# Read Bean — user reviews > 32 indexed App Store user reviews of Read Bean by Refond, Inc., rated 4.90/5 from 369 ratings. - Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/read-bean/id6736993989/reviews - App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/read-bean/id6736993989.md - Rating breakdown: 5★ 342 · 4★ 16 · 3★ 5 · 2★ 1 · 1★ 5 ## What do users think of Read Bean? Overall sentiment: positive **Pros** - 👍 Intuitive UI - 🚀 Effective learning experience - 💡 Relevant and engaging content - 🎉 Helps improve reading comprehension - 🌟 Better than Duolingo - 🤖 Helpful AI-powered features **Cons** - 🐛 Design issues on iPad - 🔍 Auto-correct issues when searching **Commonly reported bugs** - Login screen freezes - Incompatibility with older devices **Most requested features** - Full-screen mode for iPad - Ability to use reading assistance on any website ## Newest reviews (15 of 32) ### 5/5 — Best way to learn practical Chinese!! *2025-01-16, version 1.2* This app has been super helpful in improving my Chinese! The articles and stories feel perfectly customized to the right level of challenging — not too hard that the reading feels interrupted but also not too easy that I’m not learning many new words. The bite sized lessons are perfect for my terrible attention span and the flash card reviews really help me solidify my memory of new words! I love repeating the quick word chest review just to get even more practice in. Improving my Chinese significantly always feel too hard to achieve but this app gives me hope :D not to mention UI is stellar. What a great user experience!! Highly highly recommend!! ### 5/5 — The app to learn reading Chinese in AI time *2025-01-15, version 1.2* Chinese are hard to learn for thousands different words. This app makes Chinese learning easier and fun with instant translation and pronunciation. The flipping card reviews enhances the learning experience. The daily feeds let you not only learn and build up the Chinese vocabulary library but also follow the popular trends in Chinese world. Definitely recommend for people wanting to read Chinese and know China, its rich culture and history. ### 5/5 — The Duolingo Killa *2025-01-14, version 1.1* Reading is the best way to learn a language, and Read Bean supplies you with interesting Chinese passages at your reading level. Unlike Duolingo, you can learn Chinese in the context of news and stories in the world, which has helped improve my conversational proficiency. This app should have existed years ago. ### 5/5 — Cannot believe I have been missing this my whole life *2025-01-13, version 1.1* I’m an American Born Chinese heritage speaker, and I have been trying for years to find ways to improve my reading and vocab. I tried anki, watching dramas, Chinese social media, but honestly there is just no structure at all and I find it hard to really retain anything. Read Bean has totally changed that and has become an indispensable tool for me. In two months I’ve gone from 0 to reading hundreds of words 🙂‍↕️ ### 5/5 — great app ! *2025-01-11, version 1.0* love that i can improve my reading comprehension while learning about chinese history and cultural topics ### 5/5 — ❤️❤️❤️ *2025-01-11, version 1.0* really great for building vocab and learning to read short stories! would absolutely recommend for both beginner and intermediate mandarin learners :) ### 5/5 — BEST LANGUAGE APP *2025-01-11, version 1.0* Read bean is so amazing and unique in the way it teaches Chinese, and is definitely very effective as well. Not only do you learn Chinese (reading and comprehension), but you learn about relevant news as well. It makes the app a little addicting too, which is funny. I love you personalized you can make your learning experience, it truly separates this app from all other language learning apps I have used before. ### 5/5 — boosting my confidence in reading comprehension *2025-01-10, version 1.0* it’s one of my goals to be able to read more books in Chinese as well as online articles but finding good material to practice at the right difficulty level was hard… Read bean is so useful for giving me readings at the perfect level of challenging, and i wish i could use the reading assistance on any book/website! The curated articles are fun and attention grabbing. also it’s so cute and motivating, it makes me feel like im capable of reading harder texts than I thought ### 5/5 — BEST APP *2025-01-10, version 1.0* I really like how the app adjusts itself to my level. I’m a lazy person but it’s great at making learning Chinese a much more manageable task by giving new words at a fair pace with immediate access to definitions. All in all, it’s perfect 👌👌 ### 5/5 — Really Intuitive UI *2025-01-10, version 1.0* I like that the readings are tailored to my vocabulary level and that I can just tap words I don’t know to get their definitions. The app is a very natural way to learn new words that are actually used frequently. ### 5/5 — Love the content curation! *2025-01-10, version 1.0* The content is very up to date with the current news and super interesting as well! ### 5/5 — Great app to learn mandarin! *2025-01-10, version 1.0* This app has been amazing to level up my non existent mandarin reading skills. So helpful that I can read at my reading level and focus on learning characters that are more impactful to my current level. Also nice that everyone reads the same reading everyday regardless of level so I can still talk about articles with my friends who are at higher reading levels. I love the choice of articles as well - a great mix of learning more about Chinese history and culture and current news. And the read bean is so cute and helpful! ### 5/5 — I appreciate the relevant content a lot *2025-01-08, version 1.0* I have a hard time finding Chinese content that talks about the news / trends in a China, read bean has very up to date and topical content! I also love the reader interface so much, the definitions shows up instantly and I get so much help clarifying from the read bean AI tutor. ### 5/5 — Best Mandarin Learning App for reading that I’ve tried! *2025-01-08, version 1.0* This is honestly the best app I’ve used to learn to read in Mandarin. Today, I hit a 55 day streak in Read Bean, and my comprehension when reading as well as my vocabulary for all forms of communicating has made significant progress already. The language I’m learning is also practical language. A few native speaking friends have already commented on the improvement in my proficiency level since I started (and this is after already learning Mandarin over the past 6 years). The lessons have great variety in content, with a mix of relevant modern articles and cultural content. Not only am I learning but I am also enjoying reading along the way! Today, I have a 1862 day streak on Duolingo, but if you told me I had to make a choice, it would genuinely be to only use Read Bean moving forward. Lastly, the developers make updates that consistently improve both the experience and functionality of the app; the app was already innovative when I started using it, but it’s only continued to surprise and impress me as time has gone on. ~LK ### 5/5 — Learned chinese so quickly! *2025-01-08, version 1.0* I’ve tried so many methods for learning chinese, read bean is hands down the best method I ever tried. I’ve seen noticeable improvements and on top of that, was able to read/ learn things that were actually interesting, and not useless sentences that i will never use in real life. ## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated) ### 2/5 — Disappointed *2025-08-09, version 1.27* I was considering subscribing to this app because the AI conversations were amazing. Unless I’m missing something, the new update appears to have removed them entirely. I know it’s a costly feature, but without it there’s nothing particularly special about this app 😔 ### 3/5 — Good quality but money hungry *2025-10-05, version 1.1.2* All the stories are locked and you need to pay for them. They only give you ONE story which is a shame because this app has a lot of potential. ### 3/5 — Quite enjoyable but crashes all the time *2025-03-15, version 1.14* I’m trying this after using duo lingo for a year, and feeling like it’s lacking structure. This app seems to be teaching in a different way. It’s about reading, so there seems to be no pure listening. Which means I probably won’t understand people talking to me, but we shall see. Some bad points are that it seems to need constant internet, it doesn’t seem to cache anything on the device, like a dictionary and standard pronunciation, which is a small amount of data so it should be downloaded. Also it crashes all time time… like, every 15 minutes. ### 4/5 — Banners get in way! *2026-07-24, version 1.1.7* I downloaded this yesterday and I love it so far. My only issue is that the header and base banners get in the way of reading the text or moving to next page. There’s no way to scroll up or down. Very annoying and now I’m stuck because I can’t read the beginning of the text. ### 4/5 — Design issues *2025-05-12, version 1.18* Seems like a good idea for app 1) when you search for app it auto corrects to red bean. Not the same 2) is app designed for iPhone? I am using iPad mini and lots of design issues. Not full screen. Some pages are larger than the shrunken screen and you cannot scroll up or down on it. ### 5/5 — Need more grammar tutorials *2026-01-20, version 1.1.6* Very good app need more grammar tutorials ### 5/5 — Love *2025-08-11, version 1.27* Love the stories. Great for practicing reading and listening. ### 5/5 — quit duolingo for this *2025-07-19, version 1.25* i’ve finished duolingo chinese but feel like i haven’t learned much. i’m chinese american so i need to be able to express myself accurately with my family. Duolingo definitely covers the basics but Read Bean applies words to real life and allows me to learn vocabulary while learning about culture. ### 5/5 — Better than Duolingo *2025-05-01, version 1.16* I’ve tried using Duolingo for years but never connected with the content. Reading current articles and being able to explore words and phrases on my own has made learning more effective and engaging. Excited to see the app continue to develop and improve. 加油！ ### 5/5 — Good *2025-04-09, version 1.16* Nice UI ## Most praised reviews (5 highest-rated) ### 5/5 — great app! *2025-04-09, version 1.16* so interactive and helpful ### 5/5 — I loveee *2025-04-09, version 1.16* Im learning so much for my level!! So cool ### 5/5 — Best Chinese app for ABCs *2025-03-11, version 1.12* If you’re an ABC, this is the app for you. It just works and teaches you all the parts you want to learn. Nobody writes anymore, it’s all digital, so just learn to read with this app! ### 5/5 — most fun way to incorporate useful chinese into your routine!! *2025-01-23, version 1.5* Before Read Bean, I felt like I hit a Chinese learning wall. Watching c-dramas demands 5 hours, I straight up was not advanced enough for news articles, and Duolingo was teaching me useless sentences. As they say, the most important part of learning is staying consistent, and there is no other language app that encourages this consistency as Read Bean. The lessons are short enough where you can easily incorporate Chinese practice into your daily routine. Because it’s tailored to your HSK level, everything is just challenging enough. Lastly — like the other reviewers mentioned, the content is super engaging. Past topics have ranged from historical topics like Chinese maritime history, to playful topics like why Chinese consumers are captivated by the LABUBU toy series, to topical news like the TikTok ban. Through this relevant content, Read Bean allows you to learn not only the language, but also and more importantly, Chinese culture. That’s (usually?) why most people try to learn languages in the first place! I’m excited to see where this app will go - nothing is ever perfect, so it’s nice to see the developers releasing such frequent improvements. I’d never thought that I would look forward to practicing Chinese < 3 I’ve definitely noticed myself improving already and I’ve gained so much yap material with my cousins. ### 5/5 — AI-supercharged Chinese learning *2025-01-22, version 1.4* Excellent Chinese learning app with an ergonomic UI. AI-powered assistant has been incredibly helpful for learning vocab by actually understanding the shape of characters and the context behind them, rather than repeatedly drilling rote flashcard-based memorization. Stories are interesting and relevant, and spaced repetition for vocab review is helpful for solidifying vocabulary. --- *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 2026-08-29.*