Elevate - Brain Training Games Ratings and Reviews

It’s a great app with great power

This review is a long time coming. I’ve been using this app since the beginning. I believe it’s almost been 10 years since I signed up. I was really consistent early on in my younger years and always felt sharp. The joy of setting new high scores and increasing my EPQ was a great motivator. I have always been on the free plan but have managed to become an Elite in all levels. Also, I’m proud to say that on average I am in the 98th percentile of players in all five areas. I put the app down for awhile and have been on and off for the past couple years. However, lately I have been feeling my mind is feeling “foggy” especially with my spatial memory. I’ve also feel a small “lack of cognition.” This app has helped me refresh my mind again. I plan on continuing this practice and think everyone should too. It only takes about 5-10 minutes a day. Anyone can afford that. However if your really determined you may find yourself playing for hours. The training has made lasting impacts on my brain though. I amaze my wife when I can recall some of our oldest memories like they were yesterday. My photographic memory still works too but it’s not as good when I was first starting out. I truly believe this app has changed my mind in many different ways and incorporating it into a daily routine will pay good dividends now and well into old age.

Activities are decently generalized so as to be modular and highly applicable.

Elevate enhances cognitive abilities through generalized games targeting mathematics, memory, and language, and more, promoting the use of skills that are applicable to real-world problem-solving scenarios. The sleek, intuitive design with abstract visuals ensures an engaging, user-friendly experience, maximizing learning potential while not compromising professionalism. It is simple and clean. Some of the reading and mathematics sections focus on logic-based performance, building universally applicable skills. A valuable tool for developing mental sharpness and competency across essential cognitive domains. I have the ~$20 a year deal and at that price point it is excellent.

There are some concerns as well as space for even more features.C he presence of crosswords on the main page aren’t conducive towards a focus on generalized cognitive performance. Crosswords aren’t heavily backed by scientific research toward maximizing general cognitive abilities. There is no generalized visual spatial search, and the presence of random words and letters does not require reasoning. It lacks abstraction and generalization. There is no need for the update to place this at the forefront focus of the page.

Overall, this is a useful tool to keep the brain on a course of maximum informational processing productivity. Not the only one to use, though, this one is particularly effective.

Brain training that actually helps

Brain training apps can be questionable at times. Some are simple collections of brain twister games to try and help you memorize patterns on a grid, or pick the red word that actually reads blue... But what I appreciate about Elevate is that it challenges you with real world problems. Practice your ability to calculate percentages. It’ll come in handy next time you’re calculating your dinner tip, or figuring out how much you’ll save during a clothing sale. Elevate helps your to improve your writing skills and comprehension. Get better at spotting typos in your emails and texts. Quickly skim messages while reliably gathering what’s being communicated. There are so many games provided by Elevate which challenge your real-world skills, and push you to improve in areas that affect your day to day. There are free features, but thank goodness I bought a lifetime membership early on in Elevate’s life. I couldn’t have guessed I’d still love the app so many years later.

If you want to get better at day to day tasks, and push yourself to your highest intellectual abilities, Elevate is a great app for you. I personally feel the benefits of using this app, and find myself returning to this app when I’m feeling less on top of things. Give your brain that much needed mental stretch. You’ll be glad you did.

Productive use of time

Besides being fun, stimulating, and challenging, use of this app has helped me refine my thinking about grammar, word usage and mental math, and helped me become better at balancing a quick response with error avoidance. In fact, playing this game helped me realize that in many other situations I have been “dumbing down” my thinking to accommodate the common errors that are usually not seen as errors. This app snapped me out of that thinking. The program writing is at a higher level than other games / mind stimulation exercises I’ve seen elsewhere, to the extent it brings out fine errors of usage that typically go unnoticed or uncorrected. Plus, the support team appears to truly appreciate user feedback so you have a chance to challenge any result you think is wrong and get a prompt reply. This probably helps keep the game at a more rigorous level. Overall, bravo for one of the very best apps I have encountered.

p.s. agree with another rater that some of the photos used in the memory recall game are not great illustrations of the concept or are ambiguous and I, too, would like the app developers to enable users to flag those to continue making this App better and better.

Good but not enough

I have enjoyed using this app but after challenging myself to do it daily for a couple of months I feel like it’s become a chore and isn’t doing much for me. The games/daily challenges are so short, and basically over in a few seconds. I doubt any one of them usually takes more than a minute or so. It’s just not enough time to “exercise” my brain. Additionally, I have been playing consistently, and consistently doing very well (usually a few personal bests a day) yet the material doesn’t seem to be getting more challenging. Most of the math is something my 10 year old could do, though not as quickly. Similar with a lot of the reading and grammar challenges. Even memory stuff. I think this app is a fun way for an adult to feel like they are doing something for their cognitive health, but after a while is mostly an ego boost designed to make you feel smart for doing elementary school level problems quickly. I’d gain a lot more from an actual challenge. If I’m setting high scores every day, I’m not being challenged, so it can’t be doing much to exercise my brain. I’d rather be challenged to think more deeply, not just more quickly.

I am close to giving up. I had hoped that if I played every day it would start giving me harder material. Too bad I have another 7 months on my membership.

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! This is a great suggestion to pass along to our team for further consideration as we continue to implement improvements to the app. If you have any further questions or any thoughts on how we can improve our app, email us anytime at support@elevateapp.com!

Almost perfect

I rarely rate apps; you can look at my history, and see I only review an application if it’s disappointing. Elevate is not so terrible but it lacks things that you would think they would have fixed by now. I am an annual membership holder, so you know I’m not lying about investing time in this. The app is great, and it has a few awesome tricks that make visitors return and seek out activities (interesting stories, the music, positive feedback, etc). There are two concerns that need tweaking:

1.) Stopping a streak in the middle of a personalized workout because the time becomes 12:00 am. I feel it short-sighted to make the algorithm blind to a continuous workout in favor of ending your streak, even if you’re on the last activity! Some of us are busy and we don’t have the time to exercise until evening.

2.) There are not enough study materials for math problems, and not enough helpful strategies demonstrated to become stronger in mental math. I am talking specifically in the “study” section of elevation. Where are the study materials for Equivalence and Conversions? Also, can you give us the open to play without being timed on purchasing and discounts? I hate mental math, but one of the reasons I’m using this app is to become better at it, why would I want the stress of being timed when I just want to learn?

Developer Response ,

Thanks for your feedback! These are great suggestions to pass along to our team for further consideration as we continue to implement improvements to the app. If you have any further questions or any thoughts on how we can improve our app, email us anytime at support@elevateapp.com!

Worth The Download & Subscription

The negative reviews have me convinced they’re from competing companies because I can’t find anything to write negatively on in regards to Elevate.

Couldn’t ask for a better app to train and sharpen my brain through. Even if you only have a few minutes a day it’s enough to fit training in (recommendation is 12 mins. minimum I believe).

The subscription costs hardly anything for everything you get out of this app all the way down to stats updating you on your progress and where you need work. My favorite is the notification center which includes updates on sessions you had trouble in, and they go back over them with you to explain in detail where you messed up and why the correct answer is the correct answer. Not to mention the fact that the games on this are far more professional than most popular “brain game” apps on the market. I’ve tried a handful of others and they all just seem too light and playful in approach whereas Elevate has what feels like a professional and serious approach. I feel like I’m getting proper lessons and training rather than “just playing some games”. So glad I found Elevate; it’s worth the download even if you opt out of subscribing.

Exactly what I needed!

Over the past couple of years, I found myself not being able to remember things very well for very long, even if I’d just read, heard it from a video or or even a conversation. I’ve always had a great memory so it was really bothering me. When trying to find a way to help myself, I was particularly interested in finding memory type comprehension activities. I searched the APP Store for “brain games” and found Elevate.

I downloaded the free trial for 7 days as have been pleasantly surprised that I found exactly what I had wanted to find. It’s been helpful not just in reading, but keeping sharp in math (estimations, percentages, even tipping) as well as writing, diction, vocabulary and so many others. It’s all based on current skill level, the games are fun and in each ‘daily workout’ that it puts together for you, it gives great feedback. It keeps me challenged when it sees that my scores are increasing in each category.

I’m hooked. I’m enjoying the daily exercises and look forward to seeing my progress. Membership for the year is well worth it and affordable. I can’t wait to see how much I’ve improved by this time next year.

Started using this to get better at math

I started using elevate b/c I was bad at math and I knew that I could be good at math (my dad did state competitions in Texas for math events and my mom can add up grocery prices and discounts like nobody’s business), but I hadn’t ever enjoyed learning by being talked to for and hour and a half and then getting homework without any guidance… until it was grading time.

Elevate by no means taught me how statistics, or calculus, or even algebra. What it did do was give me the confidence boost I needed, and taught me how to do a lot of mental multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction. To the point that for a most things I prefer to do it in my head b/c it is faster than taking out a calculator, and in class it meant that I spent less time trying to figure out where the teacher got whatever number (since I’d already done it in my head) and more time focusing on the methodology and steps of whatever they were teaching me. Now I’ve been out of school for a few years and I still practice with elevate b/c quick mental calculations, fluid speech, good memory, and faster reading are all things that I use in my day-to-day life.

Timing everything skews learning

I can see how this app could be beneficial and enjoyable to some people. However, the fact that every game is timed adds an artificial (and IMO arbitrary) goal that supersedes the learning objective of the app. While it makes sense to time the games that appropriately aim to speed up a specific ability, it doesn’t make sense to time every game—and to cut off the game when the time expires. Some things warrant a thoughtfulness that the stress of a timer precludes. It’s difficult to get the most out of an exercise like “Adjective Recall” or “Eloquence” when I’m not allowed enough time to explore my vocabulary on a deeper level. Further, these exercises are so far removed from the real-life experiences of writing and speaking that the timer offers no real measurement of one’s actual abilities. Unfortunately, access to more challenging activity levels relies on speedy responses rather than true knowledge levels.

I suppose if you generally believe that “faster is better,” then this app will suit you. I, however, fail to see the benefits of the concept of “speed editing,” for example. For many of the skills this app addresses, the timer turns “training” into “gaming.” If you’re not interested in gaming, this app won’t satisfy your craving for intellectually challenging puzzles.

Developer Response ,

Hi there. Thank you for your kind, constructive feedback about our timer. Our apologies that the speed is troublesome. Providing a way to slow down the timer or turn it off completely is a good suggestion and something we can consider building in a future update of the app. If you have any more questions or feedback, email us anytime at support@elevateapp.com and we'd love to help you!