[App Review] – PressReader

News apps are a dime-a-dozen in the Play Store these days, but few do it as well and as simply as PressReader.

With over 2,000 publications available in full to download to your device, you can read whatever you want, whenever you want, from wherever you want.

When you first open the app you are greeted with a prompt to either setup a new account, or to authorize the app to use your existing PressDisplay.com account.  After that you can choose what newspapers you want to view.

Newspapers are viewed in a pinch-to-zoom style layout, but the headlines are detected and highlighted for you.  Touching them opens the article in a re-flowed, easy to read format that works really well on my Samsung Galaxy S3.

Each publication has an overview and contents list, allowing to pick which section you want to skip ahead to, whether you want to jump to the sports section or just the interesting looking article on page 15.

PressReader also has a built-in function to read the articles out to you, but from my experience of it, it has difficulty in figuring out the column style layout of newspapers, so reads everything out of order, which is not particularly helpful.

As far as usability goes, I can’t really fault it on any point. The menu is well laid out, as are the settings. The readability of articles is great with the reflowed text, though it could be a little neater. Looks wise it’s okay, not garish or like it just fell the back of an iPhone, but then everything looks better in Holo (hint hint).  Finding publications to read is done by either scrolling a list sorted by country, or using the search bar.  Both options work really well.

PressReader is a subscription based service, priced at $0.99 per download for casual readers on the pay-as-you-go plan, or a $29.95 per month for heavy users.  It seems fairly reasonable as prices go for publications, and given that you get easier access to content outside your country, it could be worth it for people who travel a lot and want to keep up on events back home.

Overall PressReader is a very simple, quick and intuitive app for reading newspapers. You can download it from the Google Play Store now.

Google Play Store – PressReader.