Revel by Pearson

Purchased the OB book recommended by my institute. The link is routed through the Pearson site with no option of purchasing the book other than the Revel-Pearson edition. So, that is what I purchased. Little did I know, that the eBook cannot be accessed offline. The app on iTunes is limited to downloads on iPad and iPhone only. It does not allow for an offline version on a MacBook. Spent 2 days trying to find a way through. Exhausted, finally gave up and contacted the support team. Two hours and several iterations later, the only thing that they said was, “Sorry, the eBook cannot be accessed offline on your MacBook, it just works on a mobile device.” Extremely disappointed and let down!

You would think they would have the technology to let you watch a video without going offscreen and losing video to where you can only hear it.

For how much I’m paying for these textbooks, I should be able to do the matching questions and look at graphs on my iPad. This thing never lets me look at anything that requires any interaction. Bogus.

I read someone else’s review that said the exact same way that I felt—and theirs was from 4 years ago so I don’t have faith the issues will be resolved. But the idea behind how this app works is awesome! I drive a lot so the read to me function is a life saver….when it works. Sometimes the play button won’t even do anything, sometimes it reads a whole chapter, sometimes I can’t get it to even go beyond the introduction. The web based version seems to work much more seamlessly. But man, I wish this app would!

I love how convenient this app is, but it takes forever to load your progress, keeps assignments locked that are not supposed to be locked, when I’m answering one of the Intex questions, it will kick me out of the app, and then won’t save my progress of what I was writing, and it’s just overall really slow. it takes two minutes to load one question.

I’ve had to use Pearson+ before using Pearson Revel, and I don’t know why this is but, when you play audio from a section of a textbook, it only has audio for that FIRST section and doesn’t have audio for the subsequent sections. So, even though I have “7 pages” of content to read in a section, only the 1st “page” has audio, the next 6 don’t; it just repeats the first section over again. Why? HOWEVER, if you’re using Pearson Revel on a computer/desktop, you can play audio for all the sections like you’d expect. ADDITIONALLY, the computer/desktop version of Revel has more audio speed settings to choose from (I prefer 1.25x speed and the mobile app for some reason doesn’t have that). This app just makes me wish Revel and + were compatible back and forth. Pearson+’s app doesn’t have any of these QOL issues.

App crashes when I attempt to access my course. Tried restarting my phone. Tried reinstalling. Tried switching from dark mode to light mode and back again, because who knows, it could very well be something that trivial. The support URL on App Store is a broken link. You can’t report the app in App Store. Running, scratch that, crashing on iPhone 15 Pro on latest software release. Guess I’ll keep using on PC.

There’s always a server connection issue

I really like the app and it’s very user friendly. But I always have issues taking test or quizzes from my phone. In the middle of a test it will lose connection with servers. Although I still have service and access on my laptop but the phone app stops working just for test and quizzes.

If this app worked half the time. The amount of times that I’ve been in the middle of videos, quizzes, or even tests and have been completely signed out of my account or have had a crash is insane. I can barely finish anything, IF I finish what I’m working on. Server errors are constant and more likely than the app working.