At First Sight Dating App Review

It’s Great; If Only It Worked…

What You Should Know at first sight dating

This app boasts much in the way of promises; unfortunately, on the rare occasion that it works, it doesn’t deliver on those promises. In fact, it falls pretty short. From downloading the app to getting closer to women in my area, it took quite some time, and even then the app crashed on me, and rendered me unable to contact anyone that I liked the look of. So sadly, this At First Sight dating app review will not be brimming with compliments.

The Stats

Upon visiting the Android app store, I thought that the app is somewhat hard to find. It claims to have been developed by Chris Harrison and the creator of ‘The Bachelor’; not your everyday name-dropping. But the extent of their involvement past sticking the name on the app to shift downloads is unclear.

It appears that the app has been floating around since 2003. With Harrison desperately plugging it on his Twitter account until a few months later. The target audience is made up of people in their 20s, 30s and 40s, living in the USA and speaking English.

It’s more of a dating and relationship type of dating site, with less than 50,000 downloads to date. AFS is only available for devices operating on Android 2.2 or higher. It’s free, but with hefty in-app purchases ranging from £12.90 to £64.52 per feature.

The At First Sight dating app review section on the Play Store is awash with complaints about it not working and the fact that technical support is virtually non-existent. So, expectations were low from the get-go. The site does not claim to have any specific number of people using it, just that it ‘cuts through the clutter’ to connect people.

What It Packs

Its mainstay, or what would have been that had it worked, is the video section. The entire site focuses on users recording, sharing and browsing videos for the most important aspects of their lives, like hobbies, work and interesting personal facts. In other words, you won’t find much about them in writing. Which is probably better in terms of privacy and security. Otherwise, this is a basic dating app, with a chat feature, a search function, profile browser, sharing options, gallery view, age and proximity filters, and a recorder. Or, at least, it would be if it worked properly.

The Last Word

The free download is quick and easy enough, with no cost attached to it outright, and with a pleasant colour scheme, both on the intro page and the app itself. But once installed, you realise this was about the only ‘quick and easy’ part of the equation.

The profile was set up after around four attempts, and thankfully it’s a ‘turnkey’ process. The user is prompted to enter a photo, their age, location and ‘likes’. All of which fooled me into thinking I’d be writing a more positive At First Sight dating app review. However, searching for potential matches on this app soon became tricky. It showed the true extent of the deception, considering how many people would really use it versus what numbers they claim use it.

Punching in a location brings up thumbnail pictures of attractive women with their usernames and ages next to them. This allows you to skim through and take your pick. It was pretty impressive to see so many attractive women nearby, supposedly using the app. It’s easy enough to contact them; just click on their profile. But don’t expect a reply! In fact, a flip through other user photos shows the same women in various locations all over the USA and beyond. This exposes them as fake profiles, set up by the app creators to entice male users who think they’re on to a sure thing.

inflated numbers

At this point, it becomes clear that the app is dishonestly inflating numbers with spurious members and employing all manner of sneaky tactics to bolster user sign ups. Hence, this At First Sight dating app review is understandably negative.

The app is intended to be ‘video heavy’, with users expected to opt for videos in place of generally preferred written blurbs or pouty pictures. However, many of the profiles (and who knows which ones are genuine?) have disconcerting gaps where videos would normally be. Meaning all the user can do is click through the shadow of a profile and…stare at a blank screen. Again, this glaring error didn’t do much for the At First Sight dating app review.

At First Sight dating app review: The Verdict

Overall, our At First Sight dating app review could not be any more lenient given the app’s inherent flaws. The fact that it hasn’t been updated since late 2013, or the fact that very few new members have signed on since around that time, apparently. The concept of the app is in itself great. It is allowing videos to paint a more truthful picture, but it’s fallen at the first hurdle.

The app comes with incomplete profiles, technical glitches that frustrate the user beyond belief, and blatant dishonesty from Perceptual Networks (the creators). This medley of bugs and flaws earns the app one and a half out of five stars, at best. If it had worked, hadn’t resorted to baiting members with fakery, and had been continually updated since its launch so that glitches would have been fixed and the app could have kept up with the times, it could have been a contender on the dating app market. Instead, it has faded into app store obscurity.

Find at first sight on Google Play