Marvin 3 Reviews

by Alpha.tesorieri

Marvin3 is beautiful, more so than iBooks. I loved the customization options and the auto-scroll while I was reading. I was seriously considering paying for the pro/unlocked option.

Unfortunately, when I tried to load more books (121, to be precise; I previously had 20 on there) into Marvin3 , it crashed. And crashed. And kept on crashing each time I attempted to open Marvin3 . I’m so disappointed by this; I really thought I’d found a perfect iOS ebook reader.

Another thing to note that others have mentioned that is extremely irritating is the continual Dropbox error message. I also find it ridiculous that you have to pay more to unlock different colors; most ebook apps offer this at a free charge, not a price of 99 cents or a bundle of $4.99...

by Apronikoff

I’ve been using the original Marvin for *years*. While not perfect, it was an excellent ebook app and I had no serious complaints. One of the most used apps on my iPad for nearly a decade. Over that time, I built up a library of over 4,500 books.

When Marvin 3 came out, none of the features struck me as something I needed, so I left well enough alone. Until recently when I tried to transfer books from my Dropbox and discovered that feature was now broken in the original and would never be fixed since the dev team has moved on to 3. So fine, finally time to upgrade I thought.

Paid the $4.99 and imported my entire Marvin classic library. Opened a book and it crashed. Restarted Marvin3 and it crashed. If I completely uninstalled it I could get it to open again, but as soon as I loaded any books into it crashed again.

Somehow, in all this process it managed to “lose” my Marvin backup. I can no longer restore from either app, and even when I connect my iPad to a pc and browse the file structure, my backup is no longer there.

So instead of having a great app that I’ve used for years I paid $5 for a broken app and lost ten years worth of book collecting. I guess it’s time to find a new ebook app altogether since Marvin went from being the best to being worthless.

by BAd DeTeCtIvE

There is so much to love about Marvin3. Extreme customization, goodreads integration, Dropbox, speech, journal, deep view. Marvin 3 is so feature rich it’s an ebook readers dream. Except...

It’s hard to believe that bookmarks and annotations don’t sync automatically. It’s literally the most basic feature in EVERY other ereader. An app that has so many bells and whistles (I mean Deep View alone is AMAZING) but does not have automatic syncing is soul crushing.

I will try to continue with the manual syncing in hopes that the feature will be added in the future, or until I get so absolutely frustrated I have to go back to Hyphen. From the other reviews I’ve read it looks like syncing in Marvin3 may not be happening.

by S&Cprof

This is an excellent app, the best out there in terms of the plethora of features it has and how well it works for reading. On the other hand, the gigantic number of features are hidden in weird locations and there are very unintuitive workflows. Once you’ve conquered the learning curve, you’ll love it 95% of the time. You’ll hate it for 5% of the time when you forget where a setting is, and can’t find it in Marvin3 or in the nearly nonexistent documentation. I sometimes try other apps in that 5% of the time, but I keep coming back to this one.

by + DonSmilo +

What they call “karaoke” reader will flash one word on the screen at a time. It lets you change wpm from really really slow to 720 wpm. (That’s a little slow though.) The word-flash reader also has good quality of life features, with the option to color the first letter of each word and give long words, commas, and spaces a little more time on-screen.

The dark mode is black and saves oled battery.

The margins are easily and minutely adjustable, so that I can use the whole screen to read (looking at you, Apple Books).

The text size is minutely adjustable, though doing so in the middle of a book will change your position in the book (it keeps you at the same page number, but once you change text size total page count changes).

I’m annoyed with the unintuitive and buggy design of the position adjustment slider at the bottom of the controls screen, which is so unreliable that it might as well not exist at all.

by EVGRAHAM

Marvin3 is a nearly perfect e-reader. The layout/format is beautiful and the options are perfect for allowing you to customize it however you like. I have Marvin 3 on my iPhone and iPad. My only complaint (which is not insignificant - to me anyway) is that the sync feature doesn’t work at all. I would love it if I could be reading on my iPad, then later open my iPhone and have it “remember” my “last read” postion in the book. Instead, when I hit sync I get an error message that says that I’m not connected to iCloud. However, I AM connected to the iCloud on both the iPad and iPhone. Repeated emails to Marvin3 developer have been completely ignored. But overall, a very nice app. Hopefully the sync issue will be fixed one day.

by Ir0nli0nzi0nzbee

I can honestly say that this is the best reader app I’ve found, BUT I feel that it is a bit overpriced for what you get. While the reader itself is great, the fact that you’ve got to pay extra for any themes is pretty ridiculous, especially considering Marvin3 itself is $4.99. That said, it is better than it’s competitors for a reader app. The other complaints I’ve seen are from users that are looking for way more customization than I’m looking for. I’d give it five stars if not for the price. I’d say it’s worth the $4.99 price tag if it came with the extra themes. Personally I feel it should cost about $2.99 and the extra $2 should give one the themes...

by Leopold Vincenzo

From the many user tweaks, support for imported fonts and great library management, Marvin is IMHO my favorite e-reader for IOS. With over 2000 books on my iPhone, I really appreciate the organizational and display capabilities of its library interface. Truly designed for the ebook OCD/fanatic/collector/power user. Now if I could only import a custom image as a reading background and disable the auto brightness while in Marvin3 , it would get 5 stars. Always room for improvement, right. And why is it called Marvin? If I could create an e-reader as good as this, I’d called it “Atoz.” Get it?

by J&AHannum

I still prefer the Original Marvin over the new Marvin 3. I prefer the way that books were organized in the original Marvin, but I was having problem importing books into it. So, when I moved to a new iPad, I moved to Marvin 3.

On thing that would greatly increase my appreciation of Marvin 3 would be to bring back the interface with Calibre. Or, at the very least, allow the importation of the opf files produced by Calibre to import book metadata (read flag, reading list flag, collections tags, etc).

I do like that in the night settings, black is much blacker than in Marvin. I also am beginning to appreciate the continuous scrolling within a chapter.

by Mnhhfhgykl.ljh

Well built app with plenty of customizations. My only issue is with highlighting. First, it would be nice to have the ability to underline and strikethrough. Second, when I start moving my finger across a sentence to highlight it the page starts to drift into the next page. I’m starting to see unintended highlighted paragraphs. This however is an annoying issue not a major one. The ability to underline and strikethrough would be of greater priority. Keep up the good work.

by NaderBridge

I am kind of book fanatic and I have used many ePub readers but no other reader can beat Marvin. I have more than 25 hundred ePub books on my iPad in Marvin and I love everything about it except the delete highlight option that has a confirm popup which is kind of annoying.
But other than that this is a great app with great capabilities: highlighting, exporting annotations to multiple format (really great!) meta data arranging, slick interface and so many other cool features! Great app...bravo!

by UPSY42q

Dear Developer,
PLEASE don’t abandon this project. There’s nothing better on the market than this! I would even pay a yearly subscription to see Marvin3 continue!

I really hope Marvin3 doesn’t become abandonware. It’s so near perfect. So customizable. It’s quite simply the best ebook reader out on the market. For ePub books there is nothing better. The only thing it is missing is the ability to attach images to annotations. Yes, technically it allows you to do so, but you can’t see the image (sadly, it only allows one image per highlight) unless you dig around in the journal deep in the menus.

I would love to just double tap my highlight and see my note (with attached images) automatically pop up (rather than have to tap on the pencil to edit the note before I can see it). Besides the attached images, the hashtags should also be visibly displayed atop in the “post-it note” pop-up annotation. Really the “pencil” icon should be abolished as it is sort of redundant. Just have the note pop up as soon as you tap it.

It would also be great if the vocabulary list could be used as flashcards (with definitions pasted in).

Thank you for all your hard work. Thank you!

by Mbarton98

I have been using this for years now on a daily basis. No problems with the current iOS 13 even though there have not been updates for a while. It just works for me. I change the theme to make it easier to read in a dark room or outside in the sun. The dictionary search and web search are easy to perform to find out a pronunciation of a word. Works well with Calibre’s ODPS content server to wirelessly transfer new books to read from my library. They have to be DRM free to work.

by Hierogal

Love the customization features, autoscroll and text to speech features are great. Screen and text look crisper than some other apps I’ve tried. I read a lot and like the time read counter. Link to goodreads does not work for me. Takes to goodreads app and opens on blank page. May be a problem on goodreads end but disappointing, was excited about that feature. Would love easier way to import books from calibre- select whole folder, download all etc. Clicking individually for download won’t work for me. My library is too big to do so. Currently using calibre companion as workaround so I can still have library loaded on phone but would be nice to have everything one place. Overall I love Marvin3. Other reviewers complained about price for themes but really? Not a necessary feature of app but why not support development if you really like it. Good ereader is hard to find. Please keep updating.

by F90djvl

Despite four years without an update, multiple versions of iOS and multiple new phones released by Apple, Marvin3 works incredibly well. When importing a new book, I can’t open it until Marvin3 is closed and relaunched, but that takes, very literally, a matter of moments.

Marvin3 is well worth the money, even though it’s been years since an update and the developer may well have abandoned it. I prefer Marvin3 strongly over my Kindle app and even, at times, over my Kindle Oasis. Take it from a reader: Buy Marvin3!!

by Stee-rider

I truly hope Marvin3 doesn’t become abandonware.

I’ve tried a *ton* of different e-reader apps, from the obvious to the obscure, and nothing else comes close to the flexibility, attention to detail, and straight up usability of Marvin. Just get it. Learn it. You’ll never look back.

The only thing I would really love to see added to Marvin3 is an ability to get books from a Resilio Sync share (similar to Dropbox, but shared only between my own computers). I supposed updating it for compatibility with the Files interface would handle this and many other sources.

by Fojlz

I’ve tried a number of e-book readers on my iPad and this one is the best. Other readers are clunky, outdated, and frankly seemingly designed without much love. Marvin is a pleasure to use; it’s snappy, with a variety of customizations, and it links to Dropbox, where I keep all my e-books. It even integrates with Safari to easily change things like the book cover image and metadata. And all features are generously offered for free to try out before buying, with just a tasteful banner (NOT ads!) at the bottom asking for purchase. This is what reading on the iPad should be.

I haven’t experienced any bugs or problems of the sort other reviews have mentioned. I am so happy Marvin3 exists, I use it all the time! :)

by I<3miabear

Title says it all.

To the Marvin developer - Please dear God do not abandon Marvin3. I have tried so many e-book reader apps over my lifetime and never have I fallen in love with the program so much. It’s almost as if you programmed everything I’ve ever wanted With skill and perfection in mind.

I would say that the only feature I would love is to have the customizability of the voice reader in text to speech. I know you can customize it right now but it doesn’t seem like changing it in the accessibility settings does anything to the voice. I wish Apple would allow us to use the Siri voice. The default voice that more than allows you to use is not bad but could use a little bit better. Marvin deserves the best

by BS701

I am used to be a fan of classical version. Then transfer to other app. Recently I got iPhone X. I looked for an app that could support X screen and then tried Marvin 3. So far I am very satisfied with my purchase.

One thing I personally don’t like classical version because the classical version was sort of “complicated” and “fancy”. Marvin 3 looks like more simple, direct and less distracting. It can make me focus on reading.

I like Marvin3, but get one question: how can I find out the page numbers of the whole book. I changed the setting on EPUB settings. Some books show the whole book page numbers at footers. But in most case, it just shows charter page numbers even though I tired the custom setting. I used app to track my reading and page numbers would be more helpful.

by Arbeet

I’ve used many e-readers over the years, and Marvin is my go-to (non-Kindle) app. I’m able to customize it for just the way I like to read. I use Calibre to convert and upload books, and it is a breeze with Marvin! There are only two things I would like to have, but neither one takes away from a 5-star rating! If you haven’t tried it yet, do yourself a favor now. There are far more features than I can list.
It would be great if reading in landscape on an iPad supported a 2 column display! The other issue is that syncing between devices really doesn’t work very well. I would love those two as upgrades, Marvin folk!!!

by Jon Macchio

I think Marvin3 is incredible and feature rich, and found the investment to unlock all the features with a one time in-app purchase reasonable. After reading Marvin3 description, I learned this is the first version with .cbr & .cbz support. When you combine a comic reader with this apps support for OPDS feeds, you’ve got a great way to quickly import multiple comics wirelessly with absolutely no trouble.

My suggestions to make the comic experience better would be to implement a feature that allows double tapping the screen to zoom in and quickly bring the comic into edge to edge focus of the device display. Additionally for iPads, it would be awesome to allow for a two page layout in a landscape orientation.

I look forward to the next update to full integrate into iOS 12!

by Stephen Holland

(Almost every review for any app with a criticism and a developer response I've seen contains a request that the complaint be emailed to the developer. Well, I tried that with no response. Minus one star. Here’s what I emailed:)

The iPhone X Home Indicator at the bottom only goes away when auto scroll is engaged, which makes night mode useless. It’s pretty bright. Other reader programs like GoodReader and Documents don’t seem to have the problem of making it disappear, so I’m sure it can be done. Would you please take a look at this?