Elevate trains real, useful skills — writing, reading, mental math — which neatly sidesteps the “transfer problem” that dogs abstract brain games. Excellent design, a generous free tier, and a fair price. Just know its scope is deliberately narrow.
Most brain training apps ask you to match tiles and memorize grids — abstract exercises hoping to improve your mind in general. Elevate does something smarter: it trains the practical skills you actually use. We tested it for thirty days.
Why the approach is clever
There is a well-known problem in brain training research called the transfer problem: getting better at a brain game often does not make you better at anything else. Our guide on whether brain training works covers it in depth.
Elevate’s design quietly sidesteps it. Because it trains skills you genuinely use — concise writing, careful reading, quick estimation — improvement carries over by definition. Get better at Elevate’s writing exercises and you are better at writing, because it is the same skill.
What works, what to know
- Trains real, workplace-relevant skills
- Polished, App-of-the-Year-quality design
- Genuinely generous free tier
- Well-calibrated difficulty progression
- Narrow scope — little visual or spatial work
- Leans heavily on English proficiency
- Feedback can be thin on some games
- Advanced users may hit a low ceiling
How it scores
On our five-criterion framework, Elevate scores very well on engagement and price-to-value, and unusually well on the transfer question baked into our scientific-basis criterion, because its practical skills genuinely carry over. It scores lower on breadth. The weighted result is 8.4 out of 10, placing it third in our roundup.
The bottom line
Elevate is the brain training app for people who want their training to show up in real life. If you write for work, present, or want sharper reading and faster mental math, it targets exactly those skills at a fair price. Just know its scope is deliberately narrow — for broad cognitive variety, pair it with another app or see our full roundup. Start with the free version; for many users it is genuinely enough.