Audiobooks HQ Review

It's pretty difficult to criticize Audiobooks HQ. For $1.99, users get access to 5353 different audiobooks in the time that they each take to download, and everything works just right. Sure, those audiobooks might be freely available elsewhere, but this app makes it much, much easier to access and play such content immediately. For those users who want to listen to the spoken word rather than music, while they commute or exercise, it's a winner.

Admittedly, users don't get access to the latest novels and pieces of literature. Understandably, given the price, this app is focused on the classics. That allows for plenty of choice, covering numerous interests, however. It's possible to listen to audiobooks of the works of Charles Dickens, Mary Shelley and Emily Bronte. For the English Literature fan, this app is a particular dream. It's just as easy to find David Copperfield as it is Tom Sawyer.

As someone who is forever struggling to find the time to read such classics, it's great that Audiobooks HQ is so simple to interact with. Users just tap on the title and a plethora of information is offered to them. A summary via Wikipedia is the most obvious, along with information on the duration of the audio book, a link to an eBook version and suggestions for related text. Listening to the audiobook is a matter of downloading the file. Obviously, this depends on the internet connection involved and I wouldn't recommend doing so via a 3G connection, but it's pretty easy. It's possible to close the app, leaving the file to download in the background, as well as listen to other audiobooks at the same time.

Audiobooks HQ is immensely simple, bordering on basic, to look at, but it does the job well. The readings are narrated by volunteers so the quality varies a little, but it's still a great and inexpensive substitute for more expensive audiobooks. Certainly the ones I listened to were high enough quality for me to enjoy and appreciate.