The Economist App Reviews

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An awesome App with unrivaled journalism. I love reading and listening to the Economist. The app is easy to use and has steadily improved over the years. It is one of my top 3 apps. I listen or read it about 5 hours per week. At the heart over the great value is the best journalism. I have tried the WSJ, Barrons, and others; but only the Financial Times (which I also subscribe to) comes close to the Economist’s level of Investment, Political, and Management analysis. I have been a subscriber for over 25 years and it has mad a large impact on my career and my portfolio. They cover the key topics and have the highest levels of Journalism. I highly recommend it.

These people are excellent at their jobs. I was compelled by a recent piece on the history of Russia’s attitudes towards Ukraine to post an enthusiastic, if disappointingly thinly answered, paean to the journalists of the Economist on my Facebook page. To be able to combine history, journalism and a spot of political philosophy in such a piece, in readable and lucid format, without dumbing down or preaching, and to do this sort of thing in five or six pieces week in, week out, takes more than impressive talent. It must demand application, which is belied by the impression of effortlessness it conveys. This, my friends, is real journalism. And I don’t always agree with what it is saying (although I must confess disproportionate alignment with content on an ongoing basis). Subscribing digitally, after years of enjoying the paper version and then enduring a long absence, was a very, very good idea. I flagellate myself for not reading more. The Economist deftly assuages some of these feelings.

The weekly format is a feature, not an anachronism. The Economist still stands alone as far as I know when it comes to content and writing talent but I do wish the app would go back to enabling a read through the weekly editions. I have no doubt that driving users to the more frequently updated home page pushes up app opens and whatever other metrics some meddling product manager was trying to move but, it’s silly to make those of us that enjoy long form pieces and prefer to stay out of the 24 hour news cycle go through multiple clicks and a bunch of scrolling and head scratching to find where we left off in the article we were last reading. A “just show me the newspaper but on my phone” mode would be great.

Horrible app and customer service (great content). I love the Economist content; it’s a shame the app and customer experience is so bad. The app UI is clunky and doesn’t sync across devices, so articles marked “read” on your iPhone don’t reflect on your iPad, for instance. But what prompted me to write this review was the irritating cancellation experience. I’m cancelling temporarily as I need to save some funds for a few months and I am asking for a new subscription as a gift from my family. To cancel, you have to call or contact via chat, and then they fight you on cancelling with aggressive upsell. Funny enough, it only takes a click to sign up! Price transparency and ease of managing subscription should be prioritized for paying customers, especially in the current economy. Surely if anyone understands the fiscal doom and gloom for consumers these days it should be the Economist!

Well done. After using other apps, like Barrons, turning to the Economist, it’s like a breath of fresh air. This app lets you download an entire issue, listen to it at the playback speed you choose, go between articles seamlessly, and most importantly, it remembers where you left off. I won’t comment on the quality of the economist as a publication, but it is kind of iconic, so I don’t think I need to in terms of the app. I am so happy they didn’t drop the ball like Dow Jones has, or some other financial news publication such as seem to be wedded to remaining in the 19th century. Good job guys keep it up.

The only news magazine worth taking!. I have taken the Economist for 30+ years. Nowhere else will I get news from around the world that has both economic considerations and political in depth but accessible. Once while coming back from the Middle East, there was a small article entitled, The moonshine capital of America, Franklin, County, Virginia. It was an accurate portrayal of the culture of SW Virginia. Add this to what is happening economically in equatorial Africa or Southeast Asia and you have quite a comprehensive mix of news and analysis. I’ve accepted the fact that I cannot read everything each week in the Economist so I never run out of articles of interest! My son reads the Economist on line and dedicates Thursday evening to the latest news. We both find the editorial commentary to be balanced and any biases transparent! This magazine is a refreshing breath of air in a world with so much unhelpful spin and fabrication!

Content is outstanding, delivery just meh.. Firstly, I’m an iOS user and get my content from the Economist primarily via audio. This content is fantastic - no complaints and gets five stars. But this is an app review and the app is frustrating for several reasons but I’ll just complain about the most frustrating here. You would think that after downloading the weekly edition that the response to article selection would be immediate but, no. It usually takes between 15 and 30 seconds to begin playing the supposedly “downloaded” content. This doesn’t make sense and is hugely frustrating when I’m driving and want to keep my attention on the road while being able to listen. It really seems to me that the architecture of the app needs reworking with perhaps a well-designed audio player being integrated into the rest of the “content delivery system”.

Version 3.36.0 is not quite there yet. It’s nice that you can one again select a word and look it up. Unfortunately you cannot expand the selection to more than one word. Also, with the smallest text size the last couple of words in a paragraph are sometimes missing. My wish list includes syncing saved articles and the check mark for articles you have read between devices. And some actions, like saving an article, are strangely sluggish. I often think I failed to tap the bookmark icon, only to discover that I have now tapped it twice and it is turned off again, A display of the most recent articles would also be nice. I sometimes use Apple News to get that. I don’t want to miss articles that were online but never made it into the print edition. I’d like a Daily Charts section in the digital weekly edition like the Economist Explains section, and extra articles in other areas, like we get for the Britain section in the U.S. The content remains great and I appreciate the addition of photo captions. Thanks.

Bring back the Legacy App. I love The Economist. It is a great newspaper and stays true to its founding mission. I loved the paper edition for all those years before we knew digital. I made the grudging transition to the digital edition. And in reality, it really was just the paper edition on a screen. It looked and navigated like the paper copy you had tucked in a pocket as you boarded your flight, only to pull it out once in your seat. And then someone in marketing, a new product manager I presume trying to make a name, decided it was time for a complete reboot of the app. “Let’s make it a contiguous stream of text”; “Let’s change the way it downloads”….so now I have an app that takes demonstrably longer to download, is unstable and inexplicably decides to remove the download you completed just yesterday. The layout resembles nothing like the newspaper, which I believe was part of the brand. To wrap this up….Bring back the legacy app. Please.

Cancellation process is horrendous. This a good news source. It’s very well done hence the two stars, however 1. It’s really expensive ($220 a year unless you complain and threaten to cancel) 2. I’m not sure what’s harder, a divorce or cancelling this news subscription. First you can’t do this easily on the app you have to go to, “contact us” on the app, look in the FAQ’s where you can then log in. At that point you find, “change my subscription”. There’s a button that says, “cancel my subscription”, you’re asked why, then you’re given a sales pitch in writing based on your reason. In order to move forward with the cancellation you’re required to chat with them! A sales representative joins the chat, then I was asked AGAIN to provide my name and address and why I wanted to cancel, they tried to keep me again by offering a discount. Finally the rep cancelled my subscription. This entire process took me over 20 minutes. Making it that hard to cancel on purpose so people give up and keep giving money is bad business.

Great App, fantastic content and journalism.. I’m new to The Economist after a suggestion from a relative. My goal was to be more purposeful and engaged in the content that I consume and break the habit of endless scrolling of news headlines via Twitter, Google’s and Apple’s customized news outlets. I find myself actually wanting to read the content published by The Economist rather than skimming headlines. I enjoy learning about what’s going on around the world rather than being inundated by insignificant headlines that make many of the other news outlets’ front pages just to get clicks. It’s a completely different experience. For times when I can’t read the content, like while driving, or if I want to consume some of their longer form content but want to give my eyes a rest from screen fatigue, it’s nice they offer users the option to listen to the content as well. The daily Espresso emails are short bursts of content in the AM while I have my coffee and then throughout the day I can read further the content that I’m interested in. Thanks The Economist! Suggestion for future app improvements: (1) Give users the ability to double tap the “Home” button at the bottom to quickly jump to the top of the page. (2) Give users the ability to better organize their Saved content. Either give them ways to create folders to organize their content, or the capability to apply “tags” to the content.

Love The Economist!. I get updates throughout the day on my phone about developments. I treasure more than anything the iconoclastic independent take on many issues.. it does not view issues from the cozy ease of center left or center right of many publications. The Economist informs me of key developments and tends from around the world and how they affect each other. I love the slightly sarcastic voice I detect at times. When I was teaching middle school, high school and college students I would use articles from The Economist to both inform students and to show the best use of the English language.

Terrific journalism, annoying app. I love economist but an app has a room for improvement: - No history of read articles. It’s difficult to comeback to an article I opened but didn’t finished. - Opened article flip back to the main page after few hours of inactivity. Coupled with lack of history if I haven’t finished reading an article and the app flipped to main page it’s annoying to try to find and re-open it again. I have to use bookmarks so I don’t loose what I read. - Bookmarks should sync across iOS devices. - It’s so annoying that I cannot easily continue to read same article on iPad after opening it up in iPhone. Apple News is an example of how to do it right. Coupled with separate bookmarks for iPhone and iPad it requires to use search.

Feedback on v3 update. Great app overall. Putting three stars to elevate some of the issues I encountered in the new version. I’m using the app only in dark mode, if that’s helpful context. 1. Espresso is gone. Someone else mentioned here as well. 2. App state is lost too quickly. My reading style is to jump back and forth between this app and others (e.g. switch to Wikipedia mid-article and come back afterwards to resume the same article). Currently, the app cold starts into the main menu after being the background for about a minute. This is a significant annoyance for me. 3. Read-state check marks were reset locally after the update. These were great to keep track of my backlog in recent few weekly issues. If this is a one time thing, probably I can bear the disturbance however. 4. Read-state check marks are less visible (in dark mode) on the weekly tab compared to v2. This makes it harder to find unread articles in weekly issues. 5. Articles in daily view has advertisement boxes with no advertisements in them. They show empty gray space. While I’m here, I also would like to see the read-state synced to my account server-side. Having them local only is the only reason I read the Economist on just one device, and not iPad and phone together for instance. I hope this is helpful! Thank you for the great app the dev team! i

Version 3.0 does not work well across devices. The magazine is certainly quite good, but unfortunately since the 3.0 version of the app was released my bookmarks do not work properly between my iPhone and my iPad. I used to bookmark articles on my phone during the day, and then read them at night on my iPad, but now it’s impossible (each device has its own bookmarks now). Customer support gave me some indications but they have not worked for me, and they gave me no further help. I hope The Economist can fix this soon! Let me know if I can do something to help. Jonathan

Brilliant Topics Keep Me Thinking Well Afterwards. I may be disabled from health issues. In the past couple years, I may have had to walk away from my CPA Firm I worked so hard to build, but my brain still wants to learn... just on its own timeline. The Economist App provides that for me... and how ever my body needs to take it in!! Days when my eyes struggle or concentration is tough due to pain, I can put in my AirPods and immerse into learning about the economic world via listening! If I can’t take in full articles, the morning briefings are perfect. Best if all, it gives me things to think about. And the ones that are still lingering around at dinner time, provide my husband and I something intelligent to discuss and mull over. Feels as if I may still “have it” ... Thank You.

Weekly edition has been broken for months. I challenge anyone on the dev team for this app to try reading the weekly edition. Start at the beginning and reas a few articles. Put it away. Come back in a few hours and pick up in the same place. Wait two days, find your place again, and read some more articles. If they were to do this, they would uncover multiple crippling, infuriating bugs that have gone unfixed for months. Articles will switch while you’re in the middle of reading them, all of a sudden you will go backwards by several articles. The app frequently doesn’t save your place, so every time you open it you need to go back through the table of contents to figure out where you were. This is a significant regression in functionality from how the app used to work, and it’s honestly embarrassing for a professionally produced app to have this many bugs of this severity sitting unfixed for this long. Stop building new features and fix your bugs!

Improving but still poor for offline access.. - I wish I could download all the images in advance for offline access, like I can for the text and the audio, and like I could with the classic app. At least the image streaming works better after the latest fixes. It is a huge data hog and increased my phone bill, so streaming over cellular isn’t a good option for me. - Audio needs a bit of love. Needs a 1.25x setting which would be the sweet spot for speed of playback. It frequently starts playing at the wrong speed. 15-second skip back should be the default back button for use in my car, rather than skip to the previous article. Narration sounds good. - It remembers where I was reading, but only one article... I can’t swipe to the next one in the weekly. - When re-finding my place, Clicking on the hamburger menu to find sections and then clicking on the section often doesn’t work. Other times the section headers are rendered offscreen, maybe after switching from landscape to portrait mode.

Terrible for audio/ need to fix auto-rotation. I like to listen to the weekly edition while exercising. This app takes far too long to download each edition and, when trying to play audio, it goes into a nearly endless “loading” loop that takes up to 15 minutes to figure out where it left off the preceding day before it starts playing again. I had to revert to the legacy app, which doesn’t have these problems and works smoothly. And this new app doesn’t allow us to rotate the cartoon or other images so we can see them in larger landscape mode, as the old app does. That means I can’t read the tiny text in the cartoon (which is unaffected by font size selection) or some other graphics and still need to look at the old app to get everything I overpaid for.

Where is my playlist?. It is baffling that an outstanding news organization would hire professional readers to create an audio edition, and then make it so difficult to listen to. The previous version of the app made it effortless to create a playlist, by section or individual article. In this app, you can manually play one article, then manually play the next article, etc. who’s idea was this? And please don’t tell me about the “Legacy” app which still allows playlist creation. It makes playlist creation much more difficult and confusing than it was before. Fix this or give me the old version please!

Feedback. The Economist article on Economics topics are generally of high quality and well documented and researched BUT those on the middle conflict and in particular those presenting facts about the actual events are biased and distorted. They cover up Israel crimes. Fir example when reporting about Gaza, the article don't miss to mention that Gaza is ruled by Hamas. Israel is also ruled by criminals. The article miss to mention that the people in Gaza are under siege and are in an open prison imposed by the racist and criminals ruling Israel. There is no human face of the Economist when reporting about Israel crimes. How do the Economist consider the Oppressed and the eco pied at the same footing as the oppressor and the occupier. "Conflict" is a dishonest way to report in an occupation where a whole generation of a whole nation was destroyed, killed, put in prison, dépréciés of basic human needs and even water just to be racially eliminated and deported from own home to live, if managed to survive, as refugees in foreign lands.

Good, but has potential for much more.. Overall, the Economist is a decent app. however, if they want to make it better, here are the top things that they can do. 1. Create cliff notes for the articles that they write. Right now the Economist has lots of content, and may be hard to digest everything in a given week. If you’re able to create cliff notes, it will help make the takeaways easier for the readers 2. Improve audio distribution. Right now the audio overlay for the articles is technically clear, but hard to digest. Basically, you could have the article playing in your car and you may not even hear what they’re actually saying. Similarly, the tone of the article could easily put you to sleep 3. Add more diverse content - focus on historical look back. The Economist has a huge opportunity to be a thought Leader and more broad areas. I think one of the items I’d like to seem them do more of is do a look back on historical issues and do an analysis of what happened and maybe what were the causes that were unforeseen at the time. 4. Finally, The Economist needs an app for the Apple Watch. I would like to see this on the Apple Watch so I can listen to the audio files while on a run without my phone

Consistently buggy. I’ve been using the economist app for a little bit over 5 years now and have yet to have a consistent, bug free experience over a month long period. One of the following will generally stop working until the developers patch the app which can take 1-2 weeks: the audio will simply not play (even if downloaded), the app will crash (even if it is the only app open), the editions will not download or downloaded editions will not open, or some combination of all the above. This is not a review for the Economist as a publication, I’ve been an avid reader of the print edition since uni and I will continue to do so. However the lack of consistency with the app is disappointing. All the more troubling is the economist’s decision to move some of their podcasts onto the app for subscribers only which would be sound business decision if the infrastructure (the app they are migrating to) consistently worked.

The Economist app improves. At first there was an app for each masthead, then there was a coalescing into a single one. Less to manage, easier to use. My only issue is that when using earbuds that connect directly to my iPhone, the start-stop switch on the earbuds does not stop the audio from playing. That forces me to the use either my Apple watch, or reach into my pocket for my phone (oh the shame of it all). It would also be a very nice feature if the backward and forward on the watch display instead of moving to the previous and next article would instead rewind and fast forward x and y seconds as proscribed by podcast skip button settings. Thanks.

A lot of room for improvement. I’ve had a subscription for years now and whereas the new app is a slight improvement over the previous app, it still has a poor UI design, limited functionality, slow and buggy. I love the content, but the app is a big frustration point for me. 1. You cannot easily toggle between listen and read mode- some people like to do these alternatively or in conjunction. 2. Very often I find that the screen randomly freezes. 3. When I run a routine app update, it logs me out. 4. The „read in app“ functionality doesn’t work properly either. If I find myself on IG, where I follow the economist, and I want to read a spotlighted article, it doesn’t do a proper handover to reading in the app so there is just the portion of the article that you can read for free.

A Source I Can Trust. I’ve been reading the Economist for more than 40 years. I read it when I was conservative republican in my mid-thirties. I read it today in my seventies as a democrat. Despite the fact that my own views have shifted over time, I have always been able to depend on the Economist to give it to me straight—without the hyperbole, bias or the desire to shock, enrage or terrify that so many other news sources use to attract and retain reader/viewers. What a relief. I love being able to read The Economist without the need to activate the filters I use when reading or viewing other news sources.

Audio edition unusable. Excellent content, terrible app. I use the app (and subscribe to The Economist) solely to listen to the audio edition. Usually I listen while doing something else: driving, riding a motorcycle, in the gym, on an airplane, etc. Usually I am also using other apps such as for navigation , and often with no or intermittent internet access. In older versions of the app, this was not a problem. There is an option to download the audio file and play it back through the app. However, updates over the past year have made this feature virtually unusable. Often it will randomly stop playing, and I need to pull over, restart the app (which restarts from the beginning of the edition) and then advance it to the right article. Sometimes it just doesn’t play at all. Why it would have such difficulty playing an already downloaded file is unclear, but I suspect there is some sort of over-aggressive anti-piracy feature interfering with smooth playback. If this is not resolved and the app remains unusable I will have no reason to maintain a subscription.

Very unbiased, Economics is the perspective. I love this mag. I mean I really do (Econ Major at UCO btw). The only complaint I have is the excess of ads despite me paying the full price. Otherwise I think that this is the most worthwhile news source to date. A lot of people used to consider The Economist to be a conservative newspaper, but truly I tell you that it has done a 180 in 2020, they really just use economics alone as their guiding subject. They were supporting the vaccine when it was first out and mostly a political issue. They don’t pander to leftists or conservatives very often or really at all. Also they take good critical letters from respected individuals in their letters section. I truly enjoy disagreeing with an article and then finding someone smarter than me who wrote exactly why it is wrong, I could go on and on about this magazine. I love the formatting (shorter less fiddly articles, with all of the facts and as little opinion as possible) and I’m definitely a lifelong customer as long as that Economist quality is retained. I also really enjoy how the economist never says we think that (…) they always say this is the way to fix it or just state things how they are based on economic indications. There is actual evidence to back up economics, rather than some crazy conservative conspiracy theory, or a radical leftist rant. I don’t think they’re always right but this leads to a level of honesty. Excellent customer service also.

Good app, audio article support needed. Overall this is a solid app. It’s reliable, and the interface is clean and intuitive. However, the option to play the audio versions of individual articles from the weekly publication does not yet exist in the app; it is available on the web version. I would like to see this feature implemented in the app. There is the option to listen to podcast shows of course, just not the articles from the magazine. The content itself is thoughtful and the dedication to puns and wordplay is incredible. I think we all know the OECD is “a club of mostly rich countries” by now, so it might do to spare the ink.

Essential reading and great app overall - audio issues. I love The Economist and recommend it highly to anyone interested in staying informed and learning about global issues. The app itself is overall very good. It’s sleek and easy to navigate. However, 4 stars because the new podcast section isn’t great. The player is very clunky - unresponsive controls, no queue, no episode notes, etc. For some reason you can’t tap an episode title to play it. The audio edition of the magazine (which I also love) suffers from the same UI issues. It seems to me that the audio component was an afterthought, which is a shame since the content is so good.

Bugs in latest release. I have loved this app and made it my primary means of accessing the content for more than one year now. With the latest update the audio playback seems ruined. Though the audio opens with each new issue and appears to automatically download, the playback takes several seconds, almost a minute in most cases to begin. It is almost as if the download restarts each time I open the app, and the audio files are not actually saved. Moreover the playback lasts for about half of an article, and if my screen turns off or I lock the phone, the playback and the app seem to crash. I am not sure what changed, but the stability of the app is terrible all of a sudden. Particularly with regard to the audio playback. I do like the new arrangement and layout of the ability to access the different audio articles, but there is no point if the articles won’t play.

Great news service, middling app. The quality of writing and editing in The Economist is quite high. Articles are informative and often with a little bit of wit to keep things entertaining. I’ve been a subscriber for about five years and will continue for the foreseeable future. The app is stable but has a few nagging issues that have been present for some time. If they push a new set of featured articles to the app whatever you are reading gets replaced. It’s as if articles are stored by index and you’re reading whatever is in position x rather than a particular article. It has also started duplicating paragraphs on occasion.

A lifetime source of information and thought…. I initiated my love affair with The Economist at age 26, receiving the flimsy-paper airmail edition weekly when the definite article was the capitalized and part of its calling. It followed me in working stints in Chile, Brazil, and El Salvador. For me, the inventor of the “Big Mac Index of Currency Exchange Rates” represented the greatest English language news journal and the best source for world news(given McDonald’s closing its 850 stores in Russia, it leaves the Index in a bit of a bind, or does it switch to the cost of a liter of bottled water with the standard quart augmented by a 1.06 factor?), which kept me well rounded and which I relished. And now, some sixty years later, I feel the same way. Bravo Economist!

Economist Alwayd. I started reading The Economist 30 years ago. I have subscribed the entire time without interruption. It is the best conceived, written and edited newspaper in the English language. Most of those 30 years I carried the hard copy with me around the world, reading it cover to cover. With the app no need to even carry the hard copy. Though I must admit, with inserts removed and folded in half along long axis, it was quite convenient. Getting something new each day is a nice upgrade to the weekly version. In the hard copy days I would sometimes finish whole issue before next one arrived - Economist withdrawal. A nice, new, 15 minute taste every day paces me better

Please fix audio playlist customisation.. I used to love listening to The Economist audio edition until a particular feature was removed. I used to be able to organise my audio playlist in a specific order; the world this week, then the business section, then finance, and afterwards a few select articles chosen among the remaining sections. I was able to go through the edition and organise everything once, then start and stop listening with the confidence that the playlist remained in the order I prioritised. Now whenever I add to the audio playlist it's always ordered in the way The Economist is (The World This Week, Leaders, Letters, etc) and I can arrange the playlist to my priority, which I used to do for the past few years....now I don't even want to bother with The Economist at all since I now have to either keep track of what I listened to manually and/or keep adding/removing to the playlist in order to listen while I'm doing other tasks. Very unfortunate. It would be VERY much appreciated if the feature to customise the order of the audio playlist is made available once again. Thank you.

Great Newspaper, Bad app. Like many, I was very disappointed with the Economist dropping e-ink versions of the paper. I hate having to have another reason to spend way too much time staring at a screen. And for a person that is always traveling, the paper deliveries just pile up at home, not to mention they arrive the Tuesday after the new edition is out. But, that's not the annoying part. This app will not save your location in an article you're reading if you get interrupted and leave the app, no matter what settings you chose within the app. It will also annoying start in the Home screen that attempts to feed you articles that are new. I like the layout of the paper, I want to read the sections together... so I want to have the choice to start the app right where I left off, every time. Sure, I can also sit at my desk for many more hours in a week reading the "paper", but i can't stand having a flashing add distract me while I'm reading a paragraph. It would be lovely if the Economist provided a PDF style view of the paper in their app for tablets that has the exact layout as the physical paper, this would give it a much improved aesthetic.

Good magazine, mediocre app. I love The Economist, but their app suffers from a number of issues: 1. Even after logging in with a paid subscription, the app demands that you subscribe via a pop-up at the bottom and a permanent link at the top. 2. It logs you out frequently and doesn’t readily accept your information when you log back in. 3. There are minor glitches. 4. There is no search function for articles and so it is an ordeal to go back beyond the current issue to find things of interest, which is extremely annoying and contrary to other media app common practices. 5. When clicking on The Economist articles in social media, it has to jump through Safari and then the app, which takes a few seconds, and sometimes you get stuck in Safari where it pretends you are not a subscriber and... demands that you subscribe before showing you the article that you have paid good money for. 6. The overall layout of the app is not extremely well designed, which requires a lot of clicking to get around and allows one to easily miss even current articles (much less historical articles, which are extremely difficult to find). Too much graphics and repetitive links and links that aren’t relevant and not enough smooth/ seamless connections to other current or historical articles.

Latest app broke audio playback across articles. Update: The developer responded and said this issue will be fixed in the next release. Bumping from 2->4 stars, and will go to 5 once fixed! The 3.0 version of the app broke the ability to listen to multiple audio articles with the phone in your pocket. I used to be able to pick the first article in a section and then they would all auto play. Now when on cellular data, if the phone screen is locked, it isn’t able to load the audio for the next article; it shows a “Something went Wrong” error. This means at the end of every track I have to unlock the phone and click the retry button for it to work.

Excellent. The Economist is my favorite news magazine and the app is easy to use and well designed. it is certainly one of the most reliable sources of analysis and information for me. However there are two areas which I find which the Economist fails to take its usual broad-minded approach of treating both sides of the issue., the first is the debate around climate change. The Economist has decided to editorially to accept the often one-sided claims of so-called climate alarmists. Although this is obviously an area where there is robust debate, tht Economist usually fails to provide the other side of the debate, which does not see the world was facing an imminent catastrophe due to climate change. There is simply too much evidence against the alarmist view to justify it being ignored. The other area has to do with race relations in the United States, in which parallel to the climate debate that usually takes a one-sided view, and fails to consider seriously the vast amounts of evidence rejecting the thesis of widespread racism in the United States. Nonetheless, it is brilliantly, written, engaging, and in most cases, except for those, I’ve indicated a real education which I learned from every week.

Horrible app. Stick to the print edition. The Economist has great news content. Unfortunately, they treat their app like a complete afterthought and their non-print subscribers like second-class citizens. Every few months, it is updated, and inevitably, one cannot log in again until numerous calls, emails, and reinstalls are undertaken. It looks like they have now done away with email support so you can call a phone tree with all your abundant free time. For a magazine that charges a substantial subscription price, one would think they could spend a few bucks (or pounds) to hire a reputable app developer.

News, but better.. I never personally thought I’d be writing a review for a news app. I’m a 21 year old college student and generally skeptical of news organizations. After taking a class with a heavy usage of Economist articles, I see why my professor uses them in his lesson plans: they’re factual. After multiple months of contemplating whether or not to get a subscription, I finally pulled the trigger. The app is almost seamless, minus a few features I wish I could have in the app like a search option and a viewing history for easier access to show my friends the articles (I wish I could give you all a half star less for this, but I’ll go with 5 stars because I enjoy the content so much). I feel as though I can put my trust in The Economist because they deliver the news in a digestible and palatable way. I enjoy being able to audibly listen to articles and understanding what’s going on in the world. If you’re tired of traditional American news companies like NBC, Fox, CBS, CNN, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many others, then try out The Economist. The Economist offers a new level of detail, honesty, factuality, and trust that I appreciate when it comes to news reporting. I intend to resubscribe for more after my introductory subscription. The Economist (as far as I understand) does not do editorials or opinion pieces. They offer well thought out news reporting and a deeper understanding of current events.

Balanced Journalism and a Great App. I started reading The Economist at around 16 (yes, really). It was recommended reading for passing my British army entrance tests and I’ve been a fan ever since. The idea of truly unbiased journalism is a myth - as soon as one picks up a pen or a camera, they are biased. What is included or omitted is as much a part of bias as what opinion is deliberately conveyed. That said, I think The Economist does an excellent job of being balanced; and when it is taking a side, it says so - elections, wars, major debates. I particularly like the lack of affiliation of each piece and the ‘voice’ of the paper, I find it reduces grandstanding and personal politics (anyone willing to write for a paper that deliberately doesn’t give the author credit is alright by me). Then there’s the app. It can be read daily as a source of news or you can read the weekly edition ‘cover-to-cover’ as I do. If you’re looking for a great one-stop-shop for informed news, The Economist app is it.

Excellent app, but.... I absolutely love the redesign and consolidation of the various economist apps into one. The only issue I’m having is the ability to access the current edition on Friday morning (central-time USA reader here) - though it shows that there is a new “current edition”, it sometimes takes upwards of thirty minutes for the app to properly register the new edition. Whenever I tap it, it just takes me back to last week’s release. Also, the auto-download feature of the new audio doesn’t seem to ever work for me. Other than those minor inconveniences, I have no complaints! Keep up the great work and reporting!

Fix the bugs. Screen sizing not correct. The main reading pane has to be resized when the carousel indicators are on the bottom or the audio status. These are covering the reading pane or part of a bottom ad. After you build an audio queue and close and reopen the app, the audio loading indicator spins and no way to play audio. This makes audio queueing unusable The audio queueing ux needs some thought. If you close the audio controls there is no way to get into edit mode without either going to the edition edit queue button under editions or restarting the app. If you use build queue under editions, you should be given option of adding to the start or end of an existing queue. Now it always puts selected articles at the end.

Great app but some features needed. I love the Economist and have been a subscriber for over ten years. The app is great for reading, and automatic audio download is awesome. It would be nice if they could add automatic switching between light and dark mode based on iPhone system settings. Other apps do this, so at sunset my phone switches to dark mode, and at sunrise back to light mode. Currently, in the Economist app you have to change it manually. Its audio playback & features leave something to be desired. From the Lock Screen, there are no 15-second skip forward & skip back buttons; only next track & previous track. Adding the skip forward buttons would be a great add and align it with other audio and podcast apps. It would be especially useful when I’m out on a walk with a mask on, because I could skip forward & back without unlocking the phone (FaceID doesn’t work with a mask on). Also, clicking the middle button on Apple’s wired earbuds doesn’t pause the audio...this is annoying because it works for other apps.

Terrible app, but content is good. The app is terrible. They just didn’t take the time to think through the basics of a reading app. Every time you close your phone and reopen, you need to manually start from the beginning, navigate to the issue you are reading, navigate back to the article you were reading, and then find the place in the article you left off. It absolutely drove me nuts when on a 10 hour flight where I was constantly back and forth between reading and kids. It’s a problem the rest of the time too. Nobody would use the Kindle app if it did this. Makes me wonder how this app got high ratings. Of course, the Economist is excellent content, but since this rating is for the app, I’m focusing on the app itself.

Won’t let me log in. I’ve been subscribed to this app through iTunes for years, now all of a sudden it won’t let me log in. Also, I get a free membership to the Economist through my school’s library, and there’s no way to log into the app using that. I’ve been paying anyway, which was frustrating, and now it won’t even let me log in at all even though I’m paying for it. I’ve tried clicking the “Restore your purchase through iTunes” button and it gives me an error. I’ve tried logging on with user name and password and it tells me to log on through the iTunes option. I tried deleting and reinstalling the app, restarting my phone, and nothing seems to work. I’ve logged on successfully via the website, but it doesn’t have all the same features as the app, such as the Morning Briefing, which is what I primarily what I read every morning. I would give this zero or negative stars if possible because I currently can’t use it at all and it therefore provides me negative utility, due to all the time I’ve wasted trying to log on. If someone can help me resolve this, I will gladly update this review to 4 or 5 stars.

Two requests for improvement. 1) To quote another review: “What’s really missing here is a seamless experience when switching between iPad, iPhone apps and Economist website. I often switch between devices (depending on where I am), but the ‘reading progress’ (respectively, the checkmarks for read articles) in the weekly edition only shows on one device. It would be great if that could be synced across all devices.” 2) I would really like the option to pick up where I left off and not have it default to the Home tab every time I open the app. Thanks for considering this.

An American Conservative Review of the Economist. I have only recently subscribed to the Economist and my initial impression is favorable. Your reporting is more balanced than what I am accustomed to from the Financial Times, the other European publication I read on a daily basis. I value the European perspective on "the American Experiment," still evolving after 243 years! There is a sense of desperation on the political Left in America. They want to be well received at Davos and will do and say anything to try to convince the world that we have abandoned the principles of our Revolution in favor of woke globalism. Nothing could further from the truth, most Americans have never heard of Davos and are not interested in the globalist ideas of President Obama, but you won't hear that from American media.

Audio playback has been fixed, but additional features would be appreciated. I’ve been subscribed to The Economist for several years and the audio edition has become my primary method of consumption. It’s very convenient to listen to the articles during my commute or while working around the house. The latest update seems to have fixed the audio playback issues where article audio would take forever to load and then crash somewhere in the middle, losing your progress. I haven’t had any of these issues since updating to the latest app version. I would give the app 5 stars but have taken off a star due to the lack of AirPlay support for the audio edition. I can play all my music and podcasts through my AirPlay speakers, but not The Economist - please add this.

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Terrible Customer Service. I am willing to pay such a high price for your articles because they are of high quality. But I don't understand why your customer service and subscription department is so sub par. How hard is it to change a student subscription from digital and print to digital only? It has taken me two email requests and three live chat enquires and over two months.. and still it is not settled. What makes it worse is that every single time your quote changes. It has ranged from 599 to 299 when your website clearly states 237. not to mention my subscription details changes without any notice just for me to find out after logging in. At this rate i'll just have to cancel my subscription.

Beware - Not easy to cancel subscription!!!. First the good part - excellent quality of articles, truly outstanding!! One of the things I abhor the most is when companies try to make it DIFFICULT to unsubscribe to their products in the hope that adding that will friction will force customers to stay on for longer!!! This is not only a cheap practise which diluted the brand but also leave bitter taste in customers mouth!! I had been a subscriber for almost 12 months but when it came time to cancel my subscription, I was forced to talk to someone who wanted to offer me promotional pricing and other perks to keep me as a customer which consumed 15 mins of my time. Given this experience, I am highly unlikely to ever subscribe to them again.

The best of the lot. The app is excellent on iPhone and iPad. I have it set to dark mode and the morning briefing provides a much needed snippet of world news. The economist is a balanced publication and loaded with quality analysis which is has diminished considerably from other sources.

Personal opinion of journalists infiltrating the meant to be fact based reports. I’ve enjoyed many of the articles inside the economist, mainly to do with stock prices, large corporations and various country relations reports. But apart from that many of the articles are a opinion piece and try to drive a certain narrative, rather then the actual story. I guess this is hard to do nowadays, but whenever an article tries to summarise or villainise a clearly complex piece ( as the world is- many shades of grey and not black and white) then clearly information is missing. Unfortunately there are very little pieces of news or journalism that will tell you the truth nowadays.

Great high quality bs-free content. 👍The app is good and has been getting better (remembering audio/reading location, search capability...) It’d be great if it also provided 🤞audio for morning espresso ☕️ 🤞web audio (w sync) so one can continue between devices📱 💻 🖥

Economist. As an ageing subscriber there is a tendency to switch off as the news is so depressing these days. Why is this so when as Hans Rosling says in his book Factfulness overall really things have never been better? What I remain determined to do is to continue to support The Economist, The Guardian and ABC, who have never been more important. As a former Economist I feel almost every rule in rational economic management has been broken over the past decade and more, and that eventually we will all pay a very high price for this.

Quality but here is why I am leaving you. I have enjoyed the Economist for decades but I have two concerns... 1. Your high standards seem to be declining on factual reporting. I have too many examples of your fact selection being biased on the narrative you want and not representative. This has reduced my trust in how you report on areas where I have less direct access to the facts separately. 2. You are losing the nuance re for example the limitations of liberalism and globalisation and you predictably come down on the side of your ideology regardless. This is by the way largely my thinking - but I do not want confirmation bias I want objective thinking. Of course your predictable caveat at the end of the article seeks to cover the alternative but that is no substitute for more rigorous journalism. So I have cancelled my subscription. What I so valued for years seems captured like so much media by a dominate ideology rather than what I seek which is unbiased enlightenment. I wonder how homogeneous the thinking now is at the Economist? Thanks for many good reads - you are still better than most of the rest.

Audio playback with unstable volume. Playing back “Nuclear family” this week, the audio playback dropped in volume and then a few moments later returned to normal. This volume adjustment occurred several times on this article and has occurred on others. It’s quite annoying as I need to then adjust the volume control up and then down manually. I’m posting here because I have never had a reply to a support email. So hopefully this receives more traction.

Podcasts aren’t downloadable for offline listening.. Unlike other podcast apps, the podcast function that I keep being directed to while listening to The Intelligence, does not allow for offline listening. As a subscriber I have been looking forward to the new podcast content being touted. But as I live in a rural area with poor cellular access, this is a dealbreaker for me.

Great Magazine, beware of a nasty surprise when ending your subscription service. Love my digital subscription service. Due to the higher subscription fees I sadly had to terminate my annual subscription. Despite cancelling my account online before the renewal date I was charged the annual fee and am forced to chase after customer service who claim they are unable to help and need to escalate the inquiry. Very dissappointed with the unprofessional customer service experience.

I love The Economist. I have always read The Economist since the early 90’s. Now retired ( I am only 60) but worked in finance for 25 years so it’s one of the very few publications I continue to subscribe because of the quality, depth and range of the articles. I have recently renewed my subscription as digital only (previously in Australia you still got the print edition with the online) and my main feedback is that it feels to me (in week 1) that there are too many App options - possibly due to the different package deals - so I am finding it little messy and I seem to have to continually log back in. I am sure these are just me getting used to the Apps now I don’t have the hard copy print edition. Please don’t think because of my age I am not tech savvy as I am. A bit impatient maybe 😇. Just feedback on the mechanics not on the content which I doubt I could not live without!

Real news, truthful and reliable. What a treat to read well organised relevant news that satisfies my need to know what is going on in the world and what is likely coming next. No self important declamations to dishearten, but a range of views for people who are still able change their mind.

Economist audio. Most readers are very good - reading at a moderate pace that enables detail of reports to be easily absorbed. However, one of your female readers reads much too fast - I find I can’t absorb details of complex reports when she is reading them. App would be perfect if she could be persuaded to reduce her reading pace.

Balanced and fair. Clear-eyed, with minimal hyperbole and left of centre views. Will not agree with their position on some issues but they will present information in a way which makes the reader think and challenge assumptions.

Fantastic. I've now become a fan of the new app and really like the daily pics and morning briefing. Of course, the 'This Week' section is the heart and what drives me to pay the quite hefty subscription fee. I would however, like to make one suggestion. With so much great content coming out over time the glaring short fall to me is the 'bookmarks' section. This really needs an upgrade with some very basic features like sorting the bookmarks by the date & time when they were first created or by the newspaper issue they come from. It would seriously enhance the ability to recall and reference articles that I often find myself describing to people and struggling to then find in the app (of course to ensure I'm quoting the facts correctly!). Thanks for your time to consider this enhancement.

Connected and updated. I always thought my dad was the wisest and most knowledgeable person in the world. He read The Economist cover to cover every week and it was by his bedside in hospital the day he died. This app takes the Economist to the next level. Same excellent journalism but easy to navigate, in-app podcasts, the ability to bookmark and share articles. And I feel like dad is still with me each day when I open it.

Brilliant. The Economist Espresso app is my all-time favourite, though the regular Economist app has easy format reading for full articles with great personalisation features. I prefer it to the hardcopy magazine, personally. Content-wise, Economist’s journalism is virtually second-to-none; it’s hard to imagine my morning routine without a dose of Economist in it.

Still advertisements!. So as a subscriber you pay for your subscription, of which the economist is at the higher end of subscription pricing, and still there are advertisements! Yeah the content is good but that’s really poor that you still host advertisements within the articles.

Improvements in UI. This review is purely about the app experience not the journalism which is excellent. Search: This could be significantly improved with filters and ability to search specific contributors or sections. There is a wealth of knowledge from previous years that is not easily accessible. Bookmarking/Tagging: I was thinking it could be helpful to let readers highlight sections of articles they find helpful similar to Amazon’s Kindle functionality. This could then be given tags that make future references easier. Audio: Helpful to have an update on the audio available articles to better customise playlists. I currently need to hunt around for what I need to add to playlist. Links to the main website: I have trouble clicking on links that take me to The Economist website requiring another login.

Please Fix!. When you send someone an article to read, even if they are logged into the app of their device, when they click on the article you’ve sent them, it opens an internet tab and asks them to log in. If they want to read what you’ve sent them in the app they have to remember the name of the article then search it in the app search bar. Please fix this so when you send someone an article they can click it and it will open in their economist app.

How can’t you want to know (or how I learned to live with not knowing everything). The Economist’s Christmas edition’s prompt to search on maps Singapore’s last urban village, its digital end of year summary now throwing out insights into the economics of food delivery - how can’t you want to know about either, or indeed much more of what’s happening around us. The intersection of PPE, the closing obituary, a site that’s just as useful as a paper copy that’s critical to have tucked into your work bag …

Content great however new app poor. The new Economist app is only a patch on the previous version. Slowish downloads I can forgive. However it doesn’t play/pause on my ‘household name’ brand Bluetooth headset. In 2022 that is a non-negotiable! Please fix it so I can enjoy the audio version of the magazine again.

A robust read. The Economist has become my go-to source for news and current affairs. Its articles are well written with intelligent arguments and robust facts to back it up. I read Espresso every morning and revisit the app during the day to read the main articles and stay informed.

Used to work OK. Now hangs frequently for 5-10s on my iPhone SE 3. Crashes occasionally. Has inherited the same annoying interface that sees me ignoring the same articles as they appear in Home (for long periods) and Weekly. Would it be so hard to let me see each article just once, no matter its source? To perhaps time out old articles and prioritise those from the weekly edition?

Excellent Analysis; Ads in an Expensive Paid Subscription. I’ve continuously enjoyed the global (although most often through the lens of individual nation-states) perspective provided by The Economist, through both their excellent podcasts and the occasional hard-copy issue picked up from an airport magazine stand. I’d often tossed up paying the subscription fee despite the considerable expense, and in general, I’m glad to have done so - the analysis is erudite and broad in coverage. Regardless, I was stunned to still see large ads breaking up the text and impacting focus on the story at hand. To be asked to pay over A$300 (nearly A$500 if not a student) per year and still continuously see ads is pretty ridiculous; how much would it really cost each paying user to remove these? In all, despite a clear ‘hard centre’ ideological position on both economic and social issues, The Economist is an indispensable publication. However, I’d avoid paying a subscription fee if you dislike feeling short-changed.

Great publication but please remove ads from your podcasts for subscribers!. Making your articles available to listen to is such a great feature. I just wish it was available for more of your content and as soon as it is released!

Subscription failure. Do not buy - mine worked for 3 weeks then randomly said I don’t have a subscription. Spent hours on the phone to the economist who blamed iTunes and then called Apple who blamed the economist. My subscription was clear in my iTunes account and payment had gone out, but the app clearly has a glitch. iTunes ended up refunding it as they couldn’t fix. After all it worked to begin with so no idea why the economist said it was iTunes’ fault... Real shame and very disappointed - would also add customer services terrible at economist but excellent at apple...

Factual news and content. The economist app with subscription comes with narrated articles of their weekly edition, just great to hear narrated pieces while driving etc. I especially love the Morning espresso every morning. Great way to catch up to the world.

An eternal source of reality. I have read the economist now for 40 years. Paying for a subscription for the last 25. It’s news and analysis for those of us who know how complex the world can be. The economist continues to be a wonderful source of real information in an unreal world.

Poor Australian coverage. I read your paper to get a general idea of what’s going on in the world, including in obscure parts I would normally not know about. It is a little disconcerting that folks with little understanding of Australian politics might take as informed and impartial your recent coverage of Australia’s decision to build and operate nuclear submarines, which was almost entirely informed by a couple of commentators opposed to the decision (and the broader direction of national security policy). A more serious and diligent attempt to reflect the alternative and broadly accepted view of the decision would have given me more confidence that your coverage of other out of the way countries reflects reality.

So easy to use. I’m a new user of the Economist app. I’m most surprised by how easy it is to use. I can listen to the weekly paper and pause when I need a break. Then easily return to that same point in the narration. I can easily zoom the text size up and down depending on how tired my eyes are. And I can easily find articles of interest via search.

Should be mandatory reading. I am a media sceptic. The Economist stands out as the one source of information I can trust to inform me of facts and let me form my own opinions. The Economist content is global, educational and entertaining as well as informative. Exactly what media should be about. Thank you.

Terrible Customer Service. Great journalism; great publication/s. Absolutely dismal customer service and way behind the times for online customer tools. I have had a terrible experience shifting from Digital + Print to Digital only. I have been charged twice for a 3-year subscription and nobody replies to my complaints or to my screenshots of the charges. Go online, and there are no options to get any better service. Customer service experience is equivalent to gutter journalism in my experience. :)

Great content but app fails to remember position. Every time I go back to the app (on iPad), either from Lock Screen or another app, it initially starts on the page I was last on, but then a few seconds later jumps to a different article at some random position in the weekly order. This is very annoying and requires me to go back to the index to find where I was. It would also be good if it syncronised marked articles across devices as I sometimes also read on my iPhone.

Excellent journalism with a decent app. The Economist has excellent journalism covering a remarkably wide range of topics across the world. The app itself is decent but not perfect; I like that weekly editions are downloadable for offline reading, a feature I rely on, and that it does a decent job of remembering your place and what you have read. I don’t like the lack of a slideover or split-screen mode on the iPad. I often like to read while I’m waiting for something — say a meeting about to start, or an opponent to play their move in a game. The Economist iPad app insists on being full-screen which means I inevitably read something else because I can’t share the screen with the iPad app.

New app is great but. Love the new rendering features to show more interactive article presentation by seeming current and relevant history. BUT since i can NEVER get the audio to download for this app, i keep the old app where it works. So every week i download my issue, usually via wifi. The download circle goes for hours and hours, but never finishes a download. Yes every week i cancel last week’s download (still going after a week). Yes i my app is up to date, and yes my os is up to date. Still not working.

Works well but subscription overpriced in some countries. The app is pretty good but the pricing is annoying when customers are charged more in Australia than other countries. It’s jus5 a bunch of electrons available on the net and should be 5h3 same price internationally.

Access to audibles. Loving the number of news analysis that can be heard with ear pods & so can continue readying for the day ahead while taking in a wide variety of newsworthy reports on many controversial topics from all over the world.

Can’t restore purchase. I love the articles in the Economist, but now I can’t read them because the app won’t restore my subscription purchase. I use it on two iPads (work and home) and an iPhone - not in excess of device limit according to terms and conditions. I can’t register for digital access for multiple devices because iTunes account doesn’t provide CRN. I’ve looked through troubleshooting guides and FAQs. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling, switching off and on again. Nothing works. Please fix.

Stop reviewing the magazine this is for the app. The app makes little sense sans subscription so lets agree the publication is good and move on. My bugbear is the apps lack of accessible skip forward / back buttons. For Apple’s podcast app you can use the Lock Screen or watch options to skip. If you need to go back 10s in the Economist app you have to unlock the phone, open the app, select the player and then select the skip option. This is highly frustrating in a peak hour commute or winter. Please bring the skip options to the lock screen / peripherals. It also feels bloated and slow compared to other apps. You would be mad to listen to the podcasts through the app over the podcast app on iOS right now.

It’s really good. And the new fonts are amazing. Righto, we all know the economist is world classs journalism and analysis. And it makes you smarter. But now it is easier to read too. And not because they trended towards shorter sentences, which they did about 3 years ago. It’s because they change the type face, or font, to a new unique design. The change is subtle, unless you are really into fonts. But take it from a kerning nerd. This is big. Huge even. It looks amazing, and is so much easier to read. It now makes you smarter with less effort. Win win!

After update restore subscription doesn’t work. After updating, the app requested to restore subscription via iTunes and it gives an error message “something has gone wrong, try again later”. 6 hours later it still says the same thing. As I am about to get on a flight it is very disappointing.

Exceptional, but please maintain the quality. The Economist is exceptional. The journalism is unparalleled. The app is a great way to access the journalism. I have two minor criticisms though, that I only air here in the hope of future iteration and improvement: 1. The audio queue often replays old articles, over and over, until it is cleared. The UI isn’t as intuitive here as it could be. It feels half baked and could do with some attention. 2. The new World In Brief audio recording appears to be AI generated, instead of recorded by a real person like other articles. This detracts from the quality of the journalism and is distracting. It would be preferable to have a poorly produced and mastered recording of a real person. Please reconsider. Don’t hesitate though. The Economist really is the bee’s well-informed knees.

Always best content notwithstanding climate alarmism & Remainism. Only reason not giving 5* is erratic performance on old iPad and fact I can’t get standalone Espresso back. I can live with the biases mentioned because this newspaper has always taken considered positions which could not possibly be more transparent.

Good newspaper, terrible app. The Economist is one of the best newspapers in the world. It’s app is one of the worst. Slow to load, clunky and crashes frequently if you try to read the weekly paper, rather than the selection of stories served up each day. And it has been like this for years. Given its readership, I would have thought an efficient app, which most high schoolers can now manage, would have been a priority, but obviously not.

Great new audio version. The lasted version significantly enhanced the integration of the audio features with iPhone and provides a great audio interface. Much improved and highly recommended for those listening to the weekly Economist.

Informative and well written journalism. Pity about the app. Excellent journalism, well written , impartial and informative. The Economist provides me with a view of issues and developments across the globe. I am not aware of another publication with the breadth and depth of coverage. Each week I read the Economist before any other periodical. The only issue I have is the stability of the app. I listen to the Economist via the app rather than read it. Unfortunately the app is the least stable of all apps I access. This week for example if could download the week’s edition but it came without audio. I have done all the usual things but to no avail and have not received a reply to my email of two days ago. Issues like this occur regularly. Surely an organisation of the quality of the Economist could engage someone to manage the app effectively

The Economist is the best News App around. Informative, inspiring and insightful. I see, feel and live in the World in a whole new interconnected light with The Economist’s wide array of reporting which details how interdependent the Human race is on this blue marble planet. No other news app comes close to this trusted source!

Updated App. Took me a little bit to get used to it but now very easy. I was used to the weekly edition but now there is even more. Absolutely top line journalism; informative, interesting and often entertaining too. I really end it.

Needs “Find on page” function and usability fixes. I would love to wordsearch within an article when I need to quickly skim an article or find a specific detail. Without this function I must rely on the website; this makes the app redundant for me. Also, when i try and select text to copy, lookup etc. it never highlights the end of the last word. It often ends up highlighting to the middle of the last word, so i have to inefficiently extend the highlighter rightwards. Plus, I can’t understand why the app doesn’t have an article categories section eg. ‘Finance and economics’, ‘Asia’, ‘Graphic detail’ etc., as is provided on the website. Some articles, especially graphic details and daily charts, only appear to be discoverable and readable on the website. This lack of interoperability makes very little sense. I love TE, but the app requires much improvement - which, unfortunately in my experience, has not been forthcoming.

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The Economist: not just for lovers. The economist made me the man I am today

great reading well organized. Great reading and well organized.

Downloads are slow. Downloading an edition is slow & often gets stuck

Maddeningly Sluggish in 2024 on an iPhone 14. Love the journalism, hate the app! It’s is 2024. I am on a phone that can do trillions of calculations per second. Why does it take 2 seconds for a button to respond to my finger? Why is scrolling a few hundred words of text and two images so taxing on my phone that it staggers and stutters? Economist devs: please rewrite this app using simple and basic native iOS APIs! Whatever cross platform SDK you are using to write one app for every mobile device is laying some very rotten eggs here.

App has become almost unresponsive. The app takes an incredible amount of time to launch and then to switch from one article to the next. All I can do is sit and wait for something (anything) to happen. I begin to wonder whether I missed touching the right spot. Often I just give up in disgust. At renewal I will be going back to a paper copy. The content is usually quite good but too frustrating trying to get to it.

Great newspaper another lousy app.. For 20 years I have enjoyed reading the Economist but consistently found the user interface to be wanting. Trend continues.

From best app to worst app (zero stars not available). Content remains excellent, 5-star. Original app was excellent. This app is now the worst app on my iPad. Open the app, I'm positioned on the correct article in edition I was reading, but wait 5-15 seconds (until app connects to server?) without doing anything, app jumps backward to a random previous article, or exits edition to home page. I've learned to not start reading right away but it is ridiculous that I must manually find my place where I left off last time. I guess nobody cares because I have reported this many times. Other issues: font size varies between articles, slow response to taps, too many ads that are slow to load, weird font choice for initialisms makes them difficult to read. Almost ready to ask for paper edition again. If the content ever starts to slip, I will be gone after 25+ years.

Great journalism, bad app. Complaints: - search is horrendous. Consistently showing relevant articles from 2-3 years ago when searching the name of a western country as a search query - offline editions for iPad are not really offline. Once you are out of internet connection, the app won’t let you download the editions you had previously downloaded for offline viewing. What’s the point of that? - saving of articles is device specific and not account specific. So articles saved on an iPhone won’t appear in the saved list on another device despite the logged in account being the same.

Poor customer support (updated). The content is good and the app is fine except - it has a bug and when I tried to point it out, I received poor responses from customer support. The Espresso section is missing from the app (accessing from iPhone SE in Canada). I pointed it out with all the details about the app three times but the customer support team kept assuming I am wrong (I have the wrong app or that I don’t have the latest version, etc.). Despite me trying to explain they kept assuming I have the wrong info. I was only trying to help but it doesn’t look it I could. Update: clearing cache process (as described by customer support with a reply to my rating) didn’t work.

Newish Podcast Delivery System Sucks. I really like the economist podcasts but I get annoyed with having to load them in the app. I understand they want to monetize them but would prefer it if they gave the option to download them to my usual podcast app. No descriptions either anymore. Really smacks of hubris, they’re good but you’re also competing with what like a million others? I forget they even exist half the time.

Terrible - and I paid for it. In order to keep listening to Economist podcast I was forced to use this app and pay $30 a year This app does not even have rudimentary podcast functionality, such as notes telling you what is the content in the podcast. I can no longer listen to The Economist podcasts on Pocket Casts, which is my podcasting app for the last five or 10 years. This is honestly one of the worst apps I have ever used. Typically any app that was bad I quickly deleted, but I am stuck having paid $30 for my podcasts.

Beware Subscribing. I could not cancel my subscription online, and was directed through multiple screens before asking me to call. Don’t reward dark design patterns: avoid this app.

Recent update disabled context menu??. Long time subscriber and user of the app. Recently noticed that I could no longer long press on a word and look it up. Is this a bug or had the Economist decided to revoke this important function??

Need app for audio edition.. Really disappointed I have to use this app to listen to the audio edition. I’m glad they added 1.25x playback speed, but it doesn’t sound right compared to my usual player. It stutters and sounds distorted compared to importing the mp3 edition as an audiobook. Cannot block ads in the app even though I subscribe? I just want to use my web browser and mp3 download. Not a lot of liberty for a liberal magazine. - audio player crashes iOS 14 - audio player often does not remember playback position - cannot easily bring up audio player - audio cannot easily resume without opening the app PLEASE bring back the mp3 download for the audio edition. I will have to cancel my subscription if I cannot listen.

5/5, but what happened to the audio?. What happened to audio playback for latest issues?

needs a "open in app" link. Everytime I click in an article on various socials, the link opens in the browser, and browser logs out after a few days. it's pretty annoying to go through the login process everytime, given that the login page doesn't always work

Widgets would be nice. Great journalism and insight as always, and the app has dramatically improved over the years. Still waiting for iPhone and iPad widgets to keep up with the weekly covers.

Terrible User Experience. For someone that only wants to read the weekly magazine the new app is just terrible. In your face options to listen. More clicks and a far less attractive page setup. Hopefully I am just reacting to it being very very different. But I don’t think so. I truly hate the new app. The magazine remains exceptional so this is an app only review.

Very buggy to read. Quite frustrating. The app will randomly bounce from the article you are reading to another you have read.

Audio playing on iPhone is still poor. Despite the update 2 days ago, the App is behaving poorly on my iPhone. The issues are: 1) no longer able to advance to the next piece when the screen is locked (the advance button is no longer there); 2) now it takes almost 1 minute for the audio to advance to the next piece when one is finished. I remain very frustrated with the poor quality of this app. How can an excellent (perhaps the best) publication have such a poor and buggy app?

Good app, good journalism, could be better. I find that the journalism is generally good, but I also find a lot of opinion, suggestions and, dare I say, condescension mixed in which clearly show the bias of the paper but ultimately erodes the respect it generates. When one pays almost $200 for a year’s worth of content, ideally the drivel and sensation would be kept at a bare minimum. The app could also be better. It’s 2023 and somehow their special reports arent fully available on the app or I couldn’t find them. Either way, it means the app could use some improvement. Besides those issues, its a generally useful source of information in a generally useful app.

Too much advertising. I already ready paid the subscription cost, but when I’m using this app, there are still advertisements in between of texts, which is surprisingly annoying. I understand that advertising is the main way of making profit, and I shouldn’t have judge advertising itself, but at least put it at the bottom. Economist is a great magazine, and a great reading experience should be prioritized.

We should be able to give article to friends etc.. I don’t see any way of giving them unless hiden somewhere. This would even probably help your readership

USELESS, and DYSFUNCTIONAL. Extremely slow response (sluggish like molasses at -40 C). Clunky interface. INFURIATING random resets to the HOME page (which is UTTERLY useless in itself). Constant bombardment with ads when you swipe right or left to flip pages (REGARDLESS of the fact that you paid $100's for a full subscription). Despite THOUSANDS of complaints, they are completely OBLIVIOUS to the problems pointed out to them. I can't wait for my subscription to end in order to rid myself of the BUNGLING IDIOTS at the economist.

Update ruined my subscription. Could not link active subscription (through Apple) after this update. Followed the instructions and tried several times. Chatted with The Economist help. Basically concluded that this is an Apple issue. A shame to see these two titans without a clue…

Audio not working. Excellent content but the audio has not been working for days now. Rebooted multiple times, updated the app and still no audio. Get “something went wrong” with a “retry” but it never works.

HELP PLEASE. HOW CAN I GET A RESPONSE FROM THE ECONOMIST? I paid the subscription for one year and the magazine has not arrived yet after two months. Nobody provides an explanation. It is the worst customer service on earth.

Great magazine, lousy 2020 app.. How can you go so wrong with an update. The new app is really unintuitive and difficult to navigate.

Works fine. I have used this app for many years. It works, and I am able to listen to the app fine

Great Read, Shame About The App. I’ve been a satisfied Economist reader and app user for some years. However, lately I’ve experienced continual frustrations with the iOS app. You click on a story to read it only to wait as long as 5 seconds for it to load. The app also occasionally crashes. The web user experience is now superior to the app. I hope this can be addressed. My phone is a few years old: a 13 with up-to-date iOS. Great writing, shame about the coding.

Works, but crashes when in background. The app sometimes crashes if you pause the audiobook for too long. You need to open the app again to resume playback. Also would love this if it runs on MacOS. I’d love to listen to The Economist from my Mac!

Audio to listen to The Economist only works 2/3 of the time.. Audio to listen to The Economist only works 2/3 of the time.

Best magazine Worst app. Absolutely the worst app of all those installed on my iPhone. And it’s even worse on my iPad. The list of problems is long and old. There are no noticeable improvements with recent updates. Using it is a constant and continuous source of frustration. Downloading the issue does not help. I suspect most of the problems are due to the resources dedicated to serving a new ad with every swipe forward or back. For the price of the Economist we should be treated as customers not “users” and “saleable ad recipients”.

Buggy. The Economist is a great publication. And yet, its app is the pits. Slow, buggy, and frustrating. Time to fire the whole team of "developers" and start anew.

Excellent Writing: Miserable App. The Economist continues to be informative, timely and well written. The app is horrid. Slow to load and burdened with too many options that make it pause, reload and annoy. The app’s poor functioning takes away from the enjoyment of the content provided. The content alone deserves 5 stars. The app alone deserves zero (or if allowed -1).

Terrific paper but the app gets worse and worse and worse. The previous app usually opened to where you were reading and, when it did not, the table of contents was a concise outline that let you find articles easily. This app loses your place and the contents section is an interminable list swollen by superfluous pictures. Within a story, elephantine pictures fill the screen when you try to scroll past them and your finger doesn't land just right. The latest "improvement" is animated pictures that do nothing but distract from the text and annoy.

Great content but app is insanely sluggish. The app has really taken a nosedive… it takes ten seconds just to change the orientation when rotating my iPad Pro, and to boot you lose your place in the article when you rotate the screen. Articles also take forever to load. They’ve changed something recently that’s creating these problems, as the app didn’t used to be this sluggish.

Mind opening. Informative, insightful and instructive. Get to the essence of current affairs with the Economist magazine. Thoroughly thought provoking and critical thinking inducing read.

Good content, poor audio features. The content is great, and the daily stories have high caliber. The “3 star” rating is due to the poor podcasting/audio portion of the app

Love this app but not pleased about the latest version. I’ve read the Economist on my iPad for many years and enjoyed the fact that it was virtually a duplicate of the printed magazine. Now I find that every time I go back to finish reading an article the app takes me to the beginning of that weeks edition. Is it possible I’ve done something wrong in settings? Gary Parker Burlington Ontario Canada

Great magazine. Terrible 2020 update. Great magazine but the recent update makes it awful to use

Repeatedly asked for login credentials. Love economist articles. Their system doesn’t hold my login info therefore it asks me for user name and password every day when I login using iPhone 11 with mobile app. Should have Keep me logged in option.

Great journalism; garbage app. Articles are impossible to find. I sign in to read something I saw promoted elsewhere...and I never do get to read it. Not sure I’ll renew my subscription.

The Economist is:. Exceptional Diverse On target Leading, not following Not afraid to address truly unknown, difficult topics, ones with no clear or “right” answer Excellent grammar and exceptionally concise writing The best charts, bar none!! Hugely broad coverage with first-hand, data-driven analysis No other publication is anywhere near as comprehensive, insightful, thoughtful and unafraid to lay it on the line The Economist forces readers to re-evaluate their fundamental and long-held perceptions, principles and priorities

Stick with the Legacy App. Stick with the legacy app. The interface of the new app makes it tough to navigate. For example the Economist’s 1843 magazine is a wonderful read but try and find it on the new app, good luck. It’s there because from time to time you’ll stumble on an article from it but good luck finding the magazine itself. Too bad. I love the Economist and would be all over the app on my iPad but I’ve given up.

UX and ads. I like the economist app, it’s easy to use and there’s definitely been solid improvement on the user experience over the years but there’s one major issue that really bothers me and that’s when I am scrolling down an article and tap on the ad by accident. I feel like the position of the ad is set in a way that the user is highly likely to tap on it and be led away to a 3rd party browser. It completely ruins the flow of reading and has in fact become so frustrating that I am taking the time to write a review about it. Can u please fix this :(

Great content but ads after buying??. This is the best news source on the planet. Do they really need to put ads in the articles after your paying for the subscription?

Changed for the worse. Just bought a new iPad after not having used one for a few years. The previously Economist app for iPad loaded like a printed edition and I could flip through the pages easily by sliding across the screen. Now it’s set up like a web page with individual links for each article. Not a fan.

App is terrible. Newspaper is excellent. The old app was simple and just worked. The new app is slow, complicated, buggy and almost always needs data or wifi to play downloaded material.

Terrible for listening. For years I’ve listened to the economist on my daily commute (and kept the habit through COVID). As I’m sure many do, I read/listen to pretty much the same sections every time, so the ability to add entire sections to a “playlist” easily, to then listen in one go, was critical. But in this new version I have yet to find an easy way to do that. It would seem I have to go to each article and click to listen. Not only is that annoying, but it makes it impossible to (safely) listen to it while driving. Please help if I’m missing something!

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Can manage but audio version could be better. I access each week’s edition mostly through the audio version while jogging outdoors. I would like an easy way to download the audio version each week using WiFi, place at the end of the playlist, and start the playing later. So far the only way I have found to approximate this is to delete previous editions and then download the new one. Also, while listening, after another app interrupts, such as incoming phone call, the Economist does not automatically resume playing on the iPhone.

Leaning Left - 4 Stars. I gave the Economist Magazine 4 stars, rather then 5 stars, because of instead of just reporting the news, the Economist Magazine often expresses its opinion and “gets out of its news lane” it becomes not much different then other Left Leaning biased news organizations like CNN. That’s a shame, because of truly being a 5 star news organization the Economist Magazine becomes predictably biased. When a person or organization is biased they form their own version of “The Truth”, either by twisting or omission. The Economist Magazine often does both. 4 Stars.

Best Source of News & Analysis anywhere. The Economist is second to none with its incisive analysis and news reporting. I hope this tradition continues well beyond my lifetime. The app is simple and well designed. I absolutely rely on the clear and thorough audio supplement. I love those British Accents. One annoying and seemingly easy thing to fix: When I create an audio “playlist” by selecting items as favorites, the playback is always in reverse order. I see no ability to reverse or change the order. Can this be fixed?

Great content but app is horrible. I’m a huge fan of the economist but the app isn’t good. It doesn’t consistently download articles in the background despite it being set to do so. And it uses several gigabytes per issue, even when I’m not downloading audio. I also find that images often fail to download even when the issue is downloaded. As a frequent traveler it’s frustrating to board a plane on Friday hoping to read the latest issue only to find it wasn’t downloaded, not other recent editions. And with the issues being so large, I’m often unable to download the latest while on cellular. I’m running on an iPhone 13 Pro max with the latest ios installed so it’s not a configuration issue on my end.

A daily read. I have subscribed to the Economist on and off over the past 30 years but would often find a stack of unread magazines piling up next to my bed Since my last subscription the app has become a much more digestible daily read . In particular , I like the included audio content which I often listen to while working out or during my commute . Now I find myself checking the daily briefing on most days . It’s a well done transition to a more daily focus

Excellent content, slower than expected. I am very happy with the Economist content, and appreciate the additional access having an app provides. I have noticed a few bugs and performance issues that could be improved: -There is a lag when navigating to a new page (with the exception of articles themselves) before links can be used. -When I have been swiping to move through articles and then the app closes, upon reopening I am briefly shown the article I had been reading, before it goes back to the most recent article accessed from a link. -The acronym FBI is rendered as “fbI”.

Broken - Then fixed!. The weekly edition stopped updating. I reinstalled the app to see if that would make a difference. Now the app literally does not load any content. Just blank screens. For the amount I pay for an economist subscription, this is a huge disappointment. Guess I’ll be canceling, since the whole point of getting a subscription was to access the (very fine) audio edition… but the app prevents me from doing that. Update: The devs promptly fixed the issue. Well done, team! From one to five stars.

Superb. The Economist sets the bar for other paid content apps. It combines daily updates with the weekly magazine in a way that makes it easy to go between the two. It combines audio with yeast seamlessly and tracks everything across all devices. Ads are non intrusive. It is fast and never crashes. We subscribe to several other premium content apps and they could all learn from The Economist user experience. My one complain is that outside links do not seem to work for non subscribers which should be just good marketing for the magazine.

Love the substance, hate the app. I chose to use the app for promising features, most importantly for me, the ability to see which articles I’ve read. Despite many glitches, this feature has worked ok, until yesterday when I lost all check marks at the bottom of articles I’ve read. This is incredibly frustrating because I am always working off of several issues at once as I try to completely read past issues, keep up with daily read, and read the time-relevant updates from new issues. Please fix this and I’ll change my rating to 5-stars.

Great reporting, annoying ads. The Economist has almost always had great reporting (with a few exceptions), which I would give five stars. But their new app needs to be designed better. It is extremely annoying to see ads now embedded in every article of the Weekly. In the earlier version of the app, the ads used to come when you first opened the magazine. Please go back to that format. I don’t want to see Facebook type of ads in a magazine I’m paying a monthly subscription for that costs more than Netflix.

First rate journalism, visual disaster. The economist remains one of the best sources of news anywhere, so it’s a real shame just how much they’ve lost their way from a design perspective. This has to be one of the least attractive news apps I’ve ever seen. I’m sure a lot of time and money went into developing the new app/website, but it just looks awful. Backgrounds are different shades of gray and white (and dark mode is even worse), weekly stories are presented as just one long list with no attempt at design or layout, and no thought seems to have gone into the use of blank space/ margins or the visual coherence of the app. What’s worse, the old version of the app—and the website for that matter—were a model of clean, uncluttered design.

Steadily sinking in quality. Apart from the horrible design and persistent audio playback issues that went on for months, now the article readers’ quality is going down. There’s no excuse for this especially considering the cost of subscription. Readers used to be good but lately are more annoying than pleasant to listen to. This includes some new guy who can barely read and sounds like some taxi driver from East London with a heavy accent. I understand that this may well be because of “diversity and inclusion“ but what I say to that is that quality still matters. What the economist doesn’t understand is that I don’t want to listen to that kind of voice and that kind of reading because it’s very unpleasant. Canceling my subscription.

Feedback from a subscriber of 25 years. I don’t care for the guest columns (“By Invitation”). We all read the Economist because we like the Economist writers. The guest columnists generally disappoint because they tend not to share the Economist worldview. In fact, you seem to choose guest columnists that differ from your editorial line by design. But we subscribe to the magazine because we generally prefer the Economist’s worldview to that of its relativist and appeaser critics, too many of whom seem to be appearing as guest columnists. I think it’s an innovation too far. Thank you.

Misery on bad Wi-Fi. The app is great when it works, but boy if you are unlucky enough to have a weak connection that the app finds, NOTHING works. It seems that the great tech team at the economist are in their ivory tower of constant great connections and are unable to adopt the concept of background downloading, and instead selecting a strategy of infuriating those unlucky readers that have to constantly battle their conceits as to the usability of their app. Unfortunate for me, the editors are so good, I put up with it. To be specific, the issue is that if the app detects a connection, it cancels everything else and attempts to download the new app making it impossible to read anything and reminding me to always read the paper version and regret every time I try the app

Content is Great, Digital Experience Catastrophic. None of the digital channels talk to eachother. Logged into the app and want to listen to a subscriber-only podcast? Impossible. Receive a subscriber-only invite to an event and want to register? It doesn’t recognise your login. Want to read an archived article that you found in the app? Be prepared to login again through the same app you’re already logged into. Receive a subscriber-only email and click a link to an article? Be prepared to be told that content is for subscribers only. Inconceivable that a company that is so digitally dysfunctional would have the audacity to put their podcast content behind a subscriber-only paywall. Try getting the basics right before you start trying to innovate!

Long time subscriber.. I’ve been getting the Economist in hard copy for over 40 years. Their coverage of events here in the US is particularly unbiased, they don’t speak to either major political party. Not to say that they don’t have their own slant on the news but it is much more broad and inclusive. I have many sources of news even now from both liberal and conservative writings from which I can better draw a reasonable conclusion. They are a valuable contributor to my perspective of the world.

Love the app, just a suggestion. I love the economist and the app. I listen to it on my daily commute. Being able to keep up on news while in my car during residency at times has kept me sane. The one suggestion I would have would be to let the user alter the order of the articles that are read. That way in case there isn’t enough time in a week to get through the whole edition the user can make sure they get through the articles that interest them most.

The Economist is wonderful as always, but.... the app has an irritating issue, notably that it is full of ads which are so sensitive to touch that I frequently, often two or three times per article, will be launched out of the app to view some wholly irrelevant website that I didn’t even see the ad for let alone deliberately click on. Just scrolling through an article usually causes me to accidentally click on an ad and launch my web browser. So stupid and irritating and literally the only app I have ever had this problem with. Considering I’ve been a subscriber for close to two decades this is a constant source of disappointment to me.

Close to great. This review is entirely independent of the content offered on The Economist, and focuses on the app’s ergonomics. The app is quite good. The typesetting is adjustable enough, it responds to dark mode, and it has a simple feature set. The missing star is because the app does not awaken very elegantly. I’ve noticed two main annoying bugs when switching away from the app, and then returning: - the Podcast+ screen does not accurately reflect the state of the podcast, and clicking play/pause will seek to the wrong part of the podcast, making me find my place again. - stories/articles go completely blank when the app is foregrounded. it takes a second for them to load back in, and it is usually not to where I originally had scrolled. Additionally, the app could use a feature where you can more easily see recent things you’ve read/listened to.

I love the Economist But Cancelled. I’ve been subscribing to the Economist off an on since I was 18, I’m now 46. There is no doubt that their product is superior, however I still stopped. Why? The reasons are several but the primary variable impacting my choice is the hurdles to subscribing. They have an odd rate structure that feels very print media, you can’t go monthly via the App Store which also means you need to contact them to cancel. It’s a hassle. I want it easy. I turn on and off subscriptions about once a year. So I dropped them and I do miss them but not enough to overcome the hassle. Make it easy.

Only review I’ve ever written. The Economist is THE news outlet for being informed without getting too emotionally charged. They avoid verbose hyperbole while also being sure to avoid making grand assumptions based on directional leanings; this they allow the reader to determine at their own discretion. A great variety of topics by sensational journalists harbored worldwide. The perfect combination of brevity and depth. A sensational outlet that I have been reading for almost a decade, starting in late high school. Not too esoteric for younger readers or otherwise-specialized academics. Sign up!

Audio big problems. Clicking on play plays a different article?. Same exact review I gave about a year ago. It keeps getting more and more complicated. Keep it simple. This is a magazine app. I want to read and listen to the story’s. Not make a custom playlist. A skip button is sufficient I shouldn’t have to learn how to make a playlist to listen to the first article in the issue. I click play and it plays some old article. I just want easy plug and play. If this keeps up I’m unsubscribing. This app used to be fabulous. But now it takes ages to just play a new article and it keeps having to re download the same articles. It’s incredibly slow and doesn’t seem to function.

Buggy isn’t better. The Economist is my favorite news source but the app is my least favorite app. The app repeatedly fails to update its content. Tech support’s instructions to reload and refresh provide relief for one or two days before the app crashes again and won’t update content. I’m happy to pay for some of the best journalistic content available, but the app is a failed delivery system and waste of money. If the app developers were on the same level as the content writers this would be a 5-star + news delivery service.

Top notch content but a few control options would be nice. The Economist has content second to none and it is fairly easy to access with the well-designed app. I particularly enjoy the audio content. I only wish there were slightly better options for playback. At top of my list would be options to play back at speeds between 1.0 and 1.25. To my ear the best speed would be around 1.1 depending on the narrator. And this would save me 10% of time! Additionally it would be nice to list total time of an issue and total time remaining.

This feature made it a daily go to. Since the start of the pandemic my job has essentially become reading and writing complex, dry, data intensive reports day in & day out. We should all value informed and intelligent analysis of our world. But I just cannot bring myself to read for pleasure given the current work load. Then those clever devils at the economist decided to read the stories for us! Amazing! I can listen on the drive to work, be informed, and not read?! Totally worth the monthly fee.

Overall good, but not great. Overall good, but unfortunately has some bugs that keep it from being 5 star. - app hangs whenever returning to an audio story when I left off part of the way through. I can’t go back to the beginning, I have to start playing another story first. - not a bug, but I really wish I could choose the playback controls. With podcasts, I can rewind or fast forward ~15 seconds, which is particularly useful when I’m listening while I walk (I can tap my AirPods or use my watch). When I do that in the economist app, it goes to a different article entirely, which I don’t want.

Objective creative analysis. I have subscribed for many years - since college. I have given it as a present to friends and family. Conservative economics, open-minded social perspective. Best overview of international news. It’s analysis often represents rational expectations - the basis point from which deviations are calculated. It’s greatest difficulty is keeping up with how fast events evolve - a generally insurmountable problem for any source of news reporting and analysis. It’s only competition comes from Walk Street Journal, Atlantic and New York Times.

Spectacular. The Economist continues its tradition of being one of the best newspaper in the market. Its coverage is global, thoughtful, and insightful. The addition of podcasts makes it stronger. And the ability to listen to every article means I can get to everything, even if I cannot read it all. Politically, I am on the right, The Economist seems strong center, but I nonetheless find its essays persuasive on some issues, a testament to its ethical journalism. High praise in this world. If I was ever limited to one publication to read, I would easily choose The Economist.

Great content, careless execution. 10+ years user of this app and it’s predecessors and it’s been the same story with all: great content, buggy, careless execution. Images fail to download, state isn’t kept so you always have to navigate to where you left off, audio features great on paper but never work. Every release is marred by crazy and obvious bugs that suggest something is seriously wrong with their QA. Customer service excels at writing meaningless emails but is otherwise worthless. Bottom line is this app works more or less but, like a toddler, will always have you work for it. The iPad version has been useless ever since they moved to this “responsive” version years ago.

How Can a Premier Publication Have such an Inept App?. I have used The Economist iPad app for decades. It has generally been miserable software. Let me give one example: Can the software remember where I left off? For many years, it was completely clueless. A few years ago, there was substantial improvement, and it generally recalled where I stopped. A few weeks ago, however, it lost its memory. Can software have Alzheimer’s? Now, when I open the app, it shows me the correct location for a fraction of a second then jumps 5 to 7 articles earlier. Every time I want to read The Economist, I need to flip forward multiple articles. Just one example of many.

A big improvement over previous version. (NB: I am and have long been a big fan of the content from the Economist. This review concerns only the apps from this publication, specifically on iPad) When the Economist recently (I think back in 2017) “updated” their app, moving from paginated articles to more trendy, endlessly scrolling articles, I thought it was a huge step in the wrong direction. It looked like a cheap, generic app, with many bugs and shoddy UI. For instance, there was no way to jump to another section in one week’s issue, and bookmarking was confusing. I still miss pagination on iPad (call me old fashioned but I think this is the best way to present magazine articles), but this new app version is a vast improvement. Better look, better UI, easy bookmarks that sync between iPad and iPhone. Jump to sections easily. Daily content in addition to the weekly issues. Easy audio downloads. With that said, I highly recommend this app.

Great content, but the app needs work. Hello, I chose to subscribe to The Economist because I like the content and because of the ability to play the audio for the weekly magazine articles. I like to listen to the articles as I eat my breakfast and prepare my coffee in the morning. Here are a few of the issues that I wish could be fixed and also some suggestions for things that would make the app better. 1. The app doesn’t reliably put a check mark on the articles that I’ve played. Sometimes it will, sometimes it won’t. 2. The audio player menu crashes a lot 3. The app signs me out and tells me to subscribe even when I’ve already subscribed and signed in. 4. It’d be nice if the espresso morning briefing had a play button so that I could listen to that as audio as well. I love this magazine so far because of all the great content it has and I really hope these issues are addressed in an update. I also really really like being able to listen to the articles. Thanks.

Good app, still some bugs. The app hasn’t been super stable but mostly usable. I especially like the “streaming” feature so you don’t have to download each issue as in the other app (Classic US, I think that’s the name). Every update brought some bugs and fixed some. Considering the version number of 1.x, it is probably expected. Ever since 1.5.1, I can’t access the previous editions from my iPhone X. Would appreciate it if you could please fix this soon! Update: there is a workaround to get the previous editions back. You have to delete the app and then reinstall it. But it really shouldn’t be like this way.

Why did they change this??. The old app was the gold standard for magazine apps. The functionality was perfect and let me immerse myself in each week’s magazine with no other distractions, so it felt much closer to the print version. Now the menu bar at top is always visible allowing me to click back to “this week.” I want that to go away when I scroll down/read. And it shouldn’t refer me back to “this week”—that’s a section of the magazine. It’s confusing to call the magazine part of the app that as well. Also, I never ever listen to the audio version. So why do I have to see it on each page? I just don’t get why you’d mess with perfection. I’d use the “classic” app, but apparently it doesn’t recognize my economist subscription? So frustrating.

Podcast Feed Please. I like the newspaper/magazine. I like it he content and I enjoy their prescriptive tone (telling world leaders what they should do). I love the letters from readers - frequently rebutting the paper’s liberal bias. The science section is a real treat. Holding back from 5 stars because the listening experience for the audio edition is ok. It’s good. But it’s not great. On the other hand, my podcast app provides a great listening experience, so I’d really like a subscription feed so I can just listen to the full audio edition in whatever app I want to. Also, there’s no Apple Watch app from the economist and a podcast subscription feed would address that gap.

News great, Ads not so great. The content and reporting from the Economist is top notch as usual. However a new ad system was implemented where a simple touch of an ad will force the advertisement content to open in my default browser. They have been set to be overly sensitive and don’t discriminate vs a tap with intent and one that’s simply just to scroll further down the page. This has created a horrendous user experience as I’m constantly having to switch back to the app after ungraciously been redirected to an ad I have no interest in. This is a recent issue, where they began by showing advertisements for their own offerings. And now I assume after compiling the rigged conversion rates to be able to pitch to advertisers ad space they are showcasing external third party ads.

I love the app BUT. I am a great fan of the app, but I personally would like to request two improvements. I mostly use this app for the audio and I’d Economist even more if the two followings were possible. 1. Can we make our own playlist for the audio? For instance I want to skip letter section when I’m listening and it’s frustrating that there’s no way to do so but manually. 2. Can you please introduce sleep timer? Listening to the economist audio and going to bed has been my habit but now I need to turn them off manually and this hasn’t been great.

Paper version easier to use on the subway. Once you press the manual download button and wait literally 10+ minutes per issue before leaving your apartment for the latest issue to download (can’t download multiple issues at once because obviously their server is from the early 2000s) then it’s eventually a nice app… except when it decides randomly that since it can’t reach the internet it won’t show you what you already downloaded. The publisher must own a lot of paper company stocks. Or they’ve never left London where I presume mobile data exists between stations unlike in America.

Common Sense News. Many years ago I picked up The Economist at a dentist office started reading it and instantly forgot the drilling noise, audible inside the waiting room. Haven’t put it down since. The app makes it even easier to continue reading common sense, and to-the-point journalism. There’s little left of this kind of reporting, analyzing and unbiased editing. I am a creative in design and advertising, yet it’s The Economist that makes me smarter in meetings with executives from all kinds of industries. There, The Economist has been my little secret over the years.

One improvement. I literally never write reviews. But this app and content is amazing and just genuinely well written and informative. The only reason I am writing this (and I know it is a pedantic request) is because I would like a feature added. The economist Instagram page has a link in the bio that you can click and has an integration between the posts and the app. Why not just add this into the app? The search feature works but you have to know exactly what you’re looking for. Scrolling through 100s of articles is tedious. The weekly edition is the best content and well organized. But why not just add a feature that lets you scroll through the articles in a more consummatory manner. I know it’s probably the dopamine addicted phone user in me talking but the economist page on Instagram seems like a great feature to allow users to browse the selection of media easily. I hope they add this.

Great articles! Let’s stay positive.... The Economist is there for us to grasp the fundamentals that bring this world together and make it spin on daily basis. It is great to read and listen and trust its content. Surely, for me, its articles are like an immersion into never ending learning. Keep going! One suggestion is to try -every now and then- to show the good things about this world on macro geopolitical and societal topics. Sometimes, I feel that the tone of the conglomerate of articles tend to be too negative, although realistic. For me, often the glass if half full, and I am sure The Economist can see the world this way as well. By being positive, we can always influence our followers :)

app quality. SIR- The new app is simply excellent. The rewrite has succeeded in transforming the app from a digital version of the weekly newspaper into a full fledged source of news, catering not only to the times I feel like reading in-depth analysis from the issue’s front to back. The linked articles at the end of each article allow me to wander around and read based on topic even if the linked articles are from a previous issue. The in-built espresso function is also appreciated, creating another mode of news consumption that will again serve as a jumping off point to further reading. Dom Some Guy, Austin

Lv ur App. The app brings new news daily whereas the paper copy does not, it reaches me on Thursday whereas the paper copy arrived on Monday and what I appreciated the most is once I canceled my paper copy my credit was applied to the length of my receiving the app version. Good job folks I could do without the daily reminder that President Trump who is not a favorite of mine by any means will be handcuffed etc. and There is no need to remind us about who owns the Economist parent company I really don’t care and I’m sure most readers really do not care either

I miss being able to select audio playlist!. The content is fantastic. This review pertains to the new app. I primarily read articles by listening, and excellent playlist features have been removed: One used to be able to download only selected individual articles, which was essential for hands-free listening. The only way to listen to individual articles now is to open the written article and tap “Listen to this story”. The playlist also used to check off where one left off so one could resume listening with a quick glance, and easily remove listened-to content.

Rediscovered my love of The Economist through this app!. This app is everything I could have wanted from The Economist! The app layout allows you to navigate an issue exactly as you would a physical copy of the magazine, and the features allowing you to see which articles have been read and the minute length of each article are brilliant. And the ability to download issues for offline reading is great! Thank you Economist team for helping me rediscover my love of your physical magazine through app form!!

Great app, one suggested feature for audio. I’d like to just hit ‘play’ on the bookmarked articles with audio and keep working through my list as I’m walking or driving. The app is missing a way to just play audio from my bookmarked articles without having to go back and hit ‘play’ on the next bookmarked article. After it plays my first bookmarked article, it plays an unrelated ‘Leaders’ article, which is a bit unexpected. But I still love the app and am happy with my subscription. The Economist is truly my most interesting news publication. It often helps me understand the world in a slightly different way.

Long time reader. I love the content and the app. The audio component of the app makes digesting an entire issue much easier, especially on a long commute or while doing chores at home. I read the bits that I want to and listen to the rest. The new “que” function makes putting together your listening list each week much easier, especially if you know which parts you want to listen to. I debated the Kindle subscription versus using the app and the app just has so much more functionality for me.

Excellent journalism but the app is way too slow. These ratings are only for the app. I love the economist news reporting but their app on ios is terribly slow. Its take 2 min just to click the weekly issues tab and scroll to your last article. The article page automatically refreshes if I lose internet for a second and then I need to remember which line I was on. Even switching tabs to check a new email for a second and the whole app refreshes and I need to start again. After I supposedly download the weekly issue, still the data graphs and other images need internet to load offline which makes no sense. The economist would do well investing in a better engineering team and redesign of the app

Well-written and insightful international news. I have been enjoying reading the economist for over 30 years, and I continue to marvel at how well produced and written the magazine, and the news are. Through the Economist, I get international news that I would receive nowhere else. I get insight into happenings in central Africa and the Pacific Islands and the far reaches of the Earth. I read obituaries of fascinating people that I’ve never heard of and wish I had known more about. I catch up on global economics and I’m always fascinated by the latest publication of the big Mac index. Here in the states, our local and domestic news is composed of meager sound bites and we can’t get much international news, unless we seek it. If you are seeking international news, the Economist is the place to go. Do yourself a favor and try reading The Economist for a while. I find it worth my time and money to be a subscriber.

Great paper, mediocre app. The quality of the publication is top-notch. The app has several frustrating features, the most important of which are: 1) it frequently does not retain my place in a particular story or even the section of the magazine, returning me instead to the home page and forcing me to navigate back to my story. This is not after closing the app but simply navigating off of it; and 2) rotating my phone sideways does not cause the text, but more importantly graphics, to rotate. Both of these issues were non-existent in the legacy app and I regret updating after holding out for a long time