Logos 10 Review
It’s here, everyone! Logos 10!
First, let me get the formalities out of the way. Once again, as I have said before, I am not an employee of Faithlife / Logos, but I do make a small commission when people use my links to make purchases. In exchange for my review, I was given an advance copy of the Logos 10: Messianic Jewish Gold base package in order to provide context for my review. But let me say: the review is my own personal and honest opinion, and the review would be the same whether I was granted an early copy or not (albeit, having an early copy did give me the ability to have this review ready to go on launch day, rather than being a few weeks behind).
Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s continue. In my review of Logos 9, I noted some of the top features of Logos in general. My review covered some of the basic functionality and top tools of the platform, but it wasn’t necessarily specific to Logos 9. So for this review, I won’t go more in-depth on the things that will persist from 9 to 10. You can always go read my review of L9 to get caught up on those, and in fact, I encourage you to do so if you’re a new user.
In this review, I want to instead highlight what’s new in Logos 10. This should help to supplement – rather than replace – my L9 review, so once again, to get a fuller picture, check it out before coming back to this review. Now, moving on.
First, let me get the formalities out of the way. Once again, as I have said before, I am not an employee of Faithlife / Logos, but I do make a small commission when people use my links to make purchases. In exchange for my review, I was given an advance copy of the Logos 10: Messianic Jewish Gold base package in order to provide context for my review. But let me say: the review is my own personal and honest opinion, and the review would be the same whether I was granted an early copy or not (albeit, having an early copy did give me the ability to have this review ready to go on launch day, rather than being a few weeks behind).
Okay, so now that that’s out of the way, let’s continue. In my review of Logos 9, I noted some of the top features of Logos in general. My review covered some of the basic functionality and top tools of the platform, but it wasn’t necessarily specific to Logos 9. So for this review, I won’t go more in-depth on the things that will persist from 9 to 10. You can always go read my review of L9 to get caught up on those, and in fact, I encourage you to do so if you’re a new user.
In this review, I want to instead highlight what’s new in Logos 10. This should help to supplement – rather than replace – my L9 review, so once again, to get a fuller picture, check it out before coming back to this review. Now, moving on.
The Good
First, the good. The new L10 engine runs very smoothly. This is essentially the core of the software running in the background. It runs quickly and I have had very few issues worth noting with it on my system. For the sake of transparency, I have a 2022-model Alienware R17 laptop, with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, running Windows 11. However, my personal benchmarks are given in the graph below of Logos 9 to 10. (The legend below will explain the nomenclature). Please note: these are somewhat negligible differences since my system is as fast as it is, but I wanted to go ahead and point it out anyway with something a bit more data-driven than just "new version go fast!"
Another upgrade has been the addition of new datasets, which power multiple resources but are generally most useful in the Factbook. Upgrades to the Church History dataset means you get more and better results when reading about specific themes or people in Church History. The Timeline feature has also been updated and is now easier to use while showing more useful information. Additionally, little Factbook cards / snippets appear in the search results which can help quickly locate an answer when searching for a specific question.
First, the good. The new L10 engine runs very smoothly. This is essentially the core of the software running in the background. It runs quickly and I have had very few issues worth noting with it on my system. For the sake of transparency, I have a 2022-model Alienware R17 laptop, with 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD, running Windows 11. However, my personal benchmarks are given in the graph below of Logos 9 to 10. (The legend below will explain the nomenclature). Please note: these are somewhat negligible differences since my system is as fast as it is, but I wanted to go ahead and point it out anyway with something a bit more data-driven than just "new version go fast!"
Another upgrade has been the addition of new datasets, which power multiple resources but are generally most useful in the Factbook. Upgrades to the Church History dataset means you get more and better results when reading about specific themes or people in Church History. The Timeline feature has also been updated and is now easier to use while showing more useful information. Additionally, little Factbook cards / snippets appear in the search results which can help quickly locate an answer when searching for a specific question.
L/O: Layout
Fb: Factbook search
"": Search terms using the standard search
PG: Passage Guides
EG: Exegetical Guide
Fb: Factbook search
"": Search terms using the standard search
PG: Passage Guides
EG: Exegetical Guide
The Better
Next up, for those that are not techies – and/or those that just don’t really care about system impact – we have a couple more interesting updates.
First, you can reduce the footprint of the tool bar. You can of course leave it on top as it has been; but now you can move it to the side, and actually have it collapse. This makes for more space available for resources on-screen, which is especially nice if you have a single monitor like an older PC or a laptop.
Additionally, Logos has really been working to prioritize Scripture above and beyond other resources and tools. There is now a dedicated Bible button, which will directly open your preferred translation. Now if you’re like me and you have your top Bibles already favorited and added as shortcuts, it may not be that big of a deal, but it is nice to see.
Beyond this, they have been able to massively expand on both the indexing and searching capabilities of Logos. This means searching will now be easier and can be completed without needing to employ some of the difficult syntax. As an example, if you wanted to see the places where Yeshua spoke about Moses, you would enter the following as your search: <Person Moses> WITHIN {Speaker <Person Jesus>}. This cumbersome syntax has been reduced for L10 down to person:Moses IN speaker:Jesus. Along with an upgraded intellisense (think auto-complete), this means searching your library has gotten a lot easier, especially for new users.
I mentioned that searching and indexing has improved, and the latter also comes into play not only for helping to return more relevant search results, but also for tagging all kinds of new information. The same AI sort of programming that was introduced to help auto-complete and return better search results has also added tons of new dynamic tags in your resources, which serves to make your existing resources even more useful.
The search improvements aren’t exclusive to Logos desktop, either. The mobile app now has improved search as well, including – finally! – fuzzy search results. Honestly, this has been the major thing that has kept me using BibleHub while on my smartphone, since searching on mobile has often provided less than stellar results. Now, I feel I can co9nfidently get what I want quickly from within the mobile app.
Logos is also adding a certain amount of in-suite language translation, powered by Google Translate, for Gold and higher. This means if you have a resource in a language you don’t know (whether Latin, German, etc.), you can generate dynamic translations of it in a moment, right inside Logos. Since this is a new sort of trial area for Logos, there is a limit on how much can be translated per month, and this is a feature that may see additional limits in the future. Maybe it incurs an added cost, maybe it gets limited to a certain time, we’re not sure yet.
Next up, for those that are not techies – and/or those that just don’t really care about system impact – we have a couple more interesting updates.
First, you can reduce the footprint of the tool bar. You can of course leave it on top as it has been; but now you can move it to the side, and actually have it collapse. This makes for more space available for resources on-screen, which is especially nice if you have a single monitor like an older PC or a laptop.
Additionally, Logos has really been working to prioritize Scripture above and beyond other resources and tools. There is now a dedicated Bible button, which will directly open your preferred translation. Now if you’re like me and you have your top Bibles already favorited and added as shortcuts, it may not be that big of a deal, but it is nice to see.
Beyond this, they have been able to massively expand on both the indexing and searching capabilities of Logos. This means searching will now be easier and can be completed without needing to employ some of the difficult syntax. As an example, if you wanted to see the places where Yeshua spoke about Moses, you would enter the following as your search: <Person Moses> WITHIN {Speaker <Person Jesus>}. This cumbersome syntax has been reduced for L10 down to person:Moses IN speaker:Jesus. Along with an upgraded intellisense (think auto-complete), this means searching your library has gotten a lot easier, especially for new users.
I mentioned that searching and indexing has improved, and the latter also comes into play not only for helping to return more relevant search results, but also for tagging all kinds of new information. The same AI sort of programming that was introduced to help auto-complete and return better search results has also added tons of new dynamic tags in your resources, which serves to make your existing resources even more useful.
The search improvements aren’t exclusive to Logos desktop, either. The mobile app now has improved search as well, including – finally! – fuzzy search results. Honestly, this has been the major thing that has kept me using BibleHub while on my smartphone, since searching on mobile has often provided less than stellar results. Now, I feel I can co9nfidently get what I want quickly from within the mobile app.
Logos is also adding a certain amount of in-suite language translation, powered by Google Translate, for Gold and higher. This means if you have a resource in a language you don’t know (whether Latin, German, etc.), you can generate dynamic translations of it in a moment, right inside Logos. Since this is a new sort of trial area for Logos, there is a limit on how much can be translated per month, and this is a feature that may see additional limits in the future. Maybe it incurs an added cost, maybe it gets limited to a certain time, we’re not sure yet.
The Best
So these next two features I am totally stoked about.
First off, we have a brand new feature – not something merely being improved upon. Now don’t get me wrong, we all love to see steady improvements to the tools we already have. But this one is great. If you’re like me, you often find yourself ready to buy a new book but lamenting the fact that if you buy it in print (which, let’s be real, many of us still prefer), you must also buy it on Logos or else lose out on the ability to search it and have it included in your Logos resources for reference purposes. We would all love a “free digital version” of a print book we have but let’s be real: licensing agreements surely won’t let that happen. This new feature, however, should be considered the next best thing. It’s call Print Library Catalog, and is only available for L10 gold and above. It lets you manually add all the print books you have (provided there is a Logos digital edition of it) to your library. This will also include indexing for the book. What does this mean in practice? Allow me to offer a practical example.
Suppose you’re researching about the Pharisees, and you specifically want to dig into more about their popularity among the people. In my case, I own the print edition of E. P. Sanders’ book, “Judaism: Practice and Belief.” I do not own the Logos edition of the book. However, since I added the print book to my library, then when I search for the popularity of the pharisees among the people, one of the suggestions comes from this very resource. It gives me the page number to find the reference, even. Then I can look it up in my print book. It will also link to the Logos edition if I wanted to purchase a Logos copy of it.
To sweeten the deal, the upgraded Logos mobile app also includes a barcode / ISBN scanner, which will let you quickly scan the back of your books and automatically add them to your library, which saves time entering information manually. This is a great way to get more mileage out of your print library, and I love it!
Next, my other new favorite feature and probably the one I have been waiting for the longest. Logos 10 Bronze and above has a new audio (read aloud, text-to-speech) mode. This means you can listen to virtually any book you own being read. With the recent improvements in natural-sounding voices on mobile devices (like Enhanced and Premium voices on iOS), this means you can hear your books as well as read them. Or, if you’re like me, listen to your books read to you like an audiobook on your drive to work. To be sure, there is still some improvement in making the voices continually sound more natural, but these are things already in the works that, no doubt, will continue to get better and better.
The mobile app has gotten a bit of a facelift itself and I love it. I think the interface is smoother and more useful and will allow more users to get more out of it.
But now we come to my airing of grievances and complaints.
So these next two features I am totally stoked about.
First off, we have a brand new feature – not something merely being improved upon. Now don’t get me wrong, we all love to see steady improvements to the tools we already have. But this one is great. If you’re like me, you often find yourself ready to buy a new book but lamenting the fact that if you buy it in print (which, let’s be real, many of us still prefer), you must also buy it on Logos or else lose out on the ability to search it and have it included in your Logos resources for reference purposes. We would all love a “free digital version” of a print book we have but let’s be real: licensing agreements surely won’t let that happen. This new feature, however, should be considered the next best thing. It’s call Print Library Catalog, and is only available for L10 gold and above. It lets you manually add all the print books you have (provided there is a Logos digital edition of it) to your library. This will also include indexing for the book. What does this mean in practice? Allow me to offer a practical example.
Suppose you’re researching about the Pharisees, and you specifically want to dig into more about their popularity among the people. In my case, I own the print edition of E. P. Sanders’ book, “Judaism: Practice and Belief.” I do not own the Logos edition of the book. However, since I added the print book to my library, then when I search for the popularity of the pharisees among the people, one of the suggestions comes from this very resource. It gives me the page number to find the reference, even. Then I can look it up in my print book. It will also link to the Logos edition if I wanted to purchase a Logos copy of it.
To sweeten the deal, the upgraded Logos mobile app also includes a barcode / ISBN scanner, which will let you quickly scan the back of your books and automatically add them to your library, which saves time entering information manually. This is a great way to get more mileage out of your print library, and I love it!
Next, my other new favorite feature and probably the one I have been waiting for the longest. Logos 10 Bronze and above has a new audio (read aloud, text-to-speech) mode. This means you can listen to virtually any book you own being read. With the recent improvements in natural-sounding voices on mobile devices (like Enhanced and Premium voices on iOS), this means you can hear your books as well as read them. Or, if you’re like me, listen to your books read to you like an audiobook on your drive to work. To be sure, there is still some improvement in making the voices continually sound more natural, but these are things already in the works that, no doubt, will continue to get better and better.
The mobile app has gotten a bit of a facelift itself and I love it. I think the interface is smoother and more useful and will allow more users to get more out of it.
But now we come to my airing of grievances and complaints.
The Missed Opportunities
Okay, so I don’t really have any grievances per se. But I do have a couple small complaints.
For desktop, I was still hoping to see an “academic paper builder” sort of tool. Something with easy writing and citation importation and a citation manager that would greatly assist seminary students and scholars. Something like Sermon Builder – which is great and I used it every Sabbath when teaching at Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship – but for academic papers. Alas, no such luck here.
My mobile complaint is that – at least as of the writing of this review on release day 10/10/22, the Logos mobile app still requires an internet connection to do word studies and Hebrew/Greek word lookups. This means if you’re reading in 1 Kings 8 and highlight and hold the word “utensils” from verse 4, you will only get the word definition pop-up if you’re connected to the Internet. Even if you have your Hebrew lexicon downloaded, you will still only get the definition and lexical info pop-up if it’s online. Same for the word study tool: you have to be online. Now part of me still understands: some of the functionality has been stripped down to be optimized for mobile devices, so not all of the information can live directly on the device without taking a performance hit and/or eating up too much memory. But still, I wish these most common of reference tools were included offline. People that use mobile devices without internet a lot – those in rural areas, those on airplanes, those traveling abroad, etc. – would greatly benefit from this.
But hey, here’s hoping, Logos 11!
Okay, so I don’t really have any grievances per se. But I do have a couple small complaints.
For desktop, I was still hoping to see an “academic paper builder” sort of tool. Something with easy writing and citation importation and a citation manager that would greatly assist seminary students and scholars. Something like Sermon Builder – which is great and I used it every Sabbath when teaching at Nehemiah Restoration Fellowship – but for academic papers. Alas, no such luck here.
My mobile complaint is that – at least as of the writing of this review on release day 10/10/22, the Logos mobile app still requires an internet connection to do word studies and Hebrew/Greek word lookups. This means if you’re reading in 1 Kings 8 and highlight and hold the word “utensils” from verse 4, you will only get the word definition pop-up if you’re connected to the Internet. Even if you have your Hebrew lexicon downloaded, you will still only get the definition and lexical info pop-up if it’s online. Same for the word study tool: you have to be online. Now part of me still understands: some of the functionality has been stripped down to be optimized for mobile devices, so not all of the information can live directly on the device without taking a performance hit and/or eating up too much memory. But still, I wish these most common of reference tools were included offline. People that use mobile devices without internet a lot – those in rural areas, those on airplanes, those traveling abroad, etc. – would greatly benefit from this.
But hey, here’s hoping, Logos 11!
Conclusion
All in all, I am very excited about the upgrades in L10, and I do believe the features that have been upgraded and added make it more than worth the investment. As you probably already know from hearing me talk about Logos so much over the last couple years, I have a huge investment at this point, so this isn’t just a “sponsored review” sort of opinion. This is why I personally believe, for any serious student of Scripture, Logos is more than worth purchasing a base package.
If you have specific questions or would like more info on it, please feel free to reach out through the contact form and let me know.
All in all, I am very excited about the upgrades in L10, and I do believe the features that have been upgraded and added make it more than worth the investment. As you probably already know from hearing me talk about Logos so much over the last couple years, I have a huge investment at this point, so this isn’t just a “sponsored review” sort of opinion. This is why I personally believe, for any serious student of Scripture, Logos is more than worth purchasing a base package.
If you have specific questions or would like more info on it, please feel free to reach out through the contact form and let me know.
P.S. The Sales Pitch
Okay, so that's the end of my review. But it's not the sum of everything I have to say about Logos. As I said in my video series from earlier in the year (2022, if you're reading this after), every serious student of Scripture should invest in Logos. Whether that's buying a high-level (think Gold or higher) Base Package, or buying Starter and slowly building up over time when the sales are on. During launch is always one of the best times to upgrade because the discounts are usually highest on launch day. But any time is a good time to get started.
My recommendations are below, though I am sure some of y'all have heard them before.
If you're just starting out but wanting to dig into Scripture more for your own personal benefit, you'll want Bronze. Either Standard Bronze or if you're one of my many Messianic followers, the Messianic Jewish Bronze package. This will give you the primary tools I have discussed previously and will also allow you to take advantage of the Read Aloud mode on the mobile app. You'll be able to get the bulk of the core set of features like original language tools.
If you're a more seasoned researcher of the Ancient Near East, or First Century Judaism, or the Greco-Roman background of Paul's travels, you'll mostly benefit from the higher versions like Silver on up. One again, unless you already have a specific denomination in mind, go with Silver Standard or Silver Messianic Jewish.
Next up, yes, we have Gold. This will be best suited for those with huge libraries, either of Logos resources or physical print books, since it requires Gold to get the Print Library Scanner feature on the mobile app. This is also the minimum level I would recommend for seminary students and for those in teaching and pastoral roles, whether you're the assistant Rabbi of a Messianic Synagogue or the lead teacher of the women's Bible Study group. If you are going beyond just studying to deeper research and especially to preaching and teaching, you will most definitely benefit greatly from Gold. Gold Standard is always a good choice or, for the Rabbi or Rebbetzin, Messianic Jewish Gold is perfect.
Lastly, for my friends and readers who already are Logos power users, why not consider taking the next step? Of course, Logos 10 Collector's Edition is great, but most people may have a mild cardiac event looking at the price. Though it is worth mentioning that the price includes 3 separate packages that are worth over $30k if you bought just those three, not to mention the thousands of other resources. It's not the sort of purchase most people can spring for, but for anyone who can, it is definitely worth it (the highest single package I own is Logos 9 Collector's Edition).
If you are currently already a Gold user, check out Diamond for some great resources. For those that have purchased Messianic Jewish packages in the past, you may recall that L9 went up to Diamond. This year with L10, you can actually grab Messianic Jewish Portfolio. It includes the $2,500 Library of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies, the $1,200 Jacob Neusner package of Rabbinic scholarship, and the 140-volume Anchor Yale Bible set (also worth over $2k) which includes the Anchor Yale Commentaries. These of course are not exhaustive by any means, but I hope they offer a starting point.
And remember that Faithlife/Logos will allow payment plans, so for a very small (interest-free) fee, you can pay for the software over a longer period of time. Depending on the total cost, you could even spread it out over 18+ months. So while $750 is a lot to spend on Bible software at one time, $65/mo is a lot more palatable. I know I have previously mentioned, when my wife first bought Logos 8 MJ Gold for me, it was on a payment plan as well.
As always, if you purchase through one of my links, I do get a commission for the referral. In exchange, you will get to choose 5 extra free books from a pre-selected list that you would not be able to get just by going straight to the site and buying direct. So it's extra books for you, extra bucks for me! (See what I did there?)
And with that, I will leave you to all to it. Thank you all, good day, and shalom!
Okay, so that's the end of my review. But it's not the sum of everything I have to say about Logos. As I said in my video series from earlier in the year (2022, if you're reading this after), every serious student of Scripture should invest in Logos. Whether that's buying a high-level (think Gold or higher) Base Package, or buying Starter and slowly building up over time when the sales are on. During launch is always one of the best times to upgrade because the discounts are usually highest on launch day. But any time is a good time to get started.
My recommendations are below, though I am sure some of y'all have heard them before.
If you're just starting out but wanting to dig into Scripture more for your own personal benefit, you'll want Bronze. Either Standard Bronze or if you're one of my many Messianic followers, the Messianic Jewish Bronze package. This will give you the primary tools I have discussed previously and will also allow you to take advantage of the Read Aloud mode on the mobile app. You'll be able to get the bulk of the core set of features like original language tools.
If you're a more seasoned researcher of the Ancient Near East, or First Century Judaism, or the Greco-Roman background of Paul's travels, you'll mostly benefit from the higher versions like Silver on up. One again, unless you already have a specific denomination in mind, go with Silver Standard or Silver Messianic Jewish.
Next up, yes, we have Gold. This will be best suited for those with huge libraries, either of Logos resources or physical print books, since it requires Gold to get the Print Library Scanner feature on the mobile app. This is also the minimum level I would recommend for seminary students and for those in teaching and pastoral roles, whether you're the assistant Rabbi of a Messianic Synagogue or the lead teacher of the women's Bible Study group. If you are going beyond just studying to deeper research and especially to preaching and teaching, you will most definitely benefit greatly from Gold. Gold Standard is always a good choice or, for the Rabbi or Rebbetzin, Messianic Jewish Gold is perfect.
Lastly, for my friends and readers who already are Logos power users, why not consider taking the next step? Of course, Logos 10 Collector's Edition is great, but most people may have a mild cardiac event looking at the price. Though it is worth mentioning that the price includes 3 separate packages that are worth over $30k if you bought just those three, not to mention the thousands of other resources. It's not the sort of purchase most people can spring for, but for anyone who can, it is definitely worth it (the highest single package I own is Logos 9 Collector's Edition).
If you are currently already a Gold user, check out Diamond for some great resources. For those that have purchased Messianic Jewish packages in the past, you may recall that L9 went up to Diamond. This year with L10, you can actually grab Messianic Jewish Portfolio. It includes the $2,500 Library of Hebrew and Old Testament Studies, the $1,200 Jacob Neusner package of Rabbinic scholarship, and the 140-volume Anchor Yale Bible set (also worth over $2k) which includes the Anchor Yale Commentaries. These of course are not exhaustive by any means, but I hope they offer a starting point.
And remember that Faithlife/Logos will allow payment plans, so for a very small (interest-free) fee, you can pay for the software over a longer period of time. Depending on the total cost, you could even spread it out over 18+ months. So while $750 is a lot to spend on Bible software at one time, $65/mo is a lot more palatable. I know I have previously mentioned, when my wife first bought Logos 8 MJ Gold for me, it was on a payment plan as well.
As always, if you purchase through one of my links, I do get a commission for the referral. In exchange, you will get to choose 5 extra free books from a pre-selected list that you would not be able to get just by going straight to the site and buying direct. So it's extra books for you, extra bucks for me! (See what I did there?)
And with that, I will leave you to all to it. Thank you all, good day, and shalom!