Summer sale for Envision AI - up to 50 Percent off the subscription plans

By Ben Hofer, 12 July, 2020

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hello to the AppleVis community,
there's good news for everyone not having a subscpription for Envision AI. As usual during summer time, Envision offers its subscription plans at reduced rates. I personally use the app on a daily basis and I'm really surprised by its accuracy. That's also the main reason I'm using this app and not Seeing AI or something else. Also, document reading works really well, and so I have everything in one app working great.
- For monthly subscription, you can get 30% off the first month now
- For the annual plan, you can get 50% off the first year
- For the lifetime subscription (buying the app) you can get 20% off
Here's the link to the sale, available on Envision's website: https://bit.ly/3izKAjn
In my opinion, it's really worth trying.

And if you also use Android for some reason, it's also available there.

Options

Comments

By mendi on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

I'm sad that the lifetime subscription is not 50% off, but I definitely still believe this app is well worth the money! It is one of the best reading apps I have found! I use it almost daily for reading directions, labels on items, etc.

By Blind I Am on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

With the $10 annual price now becoming a regular promotion, that lifetime plan looks rather uninviting, as I would have to get to year 9 of using the app before it started to save me money. And, that's a mighty long time in the world of iOS apps.

By Remy on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

I've tried a large number of the OCR apps on offer, starting with the KNFB reader which I wish I could purge from my bank account since I never, ever use it. Envision is by far the best in terms of usability and accuracy. I don't use the scene description or object finding, but I use magnification and OCR and they are great. I got the Lifetime subscription back when it was actually 50% off and it was a very good investment. WIth it not being that cheep though I would be hesitant to go that route, especially with Voice Dream scanner which is likewise pretty decent, as is Seeing AI. Only thing VOice Dream can't do is handwriting, which is unfortunate.

also lucked out and got the lifetime membership while it was 50% off and am glad. Sadly, when trying to use the short text feature in Seeing AI versus Envision, I find that Seeing AI just doesn't cut it. Same with document reader. Still though, I do agree that perhaps one of the other plans might be a better bet since they didn't discount the lifetime plan this time around.

You're right. Especially text recognition is far more accurate in Envision! And handwriting has been integrated in the main text features and also works great.
For Seeing AI, we should keep in mind that it's rather a social/PR project from Microsoft. Its development is of course not their priority!

By Soupy on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

Currently wondering why I seem to be the only one underwhelmed by this app and feeling like I have just wasted $10.

The live text reading tool has been woefully poor for my main use case of quickly identifying food products when cooking. Seeing AI will typically tell me all that I need to know instantly, whereas with Envision it typically takes a minute of twisting and turning of jars or packets before it will speak anything. Even then it's rarely what I actually want to know... what is this???

The barcode scanner nearly always fails to have the barcode in its database.

The “Envision It” option in the Share Sheet simply sits on the “processing” message.

And for scanning documents, there is simply no comparison with Voice Dream Scanner, which is fast and reliable.

All of this leaves me wondering what task I am going to find Envision the best tool for on my iPhone in the coming year.

By Remy on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

Do you have the latest version? I recall having the processing issue when envisioning something some time ago, but it has since been resolved. Quick text is a little awkward, but I don't find it any more so than with Seeing AI. I actually think I like Envision better for that because yolu can toggle it on and off. I find with both if you hold the image while quick text is reading it often resets itself and starts reading again. I find if you let it start reading and immediately move the image away from any tesxt you'll get everything. All in all I find quick text on both apps awkward. I love the idea. As for bar codes, I can't speak to that. It seems like with either app I strike out on products.

By Ben Hofer on Wednesday, August 5, 2020 - 23:57

Sad that you feel like wasting the $10. For me, this is the best one we currently have out there for iOS. When it comes to food packaging, try to set "offline text" to off in the help menu. This processes the OCR in the cloud which makes it (at least in my case) a lot more accurate than Seeing AI. What I also can do with Envision is reading displays; this makes for instance my coffee machine completely accessible (of course with haptic buttons).
Also, I often managed to read things out on the streets (signs on stores or at train stations) which I wasn't really able to do with Seeing AI.
And interesting that you use the Voicedream Scanner. Text recognition seems very good but I haven't managed to hold the phone so that the edges are detected and the picture is taken automatically which I can do quite easily by holding the phone steadily over the document with Envision.
Also really cool for me is the PDF importing, I created a Siri shortcut to convert any document / website to PDF and auto open the dialogue in Envision so that you can OCR inaccessible content.