Cengage Read

I like that the tool reads without having to manually advance the page. I like the option to increase or decrease the speed. I do find moving to a SPECIFIC paragraph or sentence is impossible, which is extremely frustrating. I have also found that if your phone "goes to sleep" the reader immediately starts pausing between sentences. fairly long, definitely noticeable pauses. So I have to keep my phone "awake" to avoid that. This would be perfect if not for those two functionality issues.

I... really wish I wasn't forced to go on here. It glitches and has issues with the aloud reading (useful when I'm busy). Thought it'd be what I needed since the other app glitched horribly with reading aloud (edit: primarily with tablets and mobile device). Well..Given the option for online reading...I chose it after trying this..but then it shows me nothing when I choose it. Not mad, cause I'll find a way..but I'm just frustrated.

The navigation bar of my phone (I have Samsung Galaxy S25+) overlaps with the navigation of the app, which makes it impossible to access the content menu or the speech option. I looked around the entire app to see if there was a way to change that but I can't figure out what to do. I mean isn't it crazy for the developers to make the buttons all the way at the bottom knowing that is where all Samsung phones have their navigation bar?

I used the app last semester on my phone and it was great! Starting this new semester, all of a sudden now I can't access any of the UI buttons as they are covered by the UI buttons for my phone. It is even impossible just to get to the table of contents and chapters. I only buy directly from Cengage rather than my college bookstore because of the eReader option in the app. Hopefully this gets fixed ASAP or I won't buy directly again.

To be sure, it is nice to be able to read your books on mobile. The in-book UI is fairly OK, and the offline mode is quite convenient. However, I am logged out frequently, and when I log back in, all books must be re-downloaded. I suspect it has to do with opening the app offline. I have only ever had it happen offline. Anyway, since the only reason I have the app is to read my texts offline, it REALLY defeats the purpose when I have to get online to sign and download everything AGAIN.

The app is easy to navigate and use. Reading is easy. Unfortunately the highlight feature on mobile devices leave room to be desired, in the way of changing color of already highlight text, choosing a color, or removing the highlight in general. The app does work seamlessly across devices you are logged in at (I have android phone, iPad, and a Windows computer and can access all of my notes and highlighted material). You can also easily pickup on the same page you left off on.

Have you log in every single time. Like who's going to read my books. Very buggy and hard to navigate. Dose not sync with the web or anything at all logs out while I am reading or listening to a chapter. If it was not for having this I would delete it. And I pay to have the books and still have to deal this kind of app... just horrible! Worst app I have ever used

The navigation is great, but highlighting gets slower and slower as I progress through the text. It gets to the point where I have to close all the apps on my phone and reopen Cengage just to avoid waiting a long time for the color selection to pop up after selecting some text. I realize it's only a few seconds of delay, but when trying to read several hundred pages in a day, those seconds add up, break the flow of reading, and are very frustrating

I hope Cengage gets their money back from whatever 3rd rate development shop gave them the lowest bid. There is no ability to scroll up and down while reading. The top and bottom of each "page" are obscured with no apparent way to fix it other than to change the font size. Limited background color options and no high contrast text color option. This app does not make studying easier. Serious miss

The app is ok. I downloaded it because it's not possible to highlight important text on the web version. It's difficult in the app, too, though, because the pages jump around while you are trying to select text. Very frustrating. I still prefer the web version as scrolling is more stable, but wish to highlight text 🤷 Update: highlight function is even worse now. Basically unusable.

There is no easy read feature. You still need to manually zoom in. The pages where text goes all the way across the page (not in columns) are still small to read. Sometimes, the top portion of a page is cut off, so you're missing the first few sentences. The text to speech feature is atrocious. It keeps reading from the top left column, entirely skipping the whole right half of the page. There is no opinion to start reading a section, not at the top of the page. 0 effort was put into app.

I use this app for an audible way to read my econ book. I am not able to scroll up or down on any page, if I want to start reading at the top of a page, I have to go to the previous page and let it finish reading it out and then change automatically. But if I have it set at the beginning of the chapter I can listen to the entire thing. It even gives alternate text to pictures. So even with the limits, lack of options and not being user friendly it works for what I need.

I opened my textbook in a web browser and it suggested I download this app. I did so and tried reading on this app, which is specifically designed for reading. It was terribly inconvenient. The text size was awkward; it split pages randomly depending on the size of my screen so I would have to swipe sideways very frequently. On the browser, I can simply scroll up or down. Finally, I tried highlighting text in the app to mark it. It marked multiple pages, instead of the three words I wanted.

It is an atrocious app. Highlighting is a pain because when you try to highlight from one page into another, it selects the whole page instead of the portion that I want to highlight. Turning the pages are a nightmare. Some pages don't even show up and in my experience, I had to restart my app twice in order for it to work properly. Pearson is a better app then Cengage and I had some issues with Pearson but it didn't give me a headache like this app did.

So far I like the convenience of having access on my phone. My biggest wish is syncing across platforms. I use MindTap for one of my classes, so I have notes, bookmarks, and highlights in there. But when I read the e book on my phone, none of that crosses over. It would also be much more convenient to scroll on a mobile device than try to flip through pages which often don't respond well and bounce back. I mainly use it just for ebook access so I don't have experience with other features

Attempting to highlight sometimes works, and sometimes pops me over to different page. There was a page turn that didn't make sense, and when I made the font smaller it revealed a whole paragraph that had been missing between the page turn. Other textbook apps have had the option for infinite scroll, which I prefer to flipping, and it doesn't seem to be an option. There's a pop-up whenever you open for tts options, and while it's nice to have options, an easy default option would be nicer.

So many multiple choice formatting errors. Sometimes you can't read any of the answer choices because the words are stacked on top of each other. If you like audio books, dont expect that quality of narration. It uses your phones narrator to read. Also the narration ONLY starts and stops at the top of the page. So that's just poor design. Add a cursor so you can pick where the narration starts. And then hold that spot when I pause it to review charts. Don't just restart the whole page... awful

Terrible audio!!! You can not pick where you want to start from. If there is a picture or example, it describes every bit of the picture. "The picture displays a yellow arrow pointing to the blue box". I have spent more time trying to figure this out. I could have already read the whole chapter by now. Frustrating to say the least. Waste of time. It's not even worth the book itself. Should have bought the text book. Id give 0 starts if i could.

Can't zoom in to read so you have to rely on the aloud reader which is horrible, my ebook has two columns on each page and if starts to read from the column on the right?!? And then goes back to the first (left) column. So is makes no since. So I can't read it or hear it. This app is so horribly made they should be embarrassed.

Instead of a useful resource, the app is a constant frustration. Both the front-end and backend need a serious overhaul to be competitive with alternatives, like that offered by Pearson. Constantly crashes, highlighting doesn't work 50% of the time, and my session is closed too often, logging me out. In 2023, such a buggy app is unacceptable, especially when people are paying hundreds of dollars for the books.