12min Reviews

I opened 12min just to check the subscription pricing, and by doing so the 3-day trial clock started without my consent. I never used 12min nor selected nor read any of the book summaries, I just wanted to know the price. The minimum subscription is for one year and now I can’t even do the trial due to their shady and greedy non-consent tactics. Why not let me start the trial when I’m ready rather than decide that for me? You might have had a paying customer if you were not so opaque and underhanded. I would never support nor recommend a company that uses such unconscionable practices, and I’m not paying for a year or lifetime without getting a trial.

I downloaded this thinking I would use this as a substitute for audiobooks. I paid $30 for nothing. I’ve never used it. I contacted customer service about issues with logging in on a new phone, and they responded with a lengthy Email in Spanish. I did write them in Spanish, why respond to me in Spanish? Now, I have installed 12min on my iPad. Well, you can’t read any of these stories in landscape mode. So if you have an iPad Air or pro that has a Logitech case with a Bluetooth keyboard built in, you can’t open it up and stand it up to read it, while cooking or doing other things, be everything is sideways, only viewable in portrait view. 12min is garbage. The only thing I have read is the nonsense they have written to me about 12min not working. I want my money back.

I’m guessing these are mostly either translated from another language or written by people not entirely fluent in English. Often the idea comes through, if inelegantly; but sometimes I honestly don’t quite know what a sentence or phrase is getting at because its meaning is too obscured or because a word choice could be interpreted multiple ways. Blinkist does a much better job with sheer writing quality; however, I ended up with a lifetime subscription to this app so I’m hoping it continues to improve. Certainly the breadth of content with this app is excellent!

I wanted to like this, but the recordings have unprofessional stuff like pauses in weird places and word stumblings here and there, as if their work was rushed.

I also can’t even compare this to Blinkist without written summaries. Being able to follow along with the text during the audio makes a world of difference to me, and it’s just not here. (Please correct me if I’m wrong.)

It also took me directly to a free trial when I registered on 12min , unexpectedly and frustratingly barring me from the ability to get the lifetime membership... but I guess I’m glad, because now that I’ve gotten a look, I don’t think I‘m interested in spending money on 12min.

If you are going to try to summarize an authors book in 12 minutes, the last thing you have time to do is comment on the author’s positions. I canceled my subscription when the editors or the reader commented directly to the author by name because he didn’t agree with the findings. Also, it is very distracting to hear young readers miss pronounce common words that they’re unfamiliar with. I will consider doing a trial run in a year to see if these things have been corrected. The idea behind 12min is well-founded.

My first use of 12min so prob have settings I need. I work 7 days a week 12 to 18 he days so brilliant idea. Out of the box clicked first book to listen to. While taking notes I'm like hmm it's taking long. Look at app and it's 24 minutes. Waaaaaa... I gotta get back to work! Our first interaction with 12min should be coded in as advertised. I'll try Headway and see if it's the same. It already have me a choice of 5 minutes with a growth path 7 books per week. We'll see. Used to read 12 to 50 full books a year for 10 years. Now down to about 3. Can do high speed summaries as a result and get the concepts and reread some so this would be great if I find it's as advertised.

Love this idea and app! I have ADHD and although I really want to read a great deal, I am easily distracted. Not only is this helpful for saving time and getting the most important information filtered for consumption, but I think it’s a way to encourage people to read the whole book because it provides a great intro and you can tell if it’s something you’d like to learn more details about or not. I think it gives one more confidence to attack the whole book.
This is also great for self-help books because most self-help books give you exercises to do and that’s usually the moment people tend to put a book down intending to return to it later but they never do.
I think it would be awesome if it included academic books as well. I’m in school right now and it would be a great assist!

One of my favorite apps, amazing mostly because it’s free. Though there are simple things that stop it from getting five stars.

One of them is the touch. I’ve been experiencing late responses when pressing various buttons on 12min, the problem surely isn’t from my phone and 12min would be much less frustrating and smoother if this is fixed.

Another simple problem is the cover of the books. Many times I don’t search for specific titles, I just go through a topic I like and pick a book there to listen to. It would make matters much simpler and easier to pick if the background of the books are the pictures of the actual book cover rather than random pictures. Overall this is a very amazing app. Thank you!

I have not taken advantage of my subscription like I should, but what I have listened to has inspired me to read most of the books. It has also saved me from sinking into some books that were not what I was thinking. They do a great job summarizing the books and they are always objective which gives me the opportunity to make the choice to read the book or not.

I was not disappointed at all after I subscribed to the membership. The available micro-books amazed me. One thing that may need improvement for 12min is that it was not obvious (I am still looking into it) how to send your books to kindle. I set my kindle email account but couldn’t find the button to “send”. Overall, great choice of books, concise summaries and very useful ideas!

I’m in love with 12min. When you read a book, what do you remember two weeks later? Just the highlights right? So why not just read the highlights and get the most important principles of a book in 12 minutes? Now instead of reading one book per week, I’m able to read one book per day! The only thing I’m worried about now is running out of books to read! Hopefully they just keep them coming.

I highly recommend this reading app to any lover of non-fiction books. I listen to a book every morning on my commute (the pandemic was a tough bc I worked from home). The Personality series is my favorite and wish they would expand this area more rapidly!! A “classic fiction” section would be ideal🤞🏼 One small “problem” is that I check off the books I want to read and then get confused over which one’s I have already heard. HINT HINT: add a “listen to again” feature on each book so I know if I’ve heard it once before. (Or even twice😉). Anyway, I was given a lifetime subscription for my birthday and it was honestly the best birthday gift I have received in years! 12min is worth every penny, … money well spent!

I always wanted to read more books but couldn’t find the time to devote to it.
12 min helps me a lot. Instead of music, I listen to a book or two during my morning workout and it just does magic for me.
I was skeptic at first but when I listen to the titles that I’ve already read before, I realized - it is in fact possible to transfer the whole essence of a book in 12 minutes!

Brilliant idea to condense books into 12 minute audio extracting valuable key points. I’m sure the actual books have more insight and other perspectives but this is great for me because I am trying to accelerate my ability to learn valuable content in a timely manner. This allows me to “Finish a book” and take the notes I would normally take efficiently in about 15-20 minutes!

I love 12min because of how much I am able to retain the information I’ve learned. I’m a neurodivergent so getting straight to the point is so helpful for me. And 12min does just that. 12mins is the perfect time for a summary before my mind starts to wander off about what I’m making for dinner later. And I love the fact that there are quizzes at the end for you to test your knowledge. I’d recommend 12min to anyone. Only improvement I’d say is to fix the quizzes they sometimes freeze up and the multiple choices get added to the wrong questions. Or it doesn’t go to the next question like it should. Also they could be a tad longer. For deeper testing of knowledge. But great app overall.

I never write reviews but this needs to be said. I recently found out that rich dad poor dad was on here and instantly got this ! It’s worth it just for that book alone ! I happily paid about $45 for a year membership and even if I never use it again, it was worth it for that book. Seriously, that specific book gives you financial literacy that will easily make the money back. Excited to get into The Richest Man in Babylon!

It’s time to completely revise my review. I was annoyed before because I couldn’t read any summaries offline, but that’s been fixed. I love being able to read a summary while traveling or while waiting for someone, or just to take a break from work.
The selection of books is very good and I really like being able to read a summary and then buy the book if I want more detail. 12min has saved me a lot of money by keeping me from buying books that weren’t what I thought they were!

I’ve had the pleasure of being first a team leader, then President and for over 20 years CEO of different teams (companies) and for me educating yourself is priority one! If your lucky a good employee or team member might read or seek quality information maybe once a week to once a month, but to be the team leader (i.e. Director, VP, President or CEO) your thirst for knowledge needs to be more like 3-5 per week! 12min allows you to select timely topics and prepare at your schedule in order to stay on top of your game. The best part is some topics after using 12min you’ll want to move on but some will bring you to greater heights!

If you value your time like me, yet are hungry for learning and gaining knowledge, start optimizing yourself today by downloading 12min! Seriously, I love audio books and this is not a complete replacement for the full book. However, in our daily, hectic busy lives it can be challenging to carve out enough time and focus to soak in a 12 hour full book. That’s where 12min shines! I have only just started using it today but the time and value saved are great! I’m always eager to learn but tend to only have bite-sized chunks of time to listen to a book, with 12min, I can get the whole cake in one small bite! Thank you to the team or person who made 12min! I’m a big fan!
Grant

I just started using 12min and it has given me the ability to read and/or listen to book summaries quickly. I started by reading a summary for a book that I recently read. After reading this app summary, the concept I learned from the book was well summarized with the 12 min app. Since then, I have been exploring more books which normally I do not have the time to read.