Reviews for Blinkist: Book Summaries Daily

I've been subscribed to the premium version for a couple years now, and for the price I think they should have more books/wider selection. I'd love a way to suggest new titles via the app. I use Blinkist to "preview" books to determine whether they're worth a full read. I have discovered many new favorites this way. For some books, the blinks are really all you need. The app saves me time and helps me find my next engaging read. Content is good, but some of the voices reading the audio bug me.

I enjoy this app and don't have any technical issues with it. I like having both text and audio for each blink. The library feature is great for cuing up selections. The way it's being promoted, I expected something similar to the old Reader's Digest Condensed Books. But these are more like book reports. That's ok. It's a great way to decide if a book is your thing and worth reading. Sometimes you only need the cliff notes.

Awesome accidental purchase! I did the 7day trail, and forget to cancel it. But, I'm honestly glad I did. I use it all the time. They sum up books really well and the voice actors are quite pleasant to listen to, of course you can always read the Blinkist instead! One thing I found really cool was that you can 'vote' for titles you would like to see added. All in all, for the amount of time I spend on the app, I prkce is quite reasonable.

While this app started out great, they seem to have shifted focus from reading to listening. The number of new titles to read doesn't seem to be growing and the app is constantly pushing audio and podcasts. I can get that anywhere for free. I paid for blinkist to read summaries of nonfiction books. If the service continues to depart from that mission I guess it isn't for me anymore.

I'm very pleased with my decision to subscribe to this app and their service. I'm a classic "I want to read more often, but never make enough time to do so" type person. A blink will only take a few minutes. A full book won't take more than 10-15 minutes. The audio versions - which can be downloaded automatically and only when connected to WiFi - are perfect for travel. Play one or two on the commute to or from work if you want. In my case these come in handy on flights. Highly recommend.

Overall, great app. But sometimes it is hard to navigate through and manage 'saved', "finished', 'favorites', and 'collections'. Also, doesn't sync with the website very well (in case you prefer to read on a laptop and listen on a phone). In fact, the laptop doesnt even have the 'favorites' section. Lastly, sometimes it is hard to tell which examples / opinions are by the author and which are by the reviewer / narrator.

I used to love this app. I love the concept of book summaries to explore a books content. I love the ability to choose to read the "blinks" or listen to them like an audio book. The problem is they have changed the "Listening" option. They have added a second, unnecessary narrator's voice to each 'blink' interrupting the flow. This is quite disruptive for those of us who are audible learners. It makes it difficult to stay attentive while listening. :( I have canceled my paid subscription. :(

Edit 2024: I've been using this app for years. I've paid for premium because I love it. I've stockpiled downloads for months and had a queue lined up that I've been listening to every day for the past few weeks until 2 days all of my downloads disappeared. I download the titles I want to listen to next. Now I have no record of my downloads or queue and their customer service response was "too bad, sorry." Very disappointed. 2018: Get it for the free daily summary!

There's a typo in your intro. "..you discover our our Blinks,..." The word "our" is twice. Hire me! I'm a UX designer 🤪 Also, I wish there was an option to add my own notes as I'm highlighting. That would be WONDERFUL. Also, if you can add 3 whole seconds of pause or soft music as the blinks are transitioning, it will allow listeners to digest what was being said.

This is a GREAT app, but I have some notes. Fix the highlighting feature. Whenever I try highlighting something, it highlights a much bigger portion than it should. I've tried using different devices, but they all have the same problem. In the library, when you click on one of your highlights, it should go to that highlight rather than starting the whole blink from the very start. It should be more like a bookmark. The controls aren't very good either. It should be easier to rewind a little bit.

Not as great as I had hoped. Some of the books really don't seem to have been scientifically reviewed. No way of rating the individual books, search and browse are kind of clunky, there are additional charges for some content. Overall, not very pleased. Tried the week trial and forgot to cancel before I was charged, but very doubtful I will renew when year is up.

Not giving it a five because they seem to be a little biased when it comes to representing the commentary of various religious scholars/authors over others. But then again, it's a step in the right direction to even include commentary works on what many consider to be "fiction." Overall, this subscription has saved me so much money on having to buy full length books I could have done with just a summary. They still provide the link to the unabridged versions, which is nice to have.

Absolutely love this app! I've been in IT for 25 years and have never written a product review but volunteered to rate Blinkist. That should tell you something! With so many books in the world and so little time to read them, Blinkist enables me to consume many more books than I ever could have done otherwise. I can listen to an entire book, in summary, while driving to work in the morning. And in case I miss it, Blinkist also recaps the main points for me. The selections of books is huge!

Absolutely riddled w/ extremely annoying, frustrating bugs. I'm not talking weird niche features being buggy, I'm talking CORE features are RIDDLED with bugs (audiobook). I made the mistake of buying an annual Premium sub without using the Free Trial. You'd think for the $100/year they charge for Premium (currently $80) and the $175/year for Pro (now $140) they'd be mostly bug-free. Nope! Not only are core features bugged, but they also lack common sense quality-of-life features of other apps.

The content is great - minus the ai voices - but the app is clunky and getting worse. I wouldn't mind if I could still do basic things. What happened to reordering the listening queue? It used to be possible, and super useful! But for some reason, a recent update removed it 😭. Podcast apps can all do this, despite their content usually lasting >1hr. So why would blinkist remove it, when their content is all

Useless without signing up. Way too expensive. I do not want to sign up for high monthly fee to experience the 'free' trial. It would be nice to preview at least one before signing up. There's no try before you buy here, just buy. Tried it again 5 years later and its still absolute trash. The onboarding process was like grinding teeth. Forced me to pick categories etc, many MANY pop-ups. By the time I could even get to the main view it felt like I was buying a car with the amount of forms. NO.

I really like this app. Some things that I feel need improvement are when I'm listening/reading the text, highlighting is an issue. It goes and highlights a whole body of text. It also loses its place in the audio when I do that. sometimes when I pause and replay it will put me in a completely different place in the blink. If I could see the time duration on the blink it would help me to find my place again. Other than those minor things, the reads, and variety of shorts are amazing.

The content is good and it's very useful to preview books when deciding whether to purchase. However, the app is aggravating. It's hard to highlight a particular passage that you want to remember. Sometimes it works, sometimes it decides to jump to a seemingly arbitrary location and highlight everything. Please fix this!!!

Blinkist summarizes books into 30-minute reads or listens. I was skeptical, expecting shallow summaries, but most are impressively well done. For professionals, it’s best as a tool to survey which books deserve deeper reading or to refresh past reads. Less useful for leisure readers and not a replacement for full books. Overall, strong value for busy professionals—I plan to renew once I see a deal/promotion.

Every single "blink", book summary, whatever you want to call it is locked behind a subscription. Having some of them be free, with ads for example, would get a lot more users (myself included) using the app. At which point you could at least try and convert them to "premium" accounts instead of losing them all together because they uninstall it like I'm about to. Something to think about (and one of the main reasons why many apps like Spotify and Pandora are now household names).