First Look at Logos 6: New Features and Screenshots

Logos 6 is Here

 

Logos 6 launches today.

 

The Best of What’s New in Logos 6

 

Logos 6 sports a number of new features. Here are my favorite ones so far. Click on any image or open in a new tab to see it larger.

 

1. Interactives

 

L6 Psalms Form and Structure

 

This is the most impressive part of Logos 6, in my view.

I would have loved to have the interactive “Psalms Form and Structure” when preaching through the Psalms this past summer. You can click on any of the Psalm bubbles above to get a structural outline and more information. As you can see in the left sidebar, you can sort the Psalms visually by genre (really helpful), attribution (author), and more. Out of all the Interactives, this one is my favorite: visually appealing and really practical. There’s also an Interactive for the Proverbs.

Searching your Logos library for “type:Interactive” pulls up all the Interactive resources in Logos 6. Here are a few more worth highlighting:

  • Bible Outline Browser: for any given Bible passage, it shows you any Bible text outlines in your library, so you can compare various ways of dividing the text.
  • Morphology Charts: if you’re looking at a Hebrew or Greek Bible text, you can click to see all the biblical uses of a given lemma in its various forms, and with frequency. A great feature for language learning.
  • Text Converter: it takes any Greek or Hebrew you put in and automatically translates it for you. As much as I try to use Greek and Hebrew, I’m still not very good at writing or reading them in their transliterated forms. This is a really handy resource. P.S. Handy tip of the day: You can already transliterate online, via Logos, free.
  • Hebrew Cantillation Structural Diagrams (!): uses the cantillation marks in the Hebrew Bible “as a clue to the structure” to turn the passage into a “hierarchical flow diagram.”

Here’s Logos’s video of the Psalms Form and Structure:

 

 

2. Factbook

 

It’s not the CIA, and it’s not Facebook, although it does sort of function like an amalgamation of the two (in a good way).

Factbook looks and feels like one of the Guides (Exegetical or Passage) Logos has, and updates what in Logos 5 was called Bible Facts.

Basically any noun (people, places, things, Bible books, events, etc.) pulls up a corresponding Factbook panel. If I’m researching Isaac, for example, typing “Isaac” into Factbook will pull up multiple collapsible hyperlinked sections where I can learn more about him: events in which he’s involved, resources in my library in which he appears (that I can click on for more), even a nifty “Referred to as” sub-section, so I can find all his mentions as “my son,” which is important for understanding Genesis 22, for example.

 

L6 Isaac Factbook

 

3. Search Everything

 

You can search across Bibles and commentaries and resources. Here are hit results, all of which are hyperlinked and can be explored for more, when I search everything for Abram:

 

L6 Search Everything Abram

 

The new Inline Search feature (watch it in action here) is pretty cool, too.

 

4. Ancient Literature / Cultural Concepts

 

These are two new sections that can be accessed in the Guides (Passage Guide, Exegetical Guide, and Sermon Starter Guide is how I’ve gotten them). Have a look, and note that Ancient Literature is even sub-divided into Quotations, Allusions, and more:

 

L6 Ancient Literature

 

and:

 

L6 Cultural Concepts

 

Need for Speed

 

I run Logos 6 on an early 2008 iMac, but with a hard drive that’s been replaced in the last year. As a point of comparison, Accordance runs well on the same machine and returns search results quickly.

Logos’s lack of comparative speed on a Mac (even newer ones) improved between Logos 4 and 5. And you can see that the search times in the Search Everything query above are quite fast and impressive. However, it’s not uncommon even in Logos 6 for what I would consider a simple search to take 3 to 5 seconds (or more) to return results. The frequent Indexing and “Preparing Your Library” messages on startup are a pain that I really hope Logos pays attention to improving (or eliminating), especially for Mac users.

I do understand from the Logos forums that PC users and those with Solid State Drives see faster performance, but I would use Logos more often if it had consistently faster overall performance.

 

Interactives for Sermon Preparation

 

All that said, the Interactives alone (which are not sluggish) make Logos 6 worth the price of the upgrade. Sure, you can Google “Israelite Feasts and Sacrifices” and hope for the best. Or you can open the Interactive in Logos and see (and sort) this:

 

L6 Israelite Feasts

 

And this:

 

L6 Israelite Sacrifices

 

How to Get Logos 6

 

Check out Logos 6 here, and use the promo code ABRAMKJ6 when you checkout with for 15% off base packages.

Or you can click the banner below:

 

Logos 6

 

UPDATE: More on how to upgrade here.

 

Thanks to Logos for the chance to use Logos 6 as a beta tester.

24 thoughts on “First Look at Logos 6: New Features and Screenshots

  1. Thanks for the review Abram. One of the features that I wish Logos had was the ability to open multiple layouts simultaneously as in Accordance. Has this feature been introduced to Logos 6?

      1. Thanks – just trying to upgrade now myself – their servers seem to be copping a hammering

      1. I have had Accordance 10 for a year, and I just can’t use it. Not intuitive at all, or maybe I’m just too stuck in my Logos ways lol.

  2. I too upgraded today and so far so good. I made the mistake of multitasking and upgrade from 5 to 6 PLUS Silver to Platinum. Taking forever to grab the updated packages. I too wish the search speed would increase. Wont know until everything gets loaded. Excited to play with the new tools.

    I will say this – it looks like we finally have an official Logos 64-bit program for the Mac.

  3. How did you get ancient literature/cultural concepts in your Sermon Starter Guide? I don’t see an option for it there.

  4. I appreciate your review as I’m here on the last day of their promotion, and trying to decide what to do, if anything. I’m still running Logos 4 . . . as a light user.

    1. Thanks for your comment, Susan. I didn’t say anything in this post about Logos 6 as a program–I found it faster than 5 in beta testing, but significantly slower in recent release versions. I don’t think you lose anything if you’re a light user running Logos 4. You could always save your money and use it for specific books and commentaries down the road, which would still work just fine in Logos 4.

What do you think?