Excellent!
This is an extremely helpful dictionary. I have used it extensively for intermediate Italian homework and out of 500 words or more that I looked up it only missed one (minestrone). It is also tense-aware and the various conjugations of verbs is invaluable. It also understands plural nouns so if you type in “case” (houses--plural) it goes to “casa” (house) with the correct definition. There was just an upgrade released adding a forward / back and history feature among some other improvements. Although a bit expensive it does way more than any pocket dictionary.
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Disappointing & not as useful as it should have been
Heading to Italy on holiday, I was going to buy a normal pocket paperback dictionary for about half the price - however when we saw this, we decided to plump for this for convenience sake - despite the price difference.
I think we made the wrong decision:
Firstly, it is overly expensive for what it is.
Secondly, it is not as extensive as it should be - there were a fair number of words we saw which we wanted to translate and it was unable to do so. There were various English words that we came across that it was unable to translate, and a lot of Italian words as well. In particular, the food and menu Italian is not up to scratch - words like fillet and some meats it doesn't translate accurately. We were caught out on several occasions and ended up with something different to what we thought we'd ordered.
Finally, it's implementation whilst being fairly good, is not quite there. On a few occasions it was unable to translate a valid word from English - Italian on the first time of asking.
If the bugs were ironed out, the dictionary extended and the price halved then it might be worth purchasing, but at £11.99 it's still way to expensive and a pocket dictionary will serve you much better.
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Peculiar and non-existent translations
There are some peculiar and missing translations in this dictionary that left me feeling it was a little unreliable. For example, "train" is translated as "serie" and "strascico" before the far more prevalent "treno". And "table" as "elenco" and "tabella" before "tavola". And even then, "tavola" is only included as an adjective, not as a noun.
In all, for the cost, I'd say there are probably more reliable dictionaries out there
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Apart from the obvious drawback...
...being the astronomical price it does what it says on the tin. I would like to see pronunciation of Italian words, rather than English - I know how to pronounce English, need to know how to pronounce Italian.
mediocre
I live in Italy and was hoping for a decent dictionary, especially for the steep price tag.
This is not. I have yet to find a word that I have searched for. Do not bother.
Needs navigation
Seems like a good app but it would really be helpful if you could navigate backwards and forwards through screens you've viewed.
Not perfect, but does some crucial things no print dictionary can
Two major reasons to get this: 1. You always have your iphone with you, so it eliminates the need to carry an additional pocket-sized dictionary around with you; 2. If you enter some conjugated verb, it will tell you what the verb is -- for example, type in 'fu' it it tells you that it is a form of 'to be' (it is the 3rd singular remote past). No small print dictionary does this -- try to look up 'fu' in a pocket dictionary and you don't get anything (though some of the bigger and better print dictionaries have SOME odd verb conjugations listed, but this has all of them, as far as I can tell). This is very helpful if, like me, you don't have all the many tenses and conjugations memorized.
However, there are 2 things that keep me from giving this a 5/5. First, relative to the last point, while it will tell you that, for instance, 'fu' is a form of 'to be', it doesn't tell you what form. You need to click on the conjugations tab, and then go through the different conjugations until you see where it is. This only takes 30 seconds or so, but it could be much easier. Still, a print dictionary won't even tell you what verb it is. But even so, it seems that instead of just telling you that it is a form of 'to be', it could also just tell you the conjugation. Presumably it knows this information in order to tell you it is a form of 'to be' to begin with. Second, it is not a replacement for a BIG, GOOD print dictionary, since the entries it has don't go into the kind of detail and examples that a good large dictionary will. Again, this seems correctable. Just adding a few megabits to the file size.
If they were to make these two very makable adjustments, this application would be an amazing product that could replace even large good print dictionaries. Hopefully they will. Then I'll change my score to 5/5. But until then, it still is extremely useful, easily merits a 4/5, and is well worth getting.
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Couldn't be happier with this app!
This little app is awesome and definitely worth the money! Look up a word, tap the desired verb to conjugate - a much faster process than using a paper dictionary. Just think how much money you've paid for your books that take forever to flip through!
If you're a serious student or a scholar, I can't tell you how much time and effort you will save! I now don't have to carry half the books to my Italian lesson, this is incredible! Get this thing now, you won't regret it!
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Works great, IMO the price is reasonable now
Yes, I admit that I would like the price to be lower as well, but I think for $20, this application has plenty of features to make me happy.
I travel on the airplane a lot and so the offline access is very valuable for me. The ability to lookup for words in the airplane without having to bring an additional paper dictionary is a wonderful thing. And some of the places that I travel do not necessary have the wifi or the data access (e.g. when I am not in the US). The app is better than the online dictionary since I could look up the word faster via the search without having to wait for the response to come back from the server. The integrated conjugation is a welcome addition though I would like to be able to look all type of tenses without having to tap the type of tenses that I want to see.
I travel on the airplane a lot and so the offline access is very valuable for me. The ability to lookup for words in the airplane without having to bring an additional paper dictionary is a wonderful thing. And some of the places that I travel do not necessary have the wifi or the data access (e.g. when I am not in the US). The app is better than the online dictionary since I could look up the word faster via the search without having to wait for the response to come back from the server. The integrated conjugation is a welcome addition though I would like to be able to look all type of tenses without having to tap the type of tenses that I want to see.
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too much for this
i bought this even though it was a little expensive. i hope it gets an update and when it does, the words are read to u, because that would make learning this a lot easier
