Cengagebrain Review - Is It Worth Your Time?
Within the last few years a ton of new textbook review websites have sprung up to try to grab a slice of this exponentially growing market. While just about any textbook rental offer is going to be better than buying your books outright from your school's bookstore not all of these websites are created equal. Let's take a minute to look at one of the newer textbook rental services, Cengagebrain, and see what it offers and how it stacks up against the competition.
1. Buying Discounted New Textbooks. Cengagebrain offers many textbooks for sale at a sizable discount. Cengagebrain's discount usually sits around 15% off the normal list price of the book which makes this a cheaper option than buying used textbooks from your school's bookstore. Cengagebrain also offers a steep 50% discount off of the list price of any eTextbook that you purchase from their site. While buying books outright isn't generally the most cost effective way to get the books you need, Cengagebrain does offer a good buying solution superior to buying directly from your school.
2. Custom Study Tools. This is an area where Cengagebrain offers something most of their competition doesn't. Through Cengagebrain you'll be able to choose from thousands of digital tools to help you study and pass your classes. These tools help Cengagebrain fulfil its desire to be a one-stop-shop for college students.
3. Textbook Rental. Cengagebrain's textbook rental service is good, but it just doesn't stack up against most of its competition. Most other textbook rental websites offer more books at better prices than Cengagebrain. Still if you want to use this service you'll find all of the more popular textbooks and many of the more obscure titles you desire.
4. Questia Online Research Tool. In their quest to offer a little bit of everything students might want Cengagebrain also provides its clients with easy access to the very good Questia research tool which provides you with access to millions of articles and texts to help you accumulate and pinpoint the sources you need for your collegiate work. Questia might not offer the most thorough or intuitive interface compared to other research tools but it's value priced (around $99 a year) and it's a nice addition to the other features offered through Cengagebrain.
5. Cengagebrain eBook Reader. Cengagebrain also offers its own proprietary eBook reader software that nicely supports all of the digital content that they push on their website. The Cengagebrain eBook reading platform is compatible with many popular devices, such as the iPad, and provides easy access to Cengagebrain content as well as additional note taking features.
Conclusion
Overall whether you choose to order from Cengagebrain depends a lot on what you're looking for from a textbook rental website. If you're just looking for a website that provides you with the widest selection of books for rental in hard copy at the best price than you're better off with a service like Chegg.com. On the other hand if you have a wide variety of needs that you want to meet all within one website than Cengagebrain might be just what you've been looking for. It really depends on whether you want a digital copy or the real deal. You can also compare prices and see if there are any savings in going with an ecopy, this is usually the biggest factor.
Not sold on the digital textbook thing? Try renting form a rental service like Chegg. They offer very low prices and often run huge promotions.
