependency on jQuery
    Select2 relies on jQuery, which may not be ideal for projects that prefer or require modern JavaScript frameworks without jQuery.
  • Limited Native Mobile Support
    Select2 does not naturally support mobile touch interfaces as smoothly as native HTML selects, which may lead to sub-optimal experiences on mobile devices.

Angular Material videos

Angular Material Data Table Tutorial

More videos:

  • Review - Angular Materialโ€™s Trees - Tina Gao
  • Review - Angular Material in practice โ€“ Thomas Burleson

Select2 videos

HCC TV: Teufel System 5 THX Select2 5.1 speaker package review

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Angular Material and Select2)
Development Tools
100 100%
0% 0
Javascript UI Libraries
0 0%
100% 100
Developer Tools
100 100%
0% 0
JavaScript Framework
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Angular Material seems to be more popular. It has been mentiond 1 time since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Angular Material mentions (1)

Select2 mentions (0)

We have not tracked any mentions of Select2 yet. Tracking of Select2 recommendations started around Mar 2021.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Angular Material and Select2, you can also consider the following products

Vuetify - Material Component Framework for VueJS 2

Preact.js - Preact is a fast 3kB alternative to React with the same modern API. Components & Virtual DOM.

Buefy - Lightweight UI components for Vue.js based on Bulma

Glimmer - Fast and light-weight UI components for the web

Vuesax - Vuesax is a library of Vuejs components that facilitates front-end development and streamlines work...

Svelte - Cybernetically enhanced web apps