Drops Review: Not Bad, Well-Designed But Only A Supplement

Drops

Pricing: $8.50 per month, $5 per month (annual) or $150 lifetime

Positives

• Great way to add vocabulary
• Well designed
• Gamification aspect is addictive
• Lots of languages to choose from

Negatives

• Only useful for vocabulary, not grammar
• 7 day trial only for annual subscriptions

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Summary

Drops is great app for learning the vocabulary of your chosen language. It's high quality with a beautiful design, but under the hood, it's a fairly simple flashcard tool.

It does make learning new words fun but the app is insufficient on its own.

DepthThis is 'content' richness. How comprehensive is Drops and does it take you far in terms of levels, or is it more suited to low level/tourist learners?

UniquenessIs Drops innovative or is it just an imitation? Does it have a unique selling proposition (USP) that makes it stand out among competitors?

QualityOverall product quality indicator that covers everything from video/dialogue clarity, authenticity, explanations, and effectiveness.

CostIs Drops acceptably priced and how does its pricing compare to market competition?

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What I like about Drops is that it doesn’t pretend to be an all-in-one language learning tool or course.

Their app’s intended to supplement your existing language learning course by expanding your vocabulary. As someone living in a foreign country, learning my target language (in my case, Greek), I find it to be a very useful and fun app to regulary refer to.

It takes a lot of effort to learn a language and become proficient at grammar, memorizing vocabulary can be tedious.

Drops is one of the best I’ve seen, is really high quality and has a beautiful design.

I found that this made Drops enjoyable to come back to, very easy to use and also effective at focusing on the task at hand (no annoying advertisements like other apps). I found myself mastering new words in no time at all.

Some other apps are not intuitive and the instructions are difficult to follow. Drops is a very easy concept and intuitive, making it easy to follow and I enjoyed the gamification of word memorization in the app.

It uses spaced repetition to reinforce new words that you’ve learned.

I have noticed some complaints about the depth and relevance of words available in some topics. Occasionally words appear in irrelevant topic areas.

This is a little bit frustrating if you want to really master a particular area of the language and have to encounter terms that shouldn’t be there.

One thing that I didn’t like was the automatic subscription in the annual plan. I’ve been caught with this before.

It immediately signs you up to a 12 month plan when you think you’re starting a free trial. The responsibility is on you to cancel the subscription before the seven day trial is over (I’m sure most people forget). Their refund policy is unclear.

Overall, Drops is a really great app and loads of fun but it has a simple goal (vocabulary) and should be used as a supplement.

For an app that is more ‘course-like’, Babbel or Mondly would be my recommendation.

Have you used Drops before?

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Pricing: $8.50 per month, $5 per month (annual) or $150 lifetime

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