That one-stop-shopping for creating emails is definitely more streamlined than Dragon’s implementation, and it also exposes one of Vlingo’s handiest features: a record button in the confirmation/edit screen for each of the destinations, allowing you to append or insert new dictation where you need it. Important safety note: while Vlingo isn’t intended for use while driving or during other attention-critical tasks, it’s probably less distracting to speak a few sentences than it is to type them.

Unfortunately, there are one or two drawbacks to the Vlingo fandango. First, there isn’t a raw ‘notepad’ mode, where you can simply dictate text with the intention of copying it to another app. Of course, if you have the $6.99 email module, you can use that for free text entry, but in the free app there’s no direct way to do it except by speaking a Facebook update and then copying instead of sending it (which works fine, by the way).

The second drawback is more consequential, and hopefully one that will be fixed over time; the recognition simply isn’t as good as Dragon’s, at least at the start (in one instance, it misheard “2.0″ as “to porno,” which is certainly spicier). Vlingo’s VP of Consumer Business, Hadley Harris, told me that the app does learn and improve as you use it, both for individual accuracy as it’s corrected and globally as new words are added to the back-end recognition engine.

The good news is, the base app is free, and it’s worth a try to see if it meets your needs as well or better than the Dragon suite, Siri or any of the other voice apps. I’m not sure the email or SMS buy-ups are as good a deal, but that will depend on your individual needs and usage profile.

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