[NewsPoster]

Whether you take meditation as an essential part of your life, or see it as just being able to shut up and stop thinking for a minute, there are an awful lot of meditation apps for iOS. Seriously. There are more of these than there are notepad apps, and we didn't think that was possible. Normally we'd examine them all, but it just seems somehow wrong to stress-test meditation apps. We've come to Meditate Plus after anecdotal recommendations, which also said you can see this app as a model for how they all work.

Every meditation app has soothing sounds -- often music, but not always -- and they all at least have the option for you to hear a voice talking you through this. These are called guided meditations, and we think they're the best for when you're starting out on meditation. It's easier to stop your mind going back to your next task when there's a man or woman saying now, come on, let it go for a minute.

If they are functionally all the same, fundamentally, then you know there must be something else significantly different, or they'd all be free and have names beginning with AAAAA in order to get to the top of the App Store listings. There are two serious differences. One is in the technical quality of the app: whether it simply works as it says it will, whether the sound recording is decent. That's gigantically important, but we'd argue that once those are both covered -- and Meditate Plus does both well -- then there is a deeper difference. The full title of this on the App Store is Meditate Plus with Andrew Johnson, and that's the crucial part: if you like Johnson's voice, then this will work for you. There's no reason you won't -- he has a calming, deep tone, but these things are very personal, and it's best to hear a sample buy. You can buy MP3 tracks off his website, but they're $4.55, which is more than the app. There are also short, free Lite apps such as Relax with Andrew Johnson, though that sounds like nipping over to his place for a coffee. For a great contrast between our busy lives and the calming sounds of meditation, go take a listen to one of his recordings on YouTube. The voice and style of his videos are exactly what you get in this app, but amusingly they are prefixed by loud, roaring, annoying, shouting YouTube adverts. Johnson's app provides a series of seven different meditation types. We would like to tell you what they are, but we're a bit stumped: the seven are named, and only some are obvious. The first is Basic Meditation and we got that, we grasped the principle there, but the last two are Chakra Visualisation and Astral Flying. Those names test our agreement that meditation is useful and practical. Also, what is Expansion Meditation?

You can reason that you start at the top and work down into these more nebulous terms, but we'd really like to see even a sentence about what each is for. There is room, too: when you tap on one of these titles, you go into a iOS Music-like screen with play, pause, volume and space for a description that instead is given to the title. We do also question the Basic Meditation, as while we like it and this is the one we have kept coming back to, it's also long. It's just shy of 22 minutes, and that's unusual. More often, meditation apps will give you a five-minute version: it eases you into the idea at first, and later it's a handy quick diversion in your busy day. What we don't question is the way that this app does work. We were stressed before it and now, not so much. As this is such a personal type of app, though, do check out those YouTube videos and take a look through the official website. It's only $3, but so are many other meditation apps, and the job is is to find one that you will enjoy listening to. Meditate Plus requires iOS 7.0 or later, and costs $3 on the App Store. Who is Meditate Plus for: Honestly, we could all do with a bit of mindful meditation in our lives, and if you've thought about it, maybe dabbled a little, this is good. Who is Meditate Plus not for: Possibly not for very, very beginners, or the highly cynical who twitch at phrases like "astral flying." -- William Gallagher (@WGallagher)