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Chinese dictionary apps: Pleco vs Hanping Lite

You’re learning Chinese and looking for a Chinese dictionary app to install on your phone, but don’t want to spend any money. At least not before you know what you can get for free. That’s why for this comparison I only take free features of the two most downloaded dictionary apps into account: Pleco and Hanping Lite.

Pleco vs Hanping Lite: which app is better?

I won’t lie to you: I’m biased towards Pleco as I’ve been using that app as a student until this very day and it has never let me down. But I still want to give Hanping Lite a fair chance. The app keeps getting loads of positive reviews (as does Pleco) in the Google app store and seems to match the needs of its users.

Hanping Lite presents itself as the free and limited version of Hanping Pro. The latter can be purchased for little money (3.39 €, 15.02.2019) and has some features the lite version doesn’t have like AnkiDroid Flashcards support and the stroke order of 839 characters (instead of 463 characters in the lite version). Beware though that you don’t get the full functionality of the app once you buy the “pro version”. Many “pro features” still have to be purchased separately.

Pleco, on the other hand, is Pleco. There is no pro version to which you can upgrade. If you want additional functions, you can buy the premium features or add-ons, either one by one or in bundle packages.

Google app store – review score

The score of Pleco and Hanping Lite in the Google App Store is amazingly similar, although the amount of reviews differs significantly. Pleco (founded in 2000) has been installed over one million times on Android, Hanping Lite over half a million. Hanping actually isn’t the new kid on the block I thought it was. It dates back to 2009 and – needless to say – has been further developed improved ever since (as has Pleco).

Hanping Lite – the good and the bad

To keep this short, I’ll focus on those features which positively surprised me and then discuss the more disappointing things. Here I won’t go into the essentials that you expect to get from any dictionary app so much – like comfortable word search and accurate and up-to-date translations.

Positives

Three Hanping features I want to highlight here:

Negatives

Here’s what I found less satisfying and this bullet list is slightly longer:

Hanping Lite: “Upgrade to Pro”

If I add up the minus points, I hardly can avoid the conclusion that Hanping Lite is so downgraded for no other reason than “to lure” people into buying the pro version. Maybe it’s worth to spend a few bucks on the upgrade – that’s for another review to discuss – but this downgrading unfortunately does reduce my sympathy for the Hanping project: If the “lite version” doesn’t convince me, why should I want to invest in the “pro version”?

Pleco – the good and the bad

What about the Pleco Chinese dictionary and its free functions? How big is the difference between Pleco and Hanping Lite?

Positives

These Pleco features stand out:

Negatives

I really gave my best to come up with some negative aspects about Pleco’s free features as well. The only thing I can think of is a need for more example sentences for practice and reading. Even without paid upgrades like readers and such Pleco has to offer a lot.

Pleco beats Hanping Lite

To sum it all up: Pleco is my number one.

What strikes me is that both apps follow (almost) the same business model: a free version with paid add-ons. Yet with Pleco you’re not forced to purchase the upgraded version first to get the “real deal”, you simply pay for those extra features you want or you leave it. Pleco adopted this model from an early stage and it has served them well.

Where as with Hanping Lite you get an app that is significantly downgraded, pushing you into buying the pro version that’s only slightly better. Once you’ve upgraded, you’ll discover you still didn’t get the “real deal”. But as I mentioned previously: If the “lite version” didn’t convince me, why should I want to invest in the “pro version”?

You might come to different conclusions comparing Pleco and Hanping Pro while spending – let’s say – 40 bucks on each. If you’re serious about learning Chinese investing some money into certain apps is a very reasonable thing to do. But that’s a different comparison that has to wait for another review.

Which one do you prefer, Pleco or Hanping? Which features do you like the most? Which add-ons do you find the most useful? Please feel free to comment! : )

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