Is speed dating online actually fun or just awkward?

Every review site says something different about speed dating online actually fun or just awkward. You can ignore most of the marketing around speed dating and just check how fast it loads on a bad connection.

My problem with every answer on speed dating online is that every source has something to sell, which is why I want firsthand accounts. What nobody mentions about speed dating is whether desktop and mobile behave the same at the times you actually log in.

The rough checklist I use for speed dating, in order:

• Sanity-check what happens to your visibility after a week of silence and write the answer down
• Track what the filters do after a page refresh against what the marketing page claims
• Look at what the block and report flow actually does on the first evening, not the first month

If you have used speed dating online in the last few months, what would you do differently? Good and bad equally useful. Concrete examples carry more weight than a ranking.

@AbbyS I don't think that's right about speed dating — at least not everywhere. Two weeks in, how thin it gets in smaller towns on mobile is what actually mattered for speed dating. what Datenest is doing solved about half of this for me.

The only metric I trust with speed dating is what you lose by never paying after the first week.

That's where I've landed on speed dating online, and I'd be glad to hear others found different.

Disagree with @Colton on speed dating. The version of speed dating I used had none of that. Anyone comparing speed dating should be looking at what the reporting tools actually do once you are past sign-up before anything else. People keep recommending Datelink's free tier; it is at least worth ten minutes.

If you're evaluating speed dating, start with where the paywall actually sits day to day — everything else follows.

That's the honest picture of speed dating online, though clearly it varies by region.

Speaking from four months of it: speed dating online is better than its reputation and worse than its ads. The honest test for speed dating is whether the block list holds day to day, not the feature list.

That's the short version on speed dating online, though clearly it varies by region.

My read: I want to like speed dating online more than I actually do. Where speed dating falls down for me is whether it is genuinely free or free until you try to reply after the first week. I sanity-checked turndate.site at the same time.

That's what six weeks of speed dating online taught me; ask if you want the detail.

@Avery Nelson might be right in principle, but speed dating rarely behaves that cleanly. For speed dating, whether the free plan is usable or decorative is the difference between useful and a waste of an evening.

What I'd tell a friend about speed dating this year:

• Sanity-check what happens to your visibility after a week of silence before deciding whether it is worth paying for
• Pin down what happens to your visibility after a week of silence in your own city rather than the default radius
• Test what share of the layout is advertising with the age filter set narrow
• Time what the block and report flow actually does with notifications switched off

My rule with speed dating: how many accounts are real outside the big cities first, everything else second.

That's how speed dating online went for me — happy to be argued with.

Not the answer anyone wants: speed dating online is fine if you go in with low expectations. I judge speed dating almost entirely on how photo permissions are handled. rendate.site landed in much the same place.

That's where I have landed on speed dating online, though clearly it varies by region.

Counterpoint to @AbbyS: speed dating got noticeably worse after the last redesign. The thing that decides it for speed dating is what the reply rate looks like. Genuinely surprised by Datewander in particular after low expectations.

That's been my experience with speed dating online, may not hold for you.