The Wingman dating app is meant to leverage the knowledge that one of your trusted friends has of you to help you get a date. This is supposed to strip away the roadblocks commonly associated with online dating — indecisiveness, timidness, being overly critical, etc. The question is, does it work? Is trusting your dating fortunes to a friend a good idea? Designed primarily for twenty-somethings, Wingman aims to prove that friends can know best. We reviewed the app to see if this unique style of online dating is better or worse than traditional methods.

— Pros and Cons —

Pros

• Available for both iOS and Android devices
• Free to use
• Simple and intuitive user interface

Cons

• Wingman-centric, daters treated like afterthoughts
• App can sometimes get sluggish
• Phone number required at registration

— In-Depth Wingman Dating App Review —

If there is one thing that is as old as the concept of dating, it is your friends trying to fix you up on a date. Yes, even while we were still hunter-gatherers, you just know that Oga must’ve been talking up Zog to her friend Zila over a slab of mammoth ribs. It is as if there is an innate need in all of us to be some sort of Cupid.

This is why dating apps such as Wingman should not be a surprise. Wingman belongs to the family of dating apps known as “peer matchmaking” or “Cupid” apps. Wingman has the same end goal as other dating apps — having two people meet and hopefully hit it off — but with a twist. On Wingman, all introductions must come from a friend. Two people can’t arrive at each other on their own. After all, that would be too simple.

— The Concept —

Some of us have friends whom we would trust with our lives. Unfortunately, some of us also have friends whose judgment and abilities we dread so much, that if we lend them a hair dryer we know that the next time we see it it will be a mangled mass of melted plastic and wires.

This makes the whole peer matchmaking concept rather dubious from our point of view. It seems that Wingman requires you not only to have a very trustworthy friend, but that friend must also have kick-ass judgment when it comes to sizing up relationship potential. Not only that, but your friend must also be willing to get involved with your love life. In our opinion, those are too many prerequisites.

Think about it, you may have a zillion friends, but how many would you trust with finding your next mate? Also, what about the awkwardness that would ensue if the relationship your friend helped to set up turns out to be a total disaster?

— How It Works —

Wingman revolves entirely around the wingmen, wingwomen, wingpersons of this world. To us, it seemed as if the actual single people — the daters — are afterthoughts.

Registration can only be initiated by these wannabe Cupids. A wingperson registers and invites their single friend to join with them. The wingperson sets up the profile for their single friend. While the single friend has to approve the profile written about them, the creation process is handled entirely by the wingperson. If you have friends who are control-freaks or who possess a finely honed intrusive streak, Wingman might be the app for you.

Once your profile is set up for you, your wingperson proceeds to search for a match for you. They will “shop you around.” They do this by sending a match suggestion to other members for you. If one of those other members likes your profile, that will open a channel of communication between the both of you. If they don’t like your profile, nothing happens.

— The Platform —

Wingman is available solely as a mobile app. It can be downloaded and installed on Android and iOS devices. The iOS version requires iOS 10.0 or higher. The Android version requires version 5.0 or higher. On the App Store, it has a cumulative rating of 3-stars; on Google Play it is rated with 3.9-stars.

When we tested Wingman on multiple devices, we found the performance of both the iOS and Android version to be stable. However, on both versions, our testers felt that the app would occasionally become sluggish — as if it was hogging up too many resources from the phone. While this was not serious enough to crash the app, it can negatively impact the overall user experience.

— Registration —

In order to register for an account on Wingman, you must provide your phone number and synch your Facebook account. Both of these requirements are done, according to Wingman, for the safety and authentication of their users.

When we combed through Wingman’s terms of service we did not find any items that struck us as being dubious with regards to how they use your private information. Also, they do not post anything on your Facebook account, they only import your basic information.

— User Experience —

Our testers made a total of 45 recommendations of their single friends. Of those, five resulted in a mutual connection taking place. That’s just over an 11 percent matchmaking rate. Depending on your perspective, that can be either impressive or disappointing. In fact, our testers were split right down the middle. Two thought that this was a waste of time, the other two felt that the results from Wingman were on par or better than more traditional dating apps.

Some key observations that our testers made were that the majority of the users consist of people under the age of 30. Also, based on the five members with whom a mutual connection was made, during the subsequent online chats, our testers felt that the personality profile of these individuals coincided with people who were passive or timid.