Review by PedanticAF -- Audiobooks.com Book of your Choice

[PedanticAF]

[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "Audiobooks.com Book of your Choice" by Audiobooks.]

---

3 out of 4 stars

---

Share This Review

---

I used Audiobooks to listen to the book Mrs. Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children. I had never used Audiobooks before, and I had actually been curious about which audiobook service was the best. I used the audiobooks(dot)com app, and I rate Audiobooks 3 out of 4 stars. I’m going to leave out the .com when mentioning Audiobooks throughout the rest of this review to avoid having it make a ton of links.

There was something I felt Audiobooks was seriously lacking, something that definitely brought my review down to a 3. Audiobooks doesn’t give you the option to select which chapter of the book you want to listen to. There is no way of knowing which chapter you’re on until the person reading the book announces the next chapter. In fact, there doesn’t seem to be any way to navigate the book other than dragging the slider bar back and forth on the timeline to try and find your place. For me, that’s a big problem because I like to fall asleep listening to audiobooks, and when I want to listen the next day, I have to drag the slider around and listen, and drag, and listen, and so on, until I find the spot where I left off. So while you can use the bookmark button to save your spot, it wouldn’t be helpful to me in this situation. This subjectively important feature being missing would be reason enough for me personally not to pay for a subscription to Audiobooks.

This missing feature didn’t make Audiobooks a 2 for me because there were still plenty of nice features. Audiobooks has good quality audio, which is important for any audio service. It has a nice little feature that allows the user to speed up the reading if you felt that it was being read at too slow of a pace. It also allows you to skip back 30 seconds, that is really convenient if you happen to miss something in the reading. Something else I like, which is an app-exclusive feature, is the moon icon. Tapping the moon icon causes a drop-down menu to appear which allows you to choose how much longer you want the audiobook to play before stopping.

I felt the app was better than the website, along with having more features it looks nicer. Although the app navigation was basic, it had the essentials. The website, however, looked very dated. Clicking play on an audiobook opened a new tab, and that audiobook screen didn’t look very polished. While playing an audiobook it was a small rectangular screen on a grey background. The only features it gave you were skipping back and forth 30 seconds and clicking and dragging the slider to change where you’re at in the book, adjusting the volume, and sharing to facebook.

Overall, Audiobooks was a nice app, I think it’s convenient for people who will listen and then pause it until the next time. It has good features, but for people who like to be able to select their chapter, and people who like aesthetically pleasing websites, it is lacking.

******
Audiobooks.com Book of your Choice
Audiobooks Free Trial

Like PedanticAF's review? Post a comment saying so!