Mandarin Blueprint Reviews 680

Signed up for Mandarin Blueprint even though my wife is Chinese and should be able to help.

1/ Pro's - Easy to use, you follow their system, which they thoroughly explain, the how's, the why's, the traps, everything that the future holds for you in the course and you go through it, trusting that it will work.

The course is taught with a lot of logic, they pick many common words/ characters/ and components with an eye to how useful they are in general Mandarin. When there is an oddball word used (Halberd) they clearly explain 'why' they would teach an obscure word early in the course. Stuff makes sense.

There is a real sense of progress with lots of PDFs along the way to give you an alternative way to cement information into your daily life. Your Mandarin may be getting better in other methods, but sometimes a "sense of progress" is the motivation that determines whether you actually stick with it to fluency.

Subscription models may be cheaper, and actually more viable long term, but a 'pay once and it's yours forever' model actually appealed to me the most. I do not want to pay for when I get really busy and don't have time for the course. I also travel some, and being online is problematic at times, so having bought it like a book, I can go back to it whenever, and it doesn't feel like I am wasting anything. (I can see the 'wasting' feeling also being motivation for some)

I like these guys. They come across as 'nice' in the videos, very likeable, and this makes it much easier to watch all of the videos. I also appreciate that they bring in 'guest students' to describe some of the students' memory palace stories. I do wish they had a native female speaker to rotate in. Having a native speaker might give us a different accent or phrasing than two guys who learned English first, then Mandarin. My wife says Luuk and Phil's Mandarin is excellent, but when I was in China, there were lots of pronunciations I did not catch, because native Mandarin speakers don't always speak perfectly. So, female Native Mandarin speaker would be a nice add on.

The platform itself is complicated. Way too complicated in my opinion. There is a Mandarin Blueprint Lite version which is free for many lessons. (great resource no matter where you wind up) and if you buy their Pro course, you still study on the Lite platform for a lot of videos. Imagine you buy a "premium" course, which is expensive, but you remain on the Lite free course for weeks? Add in that you also use flashcards, which were originally Anki, but transitioned to Traverse. Add in that there is a podcast, but most of us use Apple podcast or some other podcast server to listen to podcasts. Add in there is a "Discord type" channel called Skool (?) perhaps if you want to chat about the course in their community. But, if you click on "Community" on their webpage, you get a different page which asks you to figure out your seniority before you get redirected ?

Then the flashcard system is difficult to navigate. In my Traverse (my settings may be bad, or I am terrible at Traverse) the relevant sections were at the bottom of 120 sections, which I had to constantly 'find', rather than being in chronological order based on how you would study the sections. Traverse is not intuitive to me, but that might be a 'me' issue.

So, I listed more "Cons" than "Pros" but don't want to give y'all the wrong idea. This course has a lot of value for me. It has well conceived learning paths, lessons that are well thought out as to length and value to you as a student. They speak Mandarin extremely well, so listening to them is easy to understand and a great guideline as to how we should sound. And the production value is top notch. It looks professional. It feels professional. It sounds professional.

For me, it was money well spent! My wife is complimenting me on my progress, her friends are commenting on how improved my pronunciations are, etc, etc etc.

Although it is not inexpensive, I have no doubt that I will get my money's worth, and more importantly "Learn to speak Mandarin" .....

MB makes learning Chinese straightforward and rewarding. I am only on day 25 and confidently know 125 characters + 40ish words and am already reading and fully understanding basic sentences. The method includes multiple avenues for you to link back to the words and remember them.

If you can't recall a word, you have props and people which help you remember a scene, which help you remember the word and character. This is the complete opposite of how I learned in the past, which was by brute force memorization.

It starts off hard but as time goes on you really develop your visualization/memory palace skills and remembering words and their characters becomes very quick. It is actually insane to learn 12 new characters in a day (my current record), and get most/all of them correct (knowing the character, the meaning, and the tones) the first try while reviewing. I am almost finishing up with the free trial and will certainly be going pro.

I’ve been studying Mandarin for years. My biggest struggle was understanding conversations with native speakers. All the listening materials I used before Mandarin Blueprint alternated between English and Mandarin. While I learned what I wanted to say, none of them helped me understand natives.

Luke and Phil’s program and courses offered an improved way to improve my listening and understanding.

Their Mandarin Listening Kick Starter includes immersion listening that’s Mandarin only. These have been amazing. In two months time I’m hearing and understanding significantly more when I hear native speakers conversing.

The Pronunciation Mastery includes tips for the subtle tongue movements, which also helped improve my listening.

They also emphasize learning to read characters. That is something I thought I would never do because I thought it way too complex and time consuming. My life is hectic with work and family. Luke & Phil proved me wrong. I now know over 100 basic characters and am able to read some simple sentences. This, too, has helped improve my understanding.

I first heard about their program in 2020. But did not go all in until 2025. In 2020, I compared Mandarin Blueprint against other programs and thought the price was too steep. If I had understood how powerful the program is and how quickly I would progress, I would have gone in 100-percent back then. The money I invested into this program is worth the time savings.

If you’re serious about learning Mandarin and want to do it efficiently, I recommend Mandarin Blueprint.

Amazing method! Learned a ~100 characters in a little more than a month. The Hanzi movie method is a great learning tool allowing you to memorize tone / pronounciation and meaning of a character in one step. This visualization technique is really powerful as you can memorize all this information with only a few repetitions. Really looking forward for the next steps!!!

I'm grateful I found this along the way.

I was very surprised and really impressed by their method of learning the characters but even more by the entire system the community the lessons . Everything is so well done and well explained , its clear they've put a lot of effort into every details and making the course and also you can feel that this is more than just a course to learn a language but true passion and desire to share their love for mandarin. And the community not only motivates to learn but there's is always support and people are welcoming and helpful .And all this is only the free part I am very impressed and this made me really want to try the pro even if I cant now I know I will because all their efforts and work really deserves it. I would recommend this to anyone truly interested in learning the Mandarin , but if you have a closed mindset to innovative ways of learing and want the "academic" way of trying to memories everything then I maybe not.

I signed up for Mandarin Blueprint excited to begin. Unfortunately, the onboarding experience was deeply flawed and frustrating.

I was double-charged immediately upon sign-up. Their system did not prevent or flag this.

I received no receipt or order confirmation showing the price paid, contrary to their stated policy.

Customer service was unresponsive for a week. My initial request for help went unanswered, forcing me to send a follow-up email just to get a reply.

The refund for the duplicate charge was eventually processed after I provided evidence. The explanations offered were internal issues: payment processor changes, emails going to spam, and policies being updated. While I appreciate the eventual resolution, it required significant time and effort on my part to correct their mistakes.

The program itself may be good, but proceed with caution. Be aware that their purchase and support systems seem unstable, and you may need to be diligent in tracking your charges and following up on issues. I hope they improve their operational reliability for future customers.

This is the first method I've tried as an adult learner of Mandarin that makes learning all aspects of characters relatively reliable. It starts slow, but using episodic memory really works. As a speaker of only other non-tonal languages, tones in particular are hard to memorize, but this method makes them seem as integral as the rest of the character's pronunciation, meaning, and appearance. I think I can confidently say that I'm able to write and speak the characters I've learned with an accuracy or 90% or better.

The explanations are perfect for speakers of English trying to learn chinese in a fun, structured way

Mandarin Blueprint is a great course for learning Chinese language based on characters. Initially I was skeptical, but the proposed and taught method (learning Chinese characters using memory palace technique) works amazingly (both efficient and effective). After struggling quite some years (inconsistently) learning Chinese, this (MB Blueprint Pro) was the best "investment" decision in my Chinese learning career (both time/effort & money).
Besides the main course (Mandarin Blueprint), the other courses (so far I tried Pronunciation Mastery, Mandarin Speaking Kickstarter and The Phrase Vault)
Since Chinese is so different from all European Languages you still need however some patience to gain the expected results (fluency in Chinese including the capability to speak), but the teaching method and the course contents are really good.
By the time of this review I am in level 37 of the Blueprint after around 50 days full time learning (~600 characters learned).
You can also try out the Mandarin Blueprint Lite (~260 characters in total) for free and see, if the method also works for you...

Mandarin Blueprint’s Pronunciation Mastery course has been outstanding. It helped me so much with correcting multiple long-standing Pinyin and pronunciation errors, and it gave me real confidence and enthusiasm to tackle more advanced Chinese. The course also includes incredibly useful insights into grammar rules, dialect differences, and natural colloquial speech — all of which will help massively with integration and guanxi.
A big thank you to Luke and Phil for the exceptional teaching and clear instruction. Highly recommended!!!

At first, it felt a little hard to imagine the scenes using the Hanzi Movie Method and to keep going. I even thought about giving up. But then I realized the real power of mnemonics: I still remember every character and its scenes with the correct tones, and I hope I never forget them—especially with the help of the Traverse app, which is very user-friendly. I can describe MB’s teaching style in simple words: simple, straightforward, and easy to understand.

One thing to note is that this method mainly helps you memorize Chinese characters or vocabulary quickly. I can’t say how it works in the other phases, but for Phase 1—since I’ve only completed Phase 1 while writing this—it does not directly help improve listening or speaking skills. However, these are two skills that cannot be improved without vocabulary, and MB helps you build that vocabulary quickly. Of course, listening and speaking skills are essential in Chinese, but in my opinion, they are skills that improve mainly through practice and repeated use rather than direct instruction.

This method really does work and this program is super efficient and you can learn Mandarin Chinese as fast as whatever pace you set. From someone with no prior experience or background knowledge of Chinese or any Asian language, I turned into a completely different person, not just from a linguistic perspective, but also of a lifestyle and mindset. This course changed me, I highly recommend anyone wanting to learn Chinese to sign up for this free course. (Free for the first two phases lvl 1-12 + lvl 13 where I was able to read Chinese characters in 4 weeks!) There is no commitment with your money, only your dedication.

I have used Apps to learn Mandarin, took courses on Udemy and Coursera but nothing comes close to the speed and effectiveness that Mandarin Blueprint teaches.

The Hanzi movie method is a great way to learn Chinese characters in the language. It does take time to get used to it, but once you get it down, it’s great. I wish I knew this when I first learnedEnglish in my early teens. You can learn anything with the Hanzi Movie Method, you just have to adjust it to fit the parameter of your situation and utilize the appropriate props.

Demystifies Chinese pronunciation and makes it very easy!!!

Words can not express the amount of amazing content wrapped up in a teaching system that has been very enjoyable and insanely effective.

I started with MB Lite just to see whether their approach works for me. Not only did it work, it gave me hope and confidence that by following it I could actually learn Mandarin! They have put so much effort into the variety of materials, methods and their content to really make Mandarin learning a step-by-step continuous improvement process, leading to efficient and sustained learning. At first, I did not think to learn the characters, but their methods convinced me that I could and I should. At the end on the Lite version when I could actually read some sentences with proper pronunciation, I decided to go Pro. They not only teach the language, they dive into different learning strategies and habit forming, adding variety, making the process enjoyable and useful at multiple levels. Their onboarding is detailed and customer sevice is quick and friendly, making it easy to adapt to and get engaged with their learning environment.

The system works. Luke & Phil could not be more supportive. I speak some conversational Cantonese, but see how even if one had zero background, the Mandarin Blueprint is the most effective, efficient, fun and rewarding way to become proficient. HIGHLY recommend. Just follow the videos, and I supplemented with some of the speaking phrases. Traverse is AMAZING. If you're committed at the outset to "get going" I found after Phase 1 to be "in the groove." Look forward to what's ahead. (I did the "pro" version - well worth it.)

This course has vastly improved my mandarin skill level. Additionally, because of practicing the hanzi movie method so much, I have found my ability to remember and visualize things has increased immensely.