NCS+ vs H&dM AR
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
NCS+
Discover and select the perfect colors for your design projects with a comprehensive system. Explore color themes, match surfaces using a color reader, and combine colors based on similarity. Save, share, and inspire with your favorite palettes.
- Explore standardized NCS colors
- Search colors by notation or filters
- Match surfaces with color reader
- Navigate NCS color space
- Combine colors based on similarity
- Save and share color mood boards
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Find the right colour for your next project. NCS+ helps you to succeed in any colour design. With NCS - Natural Colour System®©, developed by world-renowned colour experts, it has never been easier to find the right colour for your project. EXPLORE COLOUR THEMES In NCS+, you have access to all of the standardized NCS colours, and can explore all of the NCS Colour products, including Trend collections, the NCS Index, NCS Exterior and NCS Inspire. FIND YOUR COLOUR Search for colours in the new and innovative search panel, either through an NCS Notation (or parts of it) or filter for colours based on their hue and/or nuance. MATCH A SURFACE Using the built-in support for the Colourpin II / SE / PRO colour readers, you can easily scan any surface and find the closest matching NCS colour with the click of a button. You can also see how much the scanned surface differs from the closest matching colours with the built-in rating function and its corresponding delta E 2000 value. NAVIGATE THE NCS COLOUR SPACE The new and improved NCS Navigator brings unparallelled ease of navigating in the NCS System, through the NCS Circle selecting the prefered hue, and the NCS Triangle to select the correct nuance. The innovative beehive allows you to fine-tune your selection by modifying the selected colour in either chromaticness, blackness or whiteness, giving you exactly the colour you want. COMBINE COLOURS Through the smartness of the NCS System, you can combine colours of your choice based on colour similarities such as nuance-, hue-, blackness-, chromaticness-, whiteness and NCS lightness similarity. Basing your combination colours on these properties are one of the most certain ways of creating colour combinations that harmonize. COLOUR SAMPLE REFERENCES With unprecedented on-screen colour accuracy, you can now bring up any standard NCS colour on your mobile device. On each colour, you can also find out in which collections they are available, buy a physical sample in different sizes from the NCS Colour web shop or any NCS reseller as well as find translation values into other systems such as RGB, HEX, CMYK and Lab values. SAVE, SHARE AND INSPIRE Save your favourite colours into mood boards, upload images or take photos of your project to provide addional context to the board. You can then share the boards with friends or colleagues to inspire and collaborate.
H&dM AR
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The H&dM AR app has been developed by Herzog & de Meuron for the 2023 exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts, London. There are 12 AR experiences linked to objects, prototypes and drawings in the exhibition. Scan the AR triggers using the app to activate the experiences.
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is ads: H&dM AR at none against NCS+'s shown. H&dM AR also leads on update cadence (every 4 days vs every 9 days) and iOS requirement (12.0 vs 15.1). On price, in-app purchases and device support there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
NCS+ ships an update every 9 days, H&dM AR every 4 days. The most recent releases landed on October 29, 2026 and October 27, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | NCS+ | H&dM AR |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Rating | 3.3 (6 ratings) — better | — |
| Positive reviews | 33.3% of reviews | — |
| Number of ratings | 6 — better | — |
| Update frequency | Every 9 days | Every 4 days — better |
| Ads | Yes | No — better |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Monetization | Ad-supported | — |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod | iPhone, iPad, iPod |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 | 12.0 — better |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 91 MB | 408 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | NCS Colour AB | Herzog & de Meuron Basel Ltd. |
In-app purchases
NCS+
No in-app purchases
H&dM AR
No in-app purchases









