Noa: Listen to audio articles Reviews

The “long-form journalism to audio” space is becoming increasingly crowded, and for good reason: it’s a service that many of us didn’t realize we wanted until we tried it! And now, after having spent a while comparing the three major competitors in the space that I could find—this app, Curio, and Audm—I can say that this app’s offering is the best of the bunch. Their customer service is incredibly responsive, too. It’s not a perfect app or service, as there are still several bugs and issues for them to work out, but overall, this app is definitely one of my favorite finds of the past year or so.

There is a lot of low hanging fruit that can be improved pretty quickly. This is Noa /service have been waiting/looking for since 2015. I love that it exists, but they need to get their high speed playback a bit better at being intelligible at higher speeds.

Seems like it’s also hard to have content you want from specific publishers organized automatically.

App doesn’t respond well to the play/pause button on my headphones (plays, but won’t pause).

It seems hard to resume an article where you left off. I think there’s a way to do it, but it’s not as straightforward as it ought to be.

I worry some of the organizational issues are by design, as a way of trying to foster certain behavior from users. I hope this is not the case. Maybe there is a different explanation, but as of now it seems like Noa was not designed super users like me, ie, the people most likely to use and pay for it.

I’ve been hearing this app news clips on my Google Home for months and finally decided to try Noa today. It’s a brilliant premise: Noa gives easy audio access to tons of top journals like the New York Times, Bloomberg, Independent, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

If you’ve ever wanted more than the 30-second version of a story (or endless commentary on television), Noa is perfect in that articles are sorted by topic, so you get to hear several perspectives on top-story issues such as China devaluing its currency.

Where Noa lacks at times is in the delivery. The vast majority of the readers’ voices are quite pleasant, but on multiple occasions I’ve heard gross mispronunciations of words (i.e. acquiescence, respite) and names (i.e. Epstein) as though the readers didn’t take the time to learn the words they were saying.

I’m still on my free trial but am strongly considering switching to premium if for no other reason than to keep an amazing service like this around!

I have been using news over audio (this app) for sometime and loving it... Noa has the best intuitive user interface for using Noa when I am on the go. this app has the best collection of articles for business, management, finance and technology. Thank you this app Team !
Sincerely,
Gopi Gopalakrishnan

I highly recommend this app and listen almost every day. They way they curate articles into short audio Series is something I have not seen done before and I love it! The narrators’ voices are easy to listen to and the range of news publishers is top class! If you like podcasts you’ll love this app.

Excellent app. I am able to listen and learn while I exercise, cook, clean, and accomplish daily tasks. Excellent narrators and a fine selection of articles. The subscription is very worthwhile. There are no ads to interrupt my listening enjoyment. I am so happy to have this app in my life.

This is the best news audio app you will ever find if you are regularly reading the publishers that Noa has. Love the fact that it has Harvard Business Review.

You would only find selected articles from these publishers not all, so that can be a bummer for a lot of people.

They have curated collections which I loved.

Just a hack apart from Noa, you can listen to any article on the web in perfect natural voice on the Microsoft edge.

this app is easy to use, has a reasonable beginning library of publications, features excellent readers (English only?!), and has some new stories every work day. This is a hopeful alternative when Audible is too bookish and Audm’s articles are just too long and involved. this app offers healthy audio snacks! Pain points: —Don’t hassle listeners every time they open up the this app app to “Allow Notifications Now!”. That’s unkind! —Allow listeners to hide articles with 1 click (Create an UNHEARD list?) —No SHUFFLE mode yet.

Great app that helps keep you on top of the best thinking for work and life. I originally subscribed for Harvard business review - but I’d discovered far more beyond it. Highly recommend.

In the age where sound bites rule the info sphere having a readily available source to examine all angles is crucial.

Very much needs dark mode, it hurts my eyes, it’s not like anyone has a CRT smartphone. Just use dark backgrounds please.

I love the speed adjustment.

The number of premium articles is very sparse.

Loving Noa/service!

this app’s audio series offers a broad overview of many news topics

After logging on Facebook, this app still doesn’t log me in automatically

Another service that requires me to make an account to use it. Needs a Sign In with Apple button to make onboarding simpler.