Speechify – Voice AI Assistant

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

While this a good service and app, things could definitely be improved. My biggest qualm so far is that there is a monthly word limit at which point you are unable to use most of the voice options and are stuck with a robotic sounding woman’s name. I listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts while I work or multitask and so I was excited to use Speechify to listen to books that do not have Audiobook companions, pdfs, and online content. Within about two weeks I hit the monthly word limit and am now unable to really use the service because the non-enhanced/premium voice option is not very good. Secondly, while this service does have a broad range of voices in English some are better than others in terms of sounding less robotic or monotone when reading aloud and so there are really only four or five that I found myself using regularly. Some of the voices sound more natural and are good with pacing and understanding how to read a document and others not so much. For example, occasionally a word or two will be skipped by the voice or a part of a document will be read more literally than it is meant to. For example, when “….” is used to imply a pause the voices are likely to pronounce “dot dot dot” at the same speed and pacing as the rest of a document or e-book. I will wait and see what if any improvements are made to the service to determine if I will keep paying for it once the renewal date comes up.

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