Instapaper Pro Review: Endless Reading

With the release of the iPad over the past weeks, it is important to look back at one of my most used iPhone applications, Instapaper Pro, for this app shines on Apple’s new mobile device. Instapaper (both the free 2.0 and Instapaper Pro) provides a wonderful reader application blessed by simplicity and ease of use. At $5.00, Instapaper almost justifies the price of the iPad all by itself, as the amount of free reading it offers is endless. That said it remains an invaluable resource for iPhone users as well.

Each day many scan the newspapers and magazines around the internet to find articles, while of interest, that are just too long to read at work. Instapaper solves this problem by allowing one click reformatted articles sent directly to your iPhone or iPad for later reading. Blog posts with multiple comments are also reformatted to each device seamlessly. While a number of apps provide reader solutions, Instapaper does it better and quicker, allowing you to catch up on your reading on the subway, in bed, or anywhere else you can find a moment or two.

With magazines such as The New Yorker, and The Atlantic providing full archived stories; Instapaper compresses them and makes later reading a pleasure in a manner unseen by other reader applications. I’m not a fan of browsing on Safari for iPhone, and while possible to feed Instapaper from the iPhone, Instapaper allows the user to use the larger screen of the desktop to find your daily reading and transfer it to the iPhone and iPad in one click.

Simply download Instapaper from the App Store and then visit their website at Instapaper.com on your desktop or laptop. Within minutes you can create your account with a free sign-up. Once this is finished simply drag the provided “read later” bookmarklet into your browser of choice. You can quickly install a similar bookmark directly into Safari on the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch as well. Once this is finished simply browse the web and whenever you wish to read a story later on your mobile device click “read later” on your browser.

What happens next is the heart of the application. Each time you open Instapaper, all your selected articles are reformatted to the device you are using. Stripping the page of all Flash, advertising, and clutter is done quickly and transferred to your device as long as you are connected to the internet by wifi, Edge, or a 3G network.

There are few drawbacks but they are worth mentioning, they include: any subscriber based content must be signed into manually, also Instapaper cannot view multiple page articles without your assistance. Simply look for a printer friendly or single page option before sending the article to Instapaper. Instapaper is not really designed as a heavy RSS users program but does include quite a bit of functionality.

The free version is a must for all iPhone users but the Pro version includes a huge array of features to warrant its $5.00 price tag. These include:

• Automatic Background Updating
• Folders
• Starred User and Feed Folders
• Tilt Scrolling
• Adjustable Fonts and Text Size
• Email any Link
• Send Links via Tumblr and Twitter
• In-App Offline Dictionary
• In-app browser with fast Text mode
• 250 Article Capacity (Versus 10 in the free version)

All in all Instapaper is a suberb application and one of the many improved by the addition of the iPad to the family of  Apple mobile solutions.

5 out of 5 stars.

Instapaper Pro is a universal binary app and works on both your iPhone and iPad.  Instapaper Pro is available at the App Store for $4.99 at the time of the review.  (App Store Link)