Hinge calls itself the dating app "designed to be deleted." This is really just marketing, but it does confront an amusing paradox about dating apps. If they are good at their job of helping, you find the love of your life, you will not have to use them for very long, and you can stop paying for them. The service backs up its bold claim with robust profiles, appealing interplay between text and visuals, and plenty of fun, flirty ways for users to interact. However, it moves at a slow pace, not helped by the restrictions on free users. This and other small annoyances just barely prevent Hinge from dethroning our Editors' Choices, and . Note that the same company, Match Group, which also owns OKCupid, owns all three of these services.
Getting Started With HingePreviously, Hinge's gimmick was that it used your Facebook account to find connections. The app required a Facebook login, like a modern, superior version of what Zoosk also tried to be. That is no longer the case. The only current dating app that makes you use Facebook is Facebook Dating. You now have the option to create a Hinge account with a phone number. Hinge is only available on mobile, and we tested it with an iPhone 11. There is a desktop website, but it is only for buying celebratory "Delete Day" merchandise and was down at the time of my testing.
To create your account, you answer a standard questionnaire. Are you interested in men, women, or everyone? What is your preferred age, distance, ethnicity, or religion? You can set these categories as dealbreakers to avoid seeing people you have zero interest in.
Your own personal information is divided into three categories: Virtues, Vitals, and Vices. Virtues include where you work, where you went to school, and your politics. Vitals include height, whether you have children, and where you live now. Vices are drinking, smoking, and whatever other drugs you do.
Things get more fun when you begin answering questions. The questions are the entertaining but typical icebreakers you would expect from a dating app. What is your greatest strength? What is the weirdest gift you have ever received? What is the one thing you want to know about a match?
Uploading photos is, surprisingly, the most novel part. You can pair each of your images with a prompt, a snippet of text to add extra context or irony. Prompts may also inspire you to add photos you may not have considered. For the prompt "Feeling cute might delete later," I added a selfie of me in vampire teeth. Other prompts include "Caught in the act," "Don't judge me," and "If Grandma hijacked my Hinge, she'd add this." It may seem simple, but clever ways of combining visuals and text is part of what makes Hinge such a joy to experience, especially once you start looking for matches.
Hinge takes the best part of its fellow Match Group apps (Match, OkCupid, and Tinder) and blends them together into a greater whole. When looking for matches, at first, you will just see a big picture to say yes or no to, the slick standard mobile dating format Tinder pioneered. However, keep scrolling down for a profile that combines Match's depth with OkCupid's sense of fun.
Hinge profiles have a variety and stellar sense of presentation that make them appealing to browse. The classy, mostly monochrome design is dense with information yet stays readable and not too cluttered. As you go seamlessly from personal summaries to photos paired with prompts to videos to answers for personality questions, you can feel the people on the other end taking advantage of these tools to truly express themselves. Feeling like you are getting to know the real person online before meeting them is one of the best tricks a dating app can hope to pull off.
Hinge profiles also turn browsing into a more active experience. You do not just like a profile. You like a specific thing about a profile. Maybe it is a picture. Maybe it is an answer to a question. You're then encouraged to write a little comment to send alongside that like, hopefully something more personal than just a boring "hey" you'd see elsewhere. If your pick likes you back, you then start messaging. Paid users can already see who likes them and can craft that first response accordingly. By giving your potential date a more detailed clue about why you like them, you are more likely to have a better conversation out of the gate, improving your odds for a stronger, more lasting connection. High-quality profiles lead to high-quality matches and chats, which lead to high-quality relationships. You love to see it.
Arguably, the one downside to this more thoughtful method is that using Hinge in general feels slower than other mobile rivals do. You can instantly say no, but when saying yes, you are forced to at least consider sending a comment as well before moving on. There is no fast, mindless, shallow swiping. It is up to you to decide whether that is good or bad. We will not judge.
Maybe Hinge's more methodical pace is there to keep free users from noticing just how throttled they are. The free experience is not as ungenerous as that of, say, eharmony, which blurs photos until you pay up. However, with maybe only a dozen free likes a day, with Hinge you will run up against a wall much faster compared with Tinder, which may give you over 100 likes per day, depending on your situation.
If you want to use Hinge seriously, you need to be a paid Preferred Member. Subscriptions start at $19.99 for one month, $39.99 for three months, and $59.99 for six months. Along with unlimited likes, with a paid subscription you can see everyone who likes you. Free users only see likes if they are mutual. You also get more advanced preference options to filter matches based on education, family plans, politics, and vices.
People are mostly staying at home because of the COVID-19 epidemic, and dating apps have been forced to respond. The responses have been different depending on the app, even for apps owned by the same company. When chatting in Hinge, you can use the "Dating From Home" menu to secretly tell the app you are up for a video chat with your match. If both users consent, the app lets both of you know and you will avoid the awkwardness of being shut down. However, you cannot video chat inside the app itself. You will both have to use another video conferencing service when you are ready to make that leap.
If you want video chat inside a dating app, check out Hinge's sibling's Match and Plenty of Fish, as well as and eharmony. Tinder at least lets you match with college classmates or folks in other countries free. Facebook Dating does not have built-in video chat, but Facebook users can use Messenger or Tuned, an experimental app made for quarantined couples.
Hinge is a dating app that is easy to recommend. The "designed to be deleted" marketing speaks to a larger, savvy, youthful influencer vibe that is also present in its beautiful, excellent, in-depth profiles. Seeing and reading about all that your matches have to offer really could help you find The one on your phone.
Hinge's limitations on free accounts and its slower pace overall combine to keep Match and Tinder our Editors' Choices for dating apps. Still, Hinge is a lovely alternative if you have burned out on those services and are looking for something vibrant and new.
Robust profiles
Multiple ways to like profiles
Great interplay between photos and text
CONS
Very limited likes for free users
No video chat
No desktop version
BOTTOM LINE Hinge lets users build beautiful profiles and gives them fun, flirty ways to interact with each other.