TrustRadius Insights for MATLAB are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.
Business Problems Solved
MATLAB has proven to be an invaluable tool for a wide range of use cases across academia, research, and industry. Users have praised its versatility, ease of use, and extensive capabilities in solving complex problems and handling large amounts of data. From academic homework and research projects to major industry applications, MATLAB has been employed for a variety of purposes.
In the academic realm, MATLAB is commonly used as a teaching instrument, particularly in engineering and mathematical courses. It helps students grasp complex concepts that cannot be easily computed by hand and provides an accessible coding platform with excellent visualization capabilities. MATLAB is also utilized for simulation purposes, allowing engineering students to evaluate complex integrals and summations, as well as undertake signal processing projects.
Researchers frequently rely on MATLAB for data analysis and modeling tasks. Its intuitive interface and programming structures make it an ideal tool for generating graphs and plots for visualization purposes. MATLAB's built-in artificial neural network models have been effectively employed for various studies, including rainfall-runoff modeling, earthquake and wind excitation analysis, and climate data processing.
In industry settings, MATLAB proves its worth by solving complex problems, automating processes, and handling large datasets. It is widely used for prototyping mathematical algorithms in machine learning applications, aiding in product conceptualization through data visualization and mathematical modeling. Additionally, MATLAB finds utility in diverse fields such as power systems simulation, medical research, control systems development, image processing, algorithm prototyping, and automation.
Overall, MATLAB's broad range of applications across academia, research, and industry makes it a valuable asset for individuals and organizations alike. Its adaptable nature enables users to tackle various challenges efficiently while benefiting from its abundant functionalities and user-friendly interface.
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MATLAB Reviews
21 Reviews
Enterprises (1,001+ employees)
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I have been using MATLAB for quite a long time and we use it quite frequently at Broward. It is constantly used within our research groups and by quite a lot of undergrad and postgraduate students. For the most part, we use the software for simulation purposes and we also interface MATLAB when teaching other program languages such as Fortran, as the engine allows for this. The interface is incredibly intuitive and the modeling of differential equations/integrals allows us to quickly and efficiently process large amounts of data in a short time. Currently, we are running a machine learning course, which teaches the students how to visualize and build neural networks, so building prototypes of these models helps develop an underlying understanding of the mathematics involved.
Pros
MATLAB is great at providing in-depth models and simulations with very little coding, this is particularly useful to non-coders and potential data scientists who know very little or basic understanding of coding languages. The drag and drop components of the software are ideal and its simplicity allows the user to really understand the math behind the simulations running.
It is fantastic for visualizing data, without being able to properly visualize data is almost useless, MATLAB allows the users to quickly dissect and understand how different data sets affect different variables and so forth.
It has a wide range of supportive documentation and the online community is very active and engaged. If you ever have any problems, you can always count on someone being there to help you understand what is going on.
Cons
I believe the software is quite expensive, so it is not open to independent parties which is a shame as it is fantastic at what it does, if they could find a way to include independent people rather than mass groups, I think it would really benefit a lot of people.
The responsiveness of the software is not always the best and this can be very hindering to the user, especially when working with sensitive data/models.
MATLAB is inefficient in some of its works and sometimes it is not the best tool for the job, there are times when it is quicker to write scripts in Python that run and work much better than they would ever do in MATLAB.
Likelihood to Recommend
There are many specific scenarios where MATLAB is well suited. Researchers
need fast modeling and fast prototypes for data. In a research
environment, new ideas are always popping up so it is important to be
able to distinguish quickly what methods are needed and how to get things
done. Mostly we know in advance what methods will be successful in our
modeling so the only caveat we have is programming time- this is not too
much of a problem, because a lot of time is saved as everything needed
to run a successful simulation is already outlined in MATLAB variety of
functions. I think situations, where MATLAB is less suited, are for people which already can code really well-
or already know languages that outperform MATLAB in certain scenarios,
such as Python. As a general program language, it often un-performs and
although does integrate into other languages such as Fortran, it is quirky
and quite slow for many a task.
MATLAB is used across the whole department and simplifies the handling of mass amounts of information and computations. Previously we would attempt to use Excel, which is okay but makes it much harder to visualize your equations. MATLAB also has a lot more well documents commands/functions that make computations and matrix operations tremendously easier than other comparable software. As an engineer I also think it is actually simpler to use than say Python.
Pros
Creating iterative solvers to arrive to an ideal answer or solution for something like a design or optimization problem
Performing mathematical operations on functions that also have functions nested within them
Plotting both 2d and 3d graphs with well labeled data
Cons
As with many coding software pieces, it sometimes can be tricky troubleshooting errors in your code.
Wish testing particular samples of the code was easier
Likelihood to Recommend
MATLAB really does best for solving computational problems in math and engineering. Especially when you have to use a lot of functions in your solving process, or if you have a nonlinear equation that must be iteratively solved. [MATLAB] can also perform things like integration and derivation on your equations that you put into it.
MATLAB is a program that is frequently used in numerical calculations. Used for testing, simulation and modeling purposes. Thanks to the ready-to-use functions, it enables us to perform many processes quickly in a short time. It is an application that every engineer should know a little. The fact that their indexes are different compared to other applications is a bit of a reflection in code conversions. It allows many operations with many toolboxes. The resources outside the matworks are minimal. In my undergraduate thesis, I wrote my image processing application on matlab. The MATLAB installation takes up a lot of space on the computer, so installing more than one version on one computer at the same time greatly slows down the computer. Arithmetic operations are quite simple compared to other programming languages. matrix operations, function and data drawing, algorithm development, allows user interface creation.
Pros
Less code can be done by writing many operations.
Different library support.
Cons
Installation files take up too much space on the computer.
The computer becomes very slow when MATLAB is on.
All plugins should be free.
Likelihood to Recommend
In 2015, I developed my undergraduate thesis on face recognition in MATLAB. In 2020, I used MATLAB application for my master thesis in image processing. It made my job very easy while implementing my thesis because it has many ready-made functions. Since the necessary documentation was available on MathWorks, I was able to develop applications quickly without using any other resources.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology (5001-10,000 employees)
MATLAB is used as a teaching instrument at the university. We have a class dedicated to the learning of this program. It is the only programming class in the mechanical engineering courses. It is a program used by many companies outside school, so the university is getting us prepared to an extensive use of it.
Pros
Advanced calculus as well as programming, all bundled up together.
Programming language somewhat similar to other programming software.
Intuitive built-in tutorials.
Cons
Even though it is pretty similar to other programming tools, there are some differences that are unique to MATLAB that could be changed, such as index starting at 1 instead of 0.
It would be nice to have premade parts of program, such as counters or comparators.
Sometimes programming can be daunting. Interactive programming tutorials or video playlist for beginners.
Likelihood to Recommend
For a mechanical engineer, MATLAB can be pretty useful for data collection and analysis. It can reveal the X best results from an excel sheet, create a program for manual data entry or plot data. However, it would not be appropriate for more concrete designs, analysis of parts and assembly.
VU
Verified User
Engineer in Research & Development (10,001+ employees)
MATLAB is used for running data analytics, power systems simulations, and optimization studies, often along with third-party platforms like CPLEX and Gurobi.
Pros
User-friendly interface, the learning curve is smooth.
Plotting functions are diverse, can save a figure in an editable format.
Interfaces with many tools in different fields
Subject-specific toolboxes
Cons
Expensive
Bulky, little slow as the size of input data increases
Likelihood to Recommend
MATLAB is well-suited for running proof-of-concept simulations. The learning curve is smooth, so setting up initial experiments is easy. MATLAB is well-respected in the academic community as well as the industry.
MATLAB is primarily used by the geophysics group in our company to understand the geophysical makeup of their wells to add insight for their drilling program.
Pros
The programing language to enable functions is straight forward and fairly intuitive to understand.
MATLAB does have intro lessons to help end-users become familiar with the MATLAB and its specific programming language.
MATLAB has an incredible community of users and challenges to further and help end-users to use MATLAB for leisure and professional purposes.
Cons
More examples of how MATLAB can be used in other functional areas such as Finance and Accounting. I can definitely see how MatLab can be used for mathematics and sciences and other statistical uses but it is readily apparent for other areas.
Likelihood to Recommend
MATLAB is well suite for professionals in the geophysics area in oil and gas industry, actuarial insurance industry, astrophysics professionals, etc.
I'm using MATLAB to do my assignments and projects. MATLAB covers any areas including simulation things, solving complex mathematics problems, machine learning, matrix related calculations. I’m working mainly on machine learning, machine vision, and neural networks. So, I must build prototypes of the footprints of those models. Using MATLAB for prototyping save more coding time than other languages.
Pros
MATLAB helps in simulating and modeling systems. We don’t need much coding knowledge to model/simulate systems. We just need to drag and drop components and connect them. Ideal for math students.
Codes are simple and clear. We don’t want to worry about memory management and other coding rules and regulations. Syntaxes are simple and flexible. There are powerful codes and they can be written in one or two lines.
MATLAB is ideal for making prototypes. As we don’t want to worry about coding, we can focus totally on the math part.
Great tool for visualizing data. As I’m doing projects on data science, I know the importance of visualizing data before developing models.
Cons
There should be a guiding program integrated with the software for beginners.
There should be plugins to import other scripts written in other languages.
MATLAB should allow users to add or remove features. Thee are unwanted features and functionalities for some users.
Likelihood to Recommend
MATLAB is well suited for doing AI stuff such as machine learning, neural networks, machine vision. We can use MATLAB for Simulating and
modeling these systems.
I have been using MATLAB for almost all of my academic stuff. I use it for solving my homework and completing my research. I have used it to do data processing and filtering. I have used the inbuilt artificial neural network models for my work. I used ANN for rainfall-runoff modeling for my research. I have also used it to do earthquake and wind excitation related studies. I have used MATLAB to generate time histories for wind loads and earthquake loads. For all the experiments that I carry out in my research, I use MATLAB for data filtering to remove noise from the obtained experimental results. I have used MATLAB for simple finite element modeling as well.
Pros
It has a very user friendly library which helps users learn this software fairly quickly in a short span of time.
The graphical user interface provided by the software is really good.
The code that a person writes allows options for debugging.
One can visualize the flow of control of their code inside MATLAB.
Cons
I would want for the library to get updated more regularly.
MATLAB uses a lot of computer memory for running heavy simulations. Its performance could certainly be optimized.
Apart from this, I think MATLAB is a very powerful software and helps in almost every scenario of engineering.
Likelihood to Recommend
MATLAB is well suited for data processing and filtering. It can be used well with civil engineering problems related to earthquake or wind engineering. It has a lot of inbuilt models within it. I have used it for Artificial Neural Networks. I have run heavy simulations with MATLAB and the results that I obtained were similar to what I got when I did heavy finite element simulations.
It tends to be used by colleagues who have some form of background in engineering and, hence, are familiar with the software. As a scripting software, it is very versatile and is used to handle sizeable data, do data cleaning, perform statistics and visualize data.
Pros
Very versatile
Good for data wrangling and visualization.
Other domain-specific packages such as SimBiology can be added on top of base MATLAB.
Cons
Can be pricey for non-academic users.
Uses 1-based indexing, unlike many other scripting languages.
Likelihood to Recommend
Well suited when complex calculations including, but not limited to, matrices, multiple dimensions, arrays, etc. are needed. Also, if particular Matlab-based packages are desired. It is, however, expensive for non-academic users, so for simpler tasks, other free open-source software can be considered. Dedicated MATLAB support also comes with the purchase, not to mention many training resources.
VU
Verified User
Analyst in Research & Development (1001-5000 employees)
We use MatLab as our go-to engineering to programming platform. Our whole research procedure is vertically integrated using MatLab - we use MatLab's data acquisition toolbox to collect experimental data; its statistical tool-boxes to perform statistical analysis on the collected data and use its general programming interface to post-process the data and to make multi-physics simulation models to study the observed phenomenon.
Pros
Has robust and easy-to-use debugging tools that can help one identify problems in one's codes.
Rich, well-developed and efficient library of mathematical and statistical functions that one might need to develop models or perform statistical analysis.
A very active online user community that is a great resource in terms of seeking help when you hit a snag.
Great help literature (and sometimes videos too) on all tools making it possible for all to train themselves.
Cons
MatLab is pricier than most of its competitors and because of this reason, many organizations are moving towards cheaper alternatives - mostly Python.
MatLab is inefficient when it comes to performing a large number of iterations. It gets laggy and often crashes. Python is better in this regard.
There is a limited number of hardware options (mostly NI) that can be connected directly to the data acquisition toolbox.
Likelihood to Recommend
My rating would have been an "8" if MatLab was more affordable, but because of its steep price point, and especially after its recent increase in licensing price, I don't feel comfortable recommending my colleagues a tool that I absolutely love and use everyday, but also believe that it is overpriced. Had the price not been an issue, I would've strongly recommended MatLab to all my peers, especially those working in STEM.
