Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #512 in Software
• Brand: Mindscape
• Released on: 2006-09-15
• Platform: Windows XP

Manufacturer's Description:
First came Sudoku, the fiendishly addictive puzzle, and now Britain is about to be hit by another Japanese craze: the 10-minute mental work out. Mindscape's Brain Trainer will be the first PC game to bring brain training to office workers, laptop commuters and home PC users. This new game lets you have fun while improving your brain power and can help enhance your performance when it comes to everyday tasks. You can play a daily range of activities and review your progress in order to see whether or not you can improve your memory, concentration and logic skills. You'll never get bored as this game comes with an infinite number of questions.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
I have to agree with Paul's review below (08 August). I can't add much to his review other than I wish I had read it before I bought this. The scoring is poor and gives no indication as to where you should be aiming for given age etc. I haven't found this stretching and the verbal exercises of spelling and reading leave a lot to be desired. Totally disappointing.

Paula
I would have to agree with other users that this is not a particularly good product if you want to monitor any progress you are making.

The reading section is a waste of time as it only takes in to account the time it takes you to read a couple of paragraphs, but that is all.

The spelling section of the Daily Test does not give you words to spell so the score registers as a minus value meaning the progress graph is totally inaccurate.

If you are looking for something basic and light hearted, the practice section is OK for filling 10 minutes when you are bored - but if you are looking for something to really improve your mind and see real signs of improvement I would choose something else.

Shoddy product
I bought this in the hope that it would test me a bit, help me develop my mental arithmetic and give me some idea of how to train my mind.
Over all, the application looks and sounds a bit like you're running it on a handheld device you might pick up at a £1 shop. There is very little instruction, although it is all so basic that you don't really need it. There's nothing that gives you any idea of what level you should be aiming for, or how well you're doing - other than against yourself. Even then the scoring system doesn't seem to mean much.
What really shocked me about this product were the bugs/quirks, these are the ones I've found so far (having used this for two days):
1) The mathematical equations take no account of operator precedence and are always evaluated left to right, so 3 + 8 * 5 apparently equals 55 ((3 + 8) * 5), not 43 (3 + (8 * 5)). Not a good habit to get into.
2) On one 'daily test' I was given a spelling question, the question asked which version of the word was spelt correctly, but I was given no options to select. Oddly enough I didn't manage to score at all with that one.
3) There really is a reading test that just asks you to click 'done' when you've finished reading. How well am I supposed to understand the text? Would a few questions about what I'd read be asking too much?

In conclusion, this really looks as if it could have been developed by a class of primary school children. Don't waste your money, read a book and do some sums in your head instead... or just go online and put the term 'IQ test' in a search engine, you'll get it all for free.