Speechify Text to Speech Audio 4+

Audible or Speechify?

I spent hours comparing text to speech apps, and by far, Speechify has some of the best premium HD voices. I even considered dropping Audible, so that I could pay for an unlimited amount of HD voice listening time; however, while the HD voices are great, they’re not reliable enough for me to consider them as a replacement for Audible just yet. At times, they’re slow to load or glitchy. I wasted a good 200 or so words listening to Gwyneth lisp her way through sentences as if she was lapsing into a different language. I fiddled with her speech rate trying to remedy the problem, but it was to no avail. I had to switch to Michael. Michael read through everything perfectly, but he too had trouble staying on task. Even though I had plenty of of HD listening words left, he would intermittently cut out and be replaced by the British Male speaking voice. With all things considered, this is an app worthy of downloading. It does a respectable job transferring words from pictures—better than most. Sometimes, to my astonishment, it can read my handwriting. It hasn’t crashed, and apart from the HD voices, the standard voices seem quite reliable. I like that I can earn HD words the more I listen, and that there’s enough to stay entertained with in the free version. With a bit more perfecting, Audible might find itself facing the boot in favor of this nifty little app. For now, Audible is safe from the chopping block.

Developer Response ,

Hey Manxiepoo! Thanks so much for sharing your Speechify experience. We've received reports of the Gwyneth and Narrator voices skipping words or changing into different languages. We've already reported this to our Devs Team for a review and fix. The fix wouldn't be anytime soon but we'll keep you updated once it's out. In the meantime, please choose the other HD voices. Please reach out to us via your app messaging and we're happy to refill the lost HD words due to the Gwyneth voice issue.

I love speechify

Gonna be honest. I have only ever listened to fanfiction read to me off ao3. The amount of fanfiction I have listened to in the past two years with this app is staggering and probably not healthy. But I work a job where I have to wear a head set to protect my hearing and listening to music gets boring after listening to the same stuff for so long. So, yes, sometimes the AI lady pronounces something silly or wrong and sometimes formatting an author will do on a piece can screw with the AI but honestly nothing has bothered me enough to stop using it and I don’t exactly have a lot of patience with stuff that doesn’t work. If you have a link to a pdf of literally anything it’ll read it to you and you can even turn your phone off while it does. The ONLY and I mean ONLY issue I have with speechify is it drains your battery TERRIBLY. When I originally started using this app I had an older iPhone 12 and whewww it just did not last I had my phone constantly on charge. I have a new iPhone 15 now and though it still does drain the battery it’s not as quick but my phone still ends up on the charger before I leave work. Not to end this on a bad note, I recommend speechify to anyone I know who talks about how they don’t have time to read or has trouble with sitting and reading something. It’s genuinely exactly what I was looking for in a read-it-to-me app! I highly recommend!!

Awesome

I too have dyslexia. And I hated school for this reason. I couldn’t read stuff like my friends. I was always behind. I took so long to do homework because of it I couldn’t go out and play with my friends. I hated it. I cried and fought with my mom a lot. They put me in a special reading class to try to teach me how to turn the letters and words around. I even reverse numbers sometimes. When I was in first grade I had a teacher who would yell at me for not being able to read instead of trying to help me. So my parents held me back and put me in a different school. Where the teacher had seen it before and knew the signs for dyslexia. And I was tested and found out that’s what it was. I appreciate so much you creating this app. I do wish it didn’t cost so much. I understand you have to pay for the development and to keep it up to date. But that is a lot. I did teach myself to read and I do read books. But it does take me a lot longer than everyone else because of the dyslexia. But I do it anyway and even enjoy reading now. When I was a kid you would never see me read. But again thanks for creating an app that helps with that. I just wish the cost was lower I can’t afford that much a year at one time. Or if you had smaller monthly costs too that would be better for someone like me. Thanks again. I will use the free version for now. 👍🏻

Developer Response ,

Thanks for sharing your story! Your concern about the pricing is valid. The cost is actually to support the creation and maintenance of all our premium voices, they cost a lot really. You can use the non-HD voices for free but making the HD voices has a lot of server costs. The annual subscription of $140 comes to $11.66/mo which is actually really cheap ($2.7/wk) - that’s less than the price of a textbook, less than one coffee a week.

Please feel free to use the app as a free user! 😊 If you have any other questions, drop us a message via "Message us" from your Speechify app. We're happy to help. By the way, thanks for the 5 stars! ❤️