# BrowZine — user reviews > 76 indexed App Store user reviews of BrowZine by Third Iron, LLC, rated 4.10/5 from 62 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/browzine/id463787411/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/browzine/id463787411.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 37 · 4★ 9 · 3★ 5 · 2★ 6 · 1★ 5 ## Newest reviews (15 of 76) ### 4/5 — Good, but could use improved search function *2026-07-15, version 2.25.1* Love the app for just keeping up to date with journal articles - if you have a university account, it's absolutely stellar. I wish I could search within a journal, even just a title search, though. It's not feasible to do research with the app currently, just to browse (which makes sense with the name, I'd just prefer a within-journal search function). ### 3/5 — Programmers have been responsive *2024-06-20, version 2.23.0* I use BrowZine on the iPad format. The program was formally a good usable platform for reading journals. However, in the past several months, it has become almost unusable. I primarily use it for reading the New England Journal of Medicine. Formerly articles downloaded in a matter of seconds, now it takes up to one to two minutes for each article to load. Formally I was required to sign in one time to start a program session, now I have to sign in frequently. Scrolling is much less intuitive or reliable than it once was and I am periodically thrown out of an article which I’m reading and have to start the reloading process again. this makes for a very frustrating user experience. After filing the above review the BrowZine programmers did get in touch with me and did help me work through some of the interface problems. It turns out that the BrowZine interface is a little different for each institution which has its own internal formatting and requirements. Although not perfect, the user experience has certainly improved. ### 2/5 — Please hire some programmers *2024-02-13* I use BrowZine on the iPad format. The program was formally a good usable platform for reading journals. However, in the past several months, it has become almost unusable. I primarily use it for reading the New England Journal of Medicine. Formerly articles downloaded in a matter of seconds, now it takes up to one to two minutes for each article to load. Formally I was required to sign in one time to start a program session, now I have to sign in frequently. Scrolling is much less intuitive or reliable than it once was and I am periodically thrown out of an article which I’m reading and have to start the reloading process again. this makes for a very frustrating user experience. **Developer response:** We're sorry to hear about these problems! Our developers are looking into your comments but if you could contact us directly at support@thirdiron.com we would be interested in getting some additional details. ### 3/5 — Loved the previous version *2023-01-15, version 2.10.0* I have been using Browzine like it’s my Sunday morning paper for about a year now. Until the latest update, I was very happy with the app and encouraged my friends (fellow grad students) to download and use it. I could even easily send papers to my friends if it looked like something they would be interested in. Alternatively, when a paper seemed very useful to my research, I found it incredibly easy to export the pdf to Zotero for reading and taking notes. It was an awesome, smooth experience. I’m not sure what happened with the latest update. I now have to repeatedly log back in, have to decide whether I want to read the article’s html or see the pdf before previewing it, and when I send a paper to Zotero, it will not send the pdf. These problems have made using Browzine on my iPad cumbersome. I wish I had the old version where none of these problems were happening. Until the next version, which will hopefully fix these issues, I’m no longer encouraging people to download it on their iPads. ### 3/5 — Was brilliant but now… *2022-12-23, version 2.10.0* Recent updates maybe in the journals have made it impossible to get the pdfs and difficult to read in html. Not sure what’s gone wrong but it’s a pain now! ### 2/5 — The last update caused issues *2022-12-15, version 2.10.0* Now if I have to re-enter my passwords, and sometimes the article cannot be found. Please fix the bug. ### 4/5 — Love this app, but occasionally buggy *2021-10-10, version 2.3.8* Since the last update opening articles brings me to my library login page and won’t let me actually login. Help, please! ### 2/5 — No longer functions *2021-03-10, version 2.3.6* Worked well for a while. Now all it does is load blank pages when I try to open an article. ### 4/5 — Keeping up to date *2020-09-21, version 2.2.1* Great app to keep updated on articles ### 4/5 — Some issues recently *2020-08-03, version 2.2.0* I love this app - it’s sleek, easy to use, and has many of the journals I typically cite. Unfortunately for the past couple of weeks, I haven’t been to access any articles. When I try to open an article it says there’s an authentication error. I can still access everything normally through the browser version, so I’m thinking something changed in the latest app update? Looking forward to the next update to return to normal, thanks :) ### 4/5 — Useful, but slow *2020-05-02, version 2.1.7* This app is a great way to read the journal at my campus library. My only gripe is it’s still really slow to load each article. Speed has improved in the recent release, but I still twiddle my thumbs while waiting. Why can’t it download a whole journal at once? Or download several selected PDFs while I’m reading the first one? ### 4/5 — Great app but overly eager *2020-04-02, version 2.1.0* I like the app but it would be nice if clicking on an article pulled up the title and abstract and a button to download the full text rather than immediately trying to download the paper. ### 2/5 — Potential is there but UX development is slow *2019-09-24, version 2.0.3* This app is excellent for keeping up to speed on journals that i read when paired with access granted through my institution. Also the user interface is quite past century. Not a big inconvenience but probably not for millennial reader. Competitors rely on a model that takes after other social media sites (think continuous scroll of articles curated using an algorithm) vs this app which relies on the old age phenomenon of getting a physical copy of the journal and taking your time to browse through its content. The reality is that in this day and age modern readers do not like to be tied down to journal boundaries but rather appreciate a curated list of knowledge. It also lacks in identifying the special interests of its readers and then coming up with suggestions. ### 3/5 — Works, but really needs a UI refresh! *2019-06-22, version 1.12.9* Browzine works as advertised to allow me to read journals as if I had the paper copy - from cover to cover. This is worth a lot to me as I dislike parsing emailed tables of contents. But, the skeuomorphic UI leaves a lot to be desired. It would be nice if the UI could be updated to match the latest UIs from the best developers. Make it flatter and get rid of the skeuomorphism. Compare this app, for example, to MindNode or to Things. If the devs could make this app look better, I would increase my rating to 4 or 5 stars. ### 2/5 — Good start, but needs work *2018-03-16, version 1.10.9* Pros: 1. Makes it easy to keep up to date 2. Remembers my login info (after some tweaking by their helpful support staff) 3. Easy to share link and pdf with colleagues Cons: 1. No ability to automatically save pdf to cloud storage 2. No ability to annotate articles 3. Doesn’t remember what issue I was on last 4. Big yellow button to “remove from bookshelf” needs to be less conspicuous and harder to accidentally hit Update to respond to developer: Thanks, but I don’t work for your company. I’m not going to login and tell your developers how to do their jobs. If this review isn’t good enough for them to figure out what needs to be done, or for someone from the company from copying and pasting these into the user request system, then it’s too bad for your company. Updating review to reflect poor use of user reviews. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 1/5 — Crashes upon opening *2025-01-02, version 2.24.0* Latest update continuously crashes within 10 seconds ### 1/5 — Very buggy *2024-07-21, version 2.23.0* Stuck trying to find a full text article - when clearly, if you just tap on the screen, you can see in the background that it has loaded the page that it needs to. It just doesn’t show it. What’s the point of the app if it doesn’t let you read the journal articles? ### 1/5 — Clunky and not user friendly *2023-11-21, version 2.23.0* Whilst access to my institutions library of journals in an app is extremely useful, the app itself is terrible and made worse by more recent updates. Very clunky and slow to open a full journal article, can’t export them as a pdf from the app any more, difficult to navigate things when the browser opened within the app. Also unable to edit my “bookshelf” - just appears in the order I add them. Did not find an easy way to offer this feedback to the app producers either. ### 1/5 — Useless app until developers connect most schools *2019-08-31, version 1.12.9* I was very excited when I downloaded the app and found a number of journals of my interest. However, this app is not very useful because most of the schools are actually not on the list. And those schools that are on the list are quite surprising. For instance, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center is on the list but the University of Oklahoma is not. The Medical U of South Carolina is on the list but not the University of South Carolina, Clemson, College of Charleston or any other South Carolina school. ### 1/5 — OpenAthens institutional acces *2019-01-15, version 1.11.11* When attempting to use the application to gain access to my institutions site license via OpenAthens it doesn’t work. Error message “invalid assertion service URL”. The publisher doesn’t support this unconventional method of access. I would not recommend this application to medical students or physicians. ### 1/5 — Very poor performance and zero support *2018-02-19, version 1.10.7* An excellent idea, nice tool but lots of crashes, freeze, etc. Does not load articles. Does not load journals. Zero support. Extremely unstable. The most irresponsible I have seen. ### 1/5 — Not much to go off of... *2017-06-19, version 1.9.9* Very few options to choose from ### 1/5 — After new updates, it has so many bugs now *2017-01-27, version 1.9.1* Too many bugs in the new version ### 1/5 — PROBLEMS AFTER NEW UPDATE *2017-01-18, version 1.9.0* After the update, the my articles tab is not working. Articles do not open and app crashes repeatedly. Needs urgent fix. ### 1/5 — Update forces you to get an account! *2016-03-25, version 1.8.0* The new update forces you to get an account with the developer "to sync your bookshelf". I don't need to sync my book shelf and I don't want to get an account with the developer. Now I can no longer use this app, ## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — Love it *2024-05-26, version 2.23.0* This is a great app for those wanting to keep track of new titles in a wide range of academic journals. The university systems enabling access has hiccup prompts that make access to PDFs less efficient but the app is great overall. ### 5/5 — Unread view is a game-changer *2024-04-22, version 2.23.0* Love this app and its ability to help me follow new articles across journals. The unread view is something I just discovered and has changed my workflow significantly for the better to quickly review new articles in press and across issues. 5 stars, essential for academic medicine. ### 5/5 — Fast journal access *2021-11-29, version 2.3.8* I began using this app again to access a range of journals I (should) read. Super fast access to quality titles organized in an accessible taxonomy presented in full PDF. The updates have been terrific. Solid, consistent delivery year after year. ### 5/5 — Great app for grad students *2021-11-11, version 2.3.8* In my last year of my PhD and wish I found this sooner! Definitely helps keep up-to-date on the literature. Much better than my workflow using Feedly. ### 5/5 — Love it *2020-08-07, version 2.2.0* Highly recommended, easy to use, love having everything in one place ### 5/5 — Poor execution *2019-11-02, version 2.0.7* I was really excited to find an app that enabled me to create a library of journals from my university library. Unfortunately I had problems authenticating. Prompted by the developer’s supportive response to investigate further, I had another look and realised immediately that I was an idiot! Now that it’s all working, I’m absolutely delighted! ### 5/5 — Works great again! Thanks! *2018-10-13, version 1.11.9* Thanks for the speedy fix: I really depend upon this outstanding app! ### 5/5 — Much improved *2018-06-02, version 1.11.2* I’ve been using BrowZine for a few months, and the most recent update is great. It’s easy to use—login once and it remembers my infos, the app finds and loads PDFs quickly. I’ll keep using it for my reading! ### 5/5 — State of the art in mobile access to journals *2018-04-16, version 1.10.10* The world of academic publishing is restrictive and slow to change, but BrowZine makes the best of this environment. It offers as near to seamless access to your library’s subscriptions as you’ll find anywhere. The support team is very responsive and helpful, and the product developers are proactive in proposing and making improvements. ### 5/5 — Must have *2017-02-08, version 1.9.2* Can be a bit slow, but truly a terrific app. A must for any researcher --- *Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-08-30.*