It’s no coincidence that Dragon Naturally Speaking is the most well known name in voice recognition software. If you haven’t heard of it, then you probably haven’t searched for voice recognition software before. That kind of brand awareness is well earned because this is a phenomenal product. In fact, it’s the best one out there for the PC platform and easily earned the "TopTenREVIEWS Gold Award" in our review of voice recognition software.
Dragon Naturally Speaking combines a nice palette of features with excellent accuracy in translating your voice to commands and text. In fact, it scored better than all but one of the other programs in this review. That accuracy is just one indication of how well the speech engine in this program works. Another consideration is how well the program responds to commands and how quickly it recognizes those commands. Some other products in this review required several seconds after each command to interpret it before acting. Dragon Naturally Speaking, on the other hand, executes commands smoothly.
There was one other key feature that helped Dragon Naturally Speaking make it to the top of the list: its navigation capabilities. Only one other program in this review even came close to being able to interpret what buttons or links you wanted to click in a program. The other programs only come with a limited number of commands and then require you to create your own customized commands for any other operations you want to perform. Dragon Naturally Speaking didn’t need any customized commands, instead identifying any buttons or links on the screen that might correspond to what you just said.
It’s the convenient features like these that really helped Dragon Naturally Speaking stand out above the rest of the programs in this review.
Standout Features
- Accurate dictation
- Simple navigation commands
- Numbered commands
- Fast response time
Possibly the most imperative step in using voice recognition software is creating a voice profile. This allows the program to adapt to your voice, your accent and your verbal idiosyncrasies so it can better understand what you say. So it should come as no surprise that Dragon Naturally Speaking does an excellent job of creating a profile for each user and providing the tools to make the program more accurate.
Upon starting, you read some text in order to listen how you say common words. The computer then takes what it learned from hearing you say those words and uses that information to augment your voice profile and more accurately identify what you say. Even after you complete your voice profile, Dragon Naturally Speaking provides more voice training so you can continue to improve your voice profile. The sample text gets denser and uses more obscure words as you go so that Dragon Naturally Speaking can understand what you say even if you are using jargon or uncommon words. We highly recommend completing all the voice training modules, even though it is a little time consuming at first. The benefits are worth spending the time because the program improves with each module. By the time you finish, the program will have a solid understanding of your voice and commit far fewer errors.
The program utilizes an unobtrusive little taskbar that allows you to customize commands, and it also shows you the status of the microphone (off, live, on standby). While it can get in the way occasionally, it is movable and can even be minimized or hide behind windows.
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