Readlax: Brain Games

What is Readlax?

Readlax is a versatile and powerful app for people who want to learn faster and more effectively. The application is rich with features that enable you to improve concentration, boost memory, reduce stress, enhance learning capacity, improve empathy and expand upon your current vocabulary using the apps unique games and teaching style.

Readlax: Brain Games is free initially on a trial basis and offers further plans as a monthly or lifetime subscription. Readlax: Brain Games is free from in-app adverts and is suitable for ages 4 and above according to the Appstore and is rated PEGI 3 via Google Play.

The app provides 3 main methods to improve your learning.

• Speed Reading Games – These are games and exercises that train your brain to enhance and speed up your reading. Memory is crucial when being able to recognise letters and words, and how this that can be structured in within comprehension at pace.
• Reading books and News Article – the more you read, the more words you are exposed to. Reading different genres and subject content can only but improve your vocabulary and reading speed.
• Testing your reading speed and comprehension – In-app tests will determine your speed of reading and comprehension determining how this can be improved.

The application requires an email account which is very easy to set up. Once your account has been created you can use the application via a mobile device or tablet. For this review, we will focus on the use of the application on a mobile device. 

The Home screen displays the following options:

Lower screen Menu: 

• Dashboard analysis – Here the user can access vital information regarding their reading statistics. These include: workout calendar, reading calendar, your reading speed, Badges earnt, reading speeds compared to age, further analytics and much more. Badges include – Fan – 5 plus days from registration. Gamer – Completion of your first game. Reader – Completion of the first phase for reading. 
• Reading Icon – A selection of News articles from around the world including a book section with a selection of extracts from best-selling business books to selfhelp Mini books. These also include reading times for each text, several different languages and bookmark options. 
• Chequered Flag Icon – This gives the user access to a Reading test. Read the text as you normally would then answer a quiz at the end based on the reading. 
• The ellipsis icon – Here the user can find access to their account, chosen language (7 different languages), their subscription plan and Log Out option.

Upper screen Menu:

• Question Icon – This gives the user access to ask a question via messenger to the Readlax team.
• Trophy Icon – This gives the user access to their Karma score.
• Account Icon – This gives the user access to their account information such as Billing information, trial time, privacy policy and terms of use for the application.

It is noted that the application works in both portrait and landscape mode on a mobile device.

As a new user, we started the application with a reading test to see what reading proficiency we already had. Pressing the Chequered Flag icon and starting the test we were shown a text about how aircraft take off and fly. Once the text had been read we completed some questions to work out our test score. The reading score is displayed in the Dashboard section of the application: Our score of 450 words per minute was 75% faster than the average adult, which was surprising although considerably less than a college professor. Of course, continued use of the application and reading will make the reading score improve over time.

Brain Training started with a Memory Grid. Here the application has some options from ‘How to play’ to ‘choosing a Hard Game’ mode all presented in a clear and intuitive interface. Positions of randomly coloured blocks will appear within the grid and then disappear. The user needs to remember the position of the blocks. This is ideal for memory testing and ideal for those with good visual memory skills. The ‘Hard Game’ option increases the size of the grid considerably.

The number and shapes memory game invite the user to remember not only the shape shown but also the number of the left and right. This improves peripheral vision.

The letter grid invites the user to once again focus on letters in their peripheral vision to complete the alphabet in sequence. A karma score is shown based on speed.

The ‘bigram’ letter grid invites the user to once again focus on letters in their peripheral vision to complete the bigram (a combination of two letters). A karma score is shown based on speed.

The ‘trigram’ letter grid invites the user to once again focus on letters in their peripheral vision to complete the trigram (a combination of three letters). A karma score is shown based on speed.

Number grid- Red and Black – Here the user is asked to focus on the centre of the grid and find black numbers in ascending order and red numbers in descending order. We found this quite challenging but great fun!

Once the Brain workout has been complete the user can view their Karma score in the Dashboard Dial section along with daily analytics and badges achieved.

Within the Dashboard icon, there are also two calendars. Both calendars will track workouts and reading sessions. News sessions can be filtered by country to show articles that relate to your location and language. Once an article has been chosen the rate of words per minute can be altered at the bottom. Once the start button has been pressed the words are highlighted within the article. Reading the article at an increased rate to your recommended words per minute will make the article very tough to read and may well be too fast for you. However, this is a great way to train your brain to read faster. 

Is Readlax free?

Readlax is available for free to download on iOS and Android devices.

How much does Readlax: Brain Games cost?

Readlax is free to download! There is an option for a monthly subscription or to purchase the application for a lifetime.

Is Readlax: Brain Games safe to use?

Yes. The application does require an account and email to start with. Parental controls are not required as there are no in-app purchases. The developers ensure everything you view is age-appropriate and secure.

Is Readlax: Brain Games app easy to use?

The Readlax: Brain Games is an incredibly in-depth application and the menu systems and features are very easy to navigate. The application has a very clean look to the icons and menus. At no point does the screen look over cluttered. The news articles and books are well presented and lovely to read.

How will parents benefit?

Readlax: Brain Games is a great way to get your family reading. Children today read less frequently than any previous generation and enjoy reading less than young people did in the past, according to new research. This is ideal for training your brain to read faster, improve your vocabulary and find interested and inspiring digital content.

How will teachers benefit?

Readlax: Brain Games is a great way to get your class reading or improve your reading as a teacher. Children could be tested for reading speeds and the data can be used to create a bespoke program for those weaker students. It can also promote interesting discussion in the classroom using the digital content along with classroom competition for who can read the fastest. Younger children will enjoy the badges they can earn. How will the user benefit? It’s great fun! Even after a day’s use, our reading speed improved. We tested our reading at several stages throughout the week and could see a remarked improvement. Many of our users found the application a delight to use and kept on discovering content through the digital news feeds.

What we love about the Readlax: Brain Games app 

The developers have taken a very valuable life skill and created a very easy to use application with a variety of features. We love the fact that it encourages children, students and adults to read a variety of topics as well as suggested topics that they may not have discovered before. We like the differentiation with the option to choose a Hard game for the Brain Training exercises which will stretch the brightest of children. Sometimes the simplest of designed applications are often the most effective.

What the Readlax: Brain Games app could improve on

Readlax: Brain Games is an excellent application and there is a limited amount of improvements that can be made, however, we have suggested the following: The developers might consider that when calculating the reading test score there might be some advantage for those who may have prior knowledge of the topic within the given text.

The developers might consider enabling the text size to be increased within the application for those with visual impairments or the elderly. The developers might consider enabling the text size to be shown on a pastel background to support those with dyslexia. The developers might consider multiple accounts for a teacher and their students to monitor reading test scores and competition.

We noted that once the brain game Memory grid has been completed the option for a ‘Hard Game’ is still given although this cannot be played as the previous simple game has been completed. When completing tasks for peripheral vision is would be helpful if the letter or score was called out rather than having the eye having to refer to the top of the screen. This would enable the user to focus on the centre of the game more. This could also help those who are hard of hearing if the text was audible.

We were unsure how the Karma points were calculated and what they might stand or account for? What is a good or bad Karma score? The application is listed as an app suitable for over the age of 4. We are unsure of the content of the app is age-appropriate or if the application is tailored to a particular age of a user? We understand that reading is an essential life skill and the application would be suitable for many, however, we were unsure if the content would be suitable for much younger uses.

When articles were highlighted in green using the chosen word per minute the highlighted words did not flow very well and often jumped between sentences. We were unsure whether this is deliberate to increase reading speed? Our users found this quite frustrating.

Overall Rating of the application

Readlax: Brain Games is by far one of the best speed reading and brain training apps we have seen. Not only does it come with a user-friendly platform and a variety of features the application encourages you to read and improve your vocabulary as well as keeping your brain super sharp. Readlax: Brain Games comes highly recommended by The EducationalAppStore.com

Further Reading

Brain Games for Kids

You can download Readlax: Brain Games on your iOS or Android devices from the app stores. Download the Readlax: Brain Games app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.