@Voice Premium License

Review by eFreeware

The @Voice Premium License is not a reader in itself. It is a small companion app from Hyperionics Technology that you install alongside @Voice Aloud Reader, and its job is to switch on the paid tier of that main program. If you already use the reader and want the extra features, this is the purchase that adds them.

The appeal is straightforward. A one-time payment of $14.99 unlocks the premium features of the reader. The developer also points out that without advertising, less battery and data transfer are used, which matters if you listen for long stretches on a phone.

There is a catch in the setup, and the developer is upfront about it: this license app has to be installed from Google Play after you buy it, and the main @Voice Aloud Reader needs to be on the device already.

A companion for regular listeners

This is a purchase for people who have settled on @Voice Aloud Reader as their way of listening to articles, documents or ebooks and who are bothered by the interruptions. If the reader is only an occasional tool for you, the advertising may not register enough to justify the cost.

The case is stronger for anyone who listens in long sessions, where a full-screen ad between chapters breaks the flow, or who reads on a metered connection and would rather not spend data on ad loads. The developer's claim that removing ads also saves battery is the kind of thing that matters most to people who keep the reader running in the background.

It also suits users who want the recording side of the main app to work differently. That is the second reason to buy, and it is covered below.

What the license turns on

The headline change is that the main reader no longer shows advertising. According to the developer, that also trims battery use and data transfer, since the app is no longer fetching and displaying those ads.

Beyond that, the license enables features that the free version of the reader does not offer. The first is continuous recording: when you record to sound files, the licensed version can keep going automatically through an entire reading list or ebook, while the free version stops after each article or each chapter.

That difference is significant if you build up a queue of items and want a single audio file or an uninterrupted recording session rather than one stop-start pass per item. It is the sort of feature that only matters to a subset of users, but for those users it is the reason to upgrade.

The developer notes that further premium features may be added over time, so the license is positioned as an ongoing upgrade rather than a fixed set of extras.

Speech replacements with tags

The other named extra concerns how the reader pronounces words. Under the Settings menu, in the Edit speech area, the licensed app lets you organize speech replacements with tags.

In practice that means you can keep separate sets of replacements for different material, such as one set tuned for scientific articles and another for fiction, and switch between them using the tags rather than maintaining a single list that has to serve everything.

Anyone who listens to technical writing will recognize the problem this solves: pronunciation rules that help with jargon often sound wrong in a novel, and vice versa. Being able to keep the two apart is a small but real convenience, and it is the kind of feature that is easy to overlook until you need it.

The price and what it buys

The license costs $14.99 as a one-time purchase. There are no in-app purchases attached to it, and the license app itself carries no advertising.

What that payment buys is the extra features described above. It is not a subscription, and there is no recurring charge.

One practical point: the license app must be installed from Google Play for the license to register correctly, and the main reader has to be present on the device first. Install the license, close the reader from its menu, then open it again.

Alternatives to weigh

The obvious comparison is simply to keep using the free version of @Voice Aloud Reader. That costs nothing, and for light use it may be entirely reasonable.

The other comparison is to a different text-to-speech app altogether. A dedicated paid reader would bundle its own features and its own interface, whereas this license only makes sense if you have already decided that the @Voice reader is the one you want to keep.

There is also the question of whether the specific extras matter to you. If continuous recording and tagged speech replacements are features you would never touch, then you are paying mainly for an ad-free experience, and that is a judgment only you can make.

A reasonable upgrade for committed readers

At $14.99 with no recurring charge, the @Voice Premium License is a sensible purchase for anyone who uses the main reader often enough that advertising has become an irritation. The combination of an ad-free interface and the extra recording and speech-replacement options gives the payment something to stand on beyond simple ad removal.

It is less compelling for casual users, and it is worth remembering that it does nothing on its own. The main reader has to be installed first, and the license has to come from Google Play for it to take effect. If those conditions are met and you already rely on the reader, this is a straightforward way to improve it.

The app has been available since January 2013 and carries a 4.4 average from more than 3,600 ratings, with over 100,000 installs, which suggests a settled product rather than a novelty. The most recent update addressed a brief block in the main app while the license was being checked, a small fix that points to continued attention to the licensing mechanism itself.

What's new in version 2.1.4

Ver. 2.1.4 * Fix: the main @Voice app was blocked for 3 seconds when license was checked.