App Review: Bardowl
Top titles streamed on demand with unlimited listening time
As many books as you like at no extra cost
Bestsellers, Business Books, Childrens Books and more
A library of huge titles from the best publishers for just £9.99 a month
Device: iPhone, iPad
Review: Bardowl
I’m pretty much a shameless audiobook addict. Last year I got through 126 books and I’d say at least 50 were audiobooks. It doesn’t always come cheap. One of the favourite services is Audible (£14.99/mth for two titles) but I quickly burn through my two credits. Therefore, I’m always on the lookout for other audio services.
I stumbled on Bardowl quite randomly in the Appstore, looking for something completely unrelated. I was intrigued. To me, after paying £15 a month for several years now, £9.99 for unlimited listening seemed too good to be true. There had to be a catch surely? Rubbish titles? Or hardly any titles? Hidden extra charges? So I signed up for the seven day trial, during which you can listen to up to 5 hours. I quickly found five titles I’d definitely want to listen to so I decided to continue.
So far, I’ve heard The Psychopath Test, Buyology and Boomerang, all titles that were previously on my wishlist. Excited, I’d already had a more thorough look through the titles and found several more I wanted to read. In short, this will keep me listening happily at £9.99 a month and I can’t see me running out of interesting titles any time soon.
So, if there aren’t any catches, are there any quibbles? Just a couple. I’d like to be able to store a larger number of favorites or a wish list so it’s easy to remember which titles I want to read. I couldn’t really tell if the catalogue was fixed or if additional titles would be added. If the latter (which I assume is the case given the high number of recent titles) it’d be great to have some way to easily spot new titles.
These, however, are minor quibbles. I can’t fault a service that not only provides books that I hoped to read anyway but does it at such an incredibly reasonable price. I would happily pay £20 a month so long as I knew there were books I wanted to read.
It’s no exaggeration to say this is going to make my indulgent audiobook habit a lot less guilt inducing. I haven’t cancelled Audible but perhaps I can say goodbye to the days of burning through my credits in two weeks and then checking the calendar constantly until the next ones arrive. Thank you Bardowl!
Verdict: 5/5
Source: Reviewer’s own copy
**Interested in trying Bardowl? When Bardowl heard we were reviewing the app, they made us a great offer for readers: want a month to explore Bardowl’s app instead of 7 days? Just send an email to support@bardowl.com and let them know that the “Tweedlers” sent you in the subject or body.**
App Review: Bardowl | Thank you for reading Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dave
