what do you think of Drops? I couldn’t stand the writing app they have (obviously bias), but do you like the lesson-based stuff they’ve got?

Just saw this.. I would not recommend Drops. I've got the generic app that lets you choose any language to learn... I have it because I forgot to end the subscription when I tried it out a couple years ago! But at least that inspired me to get back into Chinese! It's also nice that you can choose topics, but it only gives you 10 to 20 words in each (though lots of categories). Also no grammatical context just pure simple vocab. Loving Lingodeer as now I'm learning actual grammatical structures. I'm maybe HSK2 ish level? Highly recommend Lingodeer for newbies like me. The financial investment and variety of learning sources is good to me since I have no concurrent formal instruction, but definitely don't recommend as a first choice.

Thanks for the details. I suspected as much about Drops, but nice to hear it from someone using the app. Glad it got you back into Chinese. That alone is worth the price of the subscription. Happy studying!