Blinkist review: Is the book-summarising app a shortcut to self-improvement?
All recommendations within this article are informed by expert editorial opinion. If you click on a link in this story we may earn affiliate revenue.
TIME is precious. Everyone knows that.
The team behind Blinkist knows it too, which is why it created its app and desktop site.
Designed for time-poor individuals, or those who perhaps want to get the gist of a book before investing in the full thing, Blinkist aims to save you time by offering summaries of books.
From self-help guides to novels, Blinkist might be the app you didn’t know you needed. But what exactly is it, how does it work and is it worth the monthly subscription cost? We've done a Blinkist review to find out.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -
Pros
- Huge choice of books
- Engaging narrators
- Blinks are easy to digest
- Saves you time on reading a whole book
- Pleasing music and sound effects
- Playlists you can share with friends and family
- Blinks are downloadable so you can listen offline
Cons
- Videos aren’t categorised or searchable
- You have to pay more for audiobooks
- Overwhelming amount of choice
Rating: 3.5/5
What is Blinkist?
Blinkist is a fairly simple idea, but it sounds more complicated than it is.
It’s essentially a book summarising subscription service, offering those with the app the chance to digest books — both nonfiction and fiction — quickly.
It compresses entire books into 15-minute summaries, offering the key points from each, so you can take away all the main insights without actually investing the time in reading the entire thing. In short, it gives you all the key points of a book without having to read it.
Most read in Product Reviews
It does so plainly and with an impressive amount of style. Both the app and desktop versions are designed beautifully, with a clean, minimal layout that prioritises the book covers against a simple background. The design makes it easy to discover new books, search for something specific or just browse at your leisure.
Naturally, Blinkist doesn’t have summaries of every book in existence. Up to now there has been a focus on self-help books, with hundreds of motivational, psychological and philosophical titles present on the app. There are summaries of books on relationships, how to achieve the perfect work/life balance, ‘life hacks’ and tips on improving productivity.
Clearly, it’s designed for time-poor individuals looking to better themselves.
Blinkist condenses each of these books into summaries which it calls Blinks. Each Blink is broken down into key ideas, which can be listened to in order or in isolation, depending on whether you want to focus on the whole thing or just a single part of the book.
It sounds far more complicated than it is, but once you spend five minutes exploring the app you’ll quickly get a handle on things thanks to its intuitive design, which the Blinkist team has clearly spent a lot of time on.
In total there are 6,500 titles in the Blinkist library, a number that is only growing, so there is plenty to get lost in. As of 2023, Blinkist has 26 million downloads, so it’s clearly doing something right.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -
READ MORE:
How Blinkist works
A quick Google of Blinkist reveals brand slogans like ‘the shortcut to success’, and ‘powerful ideas - 15 minutes at a time’. It’s obvious then that the app is targeting the self-help crowd, and those who spend their afternoons watching Ted Talks. There are even Ted Talks available on Blinkist, shown in their entirety in the ‘video’ section, but more on that later.
The app is incredibly easy to use. The homepage is the ‘for you’ page, the same kind that every social media platform has. It offers suggestions based on your previous history, titles it thinks you’ll like, and ‘collections’, which feature a number of titles sequenced together in a group, like a playlist.
Then there’s the explore page. This is where you’ll find further suggested titles for you to read, as well as headers with categories that break down the genre of books you’re searching. Click on one of these and you’ll be taken to that respective page, with hundreds of titles available.
You can narrow the search further, by clicking on a sub-category within that category, which gives you more defined suggestions, which should fit right in with what you’re searching for.
Each book title page is very easily laid out, making it easy to decide whether it’s for you. Each one has a ‘what’s it about’ section with a short paragraph or two summarising the book.
Then there’s a ‘who’s it for’ section, with bullet points indicating the kind of person the book might suit. You can read these blurbs very quickly, so you can decide whether you want to dive in.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -
If you do want to give it a go, simply tap ‘play Blinks’ if you want to listen to the entire summary of the book, or ‘read Blinks’, if you want to read about it instead. You can listen to the summaries of the books, read the transcripts, or do both at the same time if you really want to get dialled in.
It’s incredibly easy to save the titles you want to check out. You simply tap on the ribbon icon next to each respective title, which will then store it in your ‘saved’ folder in your library, making it easy to find later. It essentially bookmarks them, putting them all in one clear place you can return to.
Is Blinkist worth it?
What makes Blinkist impressive is the way it goes about its business: the attention to detail is there where it matters, the narrators are engaging and hold your attention throughout a Blink, and the writing is impressive.
It would have been very easy for Blinkist’s summaries to read like Wikipedia entries, but each one I tested is very well put together, and can actually work as a complement to the book they are describing.
It’s not always clear when the narrator is reading words from the actual book, but for the sake of immersion, that might not be a bad thing. Speaking of which, there is often background music added, with certain musical notes playing at critical moments alongside the narrator, giving each reading a more involved, immersive feel.
There are other details. For example. when you press pause and play in quick succession, the app carries on from the same point; however, if you pause and wait for five seconds or more, it jumps back slightly to repeat what was just said so you can pick up where you left off with a quick reminder of what just happened.
Other features include ‘Spaces’, which are playlists you can create that can be shared amongst family or friends. You can leave notes to accompany them for an added bit of personality.
AI is being incorporated into the app too. There are AI recommendations, which work as an algorithm to suggest titles it thinks you will like.
There's also ‘Blinkist AI’, a new Chat GPT-style option that lets you type in what you’re looking for, and then offers a series of recommendations based on your input.
There are some downsides. Audiobooks feature on the app, but you have to pay separately for them. Video is also present but they aren’t searchable and appear somewhat as an afterthought. You have to scroll endlessly and can’t filter them, making it difficult to find something you actually want to watch.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -
How much is Blinkist?
If you pay monthly, Blinkist costs £9.99 per month; however, if you can afford to pay upfront, that goes down to £4.99 per month (£59.99 for the year).
For this sum you get unlimited access to all of its Blinks, as well as a number of videos, which range from biographies to Ted Talks, all ad-free.
If you're still unsure about committing, then you'll find the fact that Blinkist does a 7-day free trial useful. Even more useful is the fact that on the fifth day of your trial, Blinkist will send you a reminder that your free period is ending, so that you don't accidentally forget and get charged.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -
Blinkist review: the verdict
In short, if you struggle to dedicate the time to reading full books, but you still want to glean the key information, tips, tricks and overall pointers, Blinkist is totally worth it.
It’s particularly effective with self-help books, which can often contain a lot of filler text. Blinkist eliminates all the filler, getting straight to the key points so that you can spend more time actually implementing them. Bettering yourself is what the app is about, after all.
Blinkist is also a good potential tool for students. Whereas websites like Sparknotes offer their own summaries and critical reviews of books, Blinkist does so in a very easy, digestible manner.
Read More on The Sun
Its summaries don’t have any critical takes, but they are thorough enough for you to gain a good understanding of both nonfiction and fiction titles.
- Sign up for a 7-day free trial of Blinkist -