Home vs. If you are intended to use dictation software to create, edit, or control either of those programs, you'll need to spend the extra hundred bucks on Premium. Premium includes both voice command and full text control for Excel, and voice commands in PowerPoint (but not text control).

Put simply, Dragon allows you to speak into Word documents, web pages, Microsoft outlook, Word and almost every other application. The words will appear exactly where you were about to type them. Instead of typing, you talk into to a microphone.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking 13 learns to detect what you say fairly quickly, and it's quite accurate even the first time you use it. Better still, it improves over time because it learns your language patterns and which words you commonly use.

The Bottom Line. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 isn't perfect, but it's the best dictation software available. We don't find this upgrade necessary for the most basic dictation, although new features may benefit heavily accented English speakers and those who rely heavily on voice commands.

Our panelist with language-processing disabilities said Dragon was one of the most accurate dictation options they tried, and the robust command features made it possible for them to quickly navigate their machine.

The most recent version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking software that has been discontinued is Dragon NaturallySpeaking v15. It was released in 2016. The current version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking is Dragon Professional v16, which was released in 2021.

Nuance Dragon Professional v16 is the best option for Windows PC users because it surpasses the Microsoft Word and Windows dictation tools in accuracy, quickly processes and displays transcriptions, and offers a helpful training module and selection of command prompts to get you swiftly up to speed.

Dragon is a speech-recognition program that can be used to, among other things, dictate answers to homework questions, a five-paragraph essay, or even to write a novel. You can dictate an e-mail, surf the web using voice commands, or dictate on your Blackberry, iPhone, iPad or iPad touch.

Because customers purchasing Dragon Premium 13 own a perpetual license to the solution, they may continue using it. However, Nuance will no longer provide support or updates for the solution after January 1, 2019.

While initially it takes a bit of time to get started using the software proficiently, Dragon will save its user a lot of time. The students in our study learned the software in anywhere from a day or two to a month, with most getting the hang of it in a few weeks.

Dragon was 82% accurate in transcribing casual speech (slightly behind Apple Voice Control, which produced 87% accuracy), and in transcribing technical language, it didn't exhibit the steep decline in accuracy that we saw from other software, including Apple's Voice Control and Dictation tools.

The transcription process usually takes a minute of time to process per minute of audio in the recording. If you have a 20-minute-long audio recording, it will take Dragon around 20 minutes to transcribe the recording.