Artfahie

I get way too much stuff in the mail as it is, but I'm looking to bring some arm-chair cycling into my home and wonder if there is a preferred magazine among enthusiasts like you folks. I know these are just opinions... but you never know unless you ask !... Art in Maine

JanMM

I don't currently read any cycling magazines on a regular, or semi-regular, basis, but I do read much online about bikes.

Artfahie

Me too, but the ads and new release news is nice to have around when you're tire if looking at internet.

rekmeyata

Another me to in regards to not reading magazines, I read the internet myself. Magazine articles have become shorter as the years gone by so they could make room for more advertisements, what use to be endepth articles are now summaries, and then because these same magazines dedicate so much space for ads, and so many companies place ads that it makes it nearly impossible to do a review on a product and cut it down without fear of losing an endorsement which means losing money. This problem is with all magazines now cycling or something else, there may be a couple of exceptions like the Adventure Cyclists mag, and the Bicycle Times mag, but that's as far as I know.

16 Tons

I used to like Winning magazine and Velo News. I know Velo has a website, but Winning is long gone. I think the biggest problem with trying to keep a publication today is that not much in cycling has changed over the past 20 years or so. The other is, with so many knock-offs, it's hard to review one brand against the rest. How many times can you captivate an audience with a pedal review? New handlebars? There are TONS of them out there. Where do you start?
It reminds me a bit of electronic music gear limping for two decades and not until things went back to analog that there was something to report.

rekmeyata

That is a problem of course but gear in cycling is changing at a far greater pace than music gear, and the same will happen to analog once it runs the wheel on magazines. It's funny about analog, I knew for years, due to knowing people that owned recording studios, that analog was superior, but trying to convince people of that was a very steep uphill battle. There was one digital media that actually could have been better than anything but they never went to it, and that was placing music on DVD's instead of CD's due to a lot more information could be put on a DVD, but the furthest that ever got was music videos, unfortunately the music itself was compressed to the same size as a CD to make room for the video which defeated the purpose of sound quality. A lot of recording stars today are now master recording on both now, digital and analog. Recording studios liked digital technology when it first came out because they could now put all sorts of computerized "instruments" into the recording and most people would never know it, and they could take a singer who has problems reaching certain notes and the computer would automatically take over for the shortcomings of the singer, this why a lot concerts either have the singer lip syncing, or they crank up the instruments higher than the singer so you can't tell if the singer fails to make the grade, but hey as long as that singer looks sexy and can dance who cares if they can sing! The computer later in the recording studio will make them sing just fine.

badger1

Depends what you are looking for. Most of the English-speaking ones (NA and UK) are dreck and/or illiterate, unfortunately. By 'dreck' I mean that they typically consist of 'lifestyle/fitness' crap articles that seem to be repeated on an annual cycle ("You Can Have Guads of Steel This Summer"), along with "bike reviews" that are shilling for a manufacturer and/or written in a kind of anthropomorphic jargon that is risible (" ... the bike seemed to want to surge between my mighty guads as it thrust uphill, leaving my riding partners shattered in its wake ... "; "... it cornered as if it knew where I wanted to go before I did ...").

That said, a few that are reasonably good:

Mtb: Bike (U.S.; very good articles/photography; emphasis on people/places)
Road: Peloton (U.S.; could use better copy-editing, but consistently interesting); Rouleur (U.K.)

Leebo

What kind of biking do you do? I subscribe to Dirt Rag, Bicycle Times and Bike. Like them all. YRMV.

obed7

don't read any of them... just can not see paying for 65 pages of advertising and 8 to 10 paragraphs of biking fluff.

ThermionicScott 

+1. I get enough ads online these days.

Stucky

All cycling magazines [make that 'most magazines, period'] are little more than marketing propaganda and an excuse to get advertising in front of the eyes of a specific audience. Most of the various tests, reviews, etc. are calculated to make advertisers look good, or advance features which are common on many new bikes, in order to stimulate sales across the board; and ultimately, to make you want more and more junk, and to make you believe that what you bought yesterday is out-dated and cheesy, and that you're laughable if you don't have the very latest one!

A forum like this provides much better info than any magazine ever could. Even here, you'll get some opinions from some who have been influenced by the marketing/magazines, but you can usually seperate those quite easily from the real-world opinions of those who do their own thinking and draw their own conclusions.

Had to take a relative to a doctor a while back, and I found a copy of Cycling in the waiting room. I was utterly amazed that anyone would waste good money on such a publication. It was utterly worthless; clearly just in existence to sell advertising, and make it's readers drool over the latest & greatest expensive crap.

cobyrne

I've enjoyed the writing in Bicycle Quarterly. It provides a nice mix of ride reports, history, and gear reviews.

techsensei

If you join the League of American Bicyclists at the $70 advocate level, you will "Increase your support for bicycling advocacy, and receive the League's American Bicyclist along with your choice of up to four digital magazine subscriptions - Bicycling, Bicycle Times, Dirt Rag and Momentum. You'll also get discounts at dozens of participating businesses."

Cychologist

I still take Bicycling but usually am finished with it in 15 minutes. It does keep up with the trends, if nothing else through their ads.

i used to take Velo News to keep up with the pro circuit, but the Internet makes that obsolete.

Bicycle Times is a different mag. I enjoy from time to time. Frequently buy it when traveling.

if you really want a mag., look into those three.

rekmeyata

Not only did I get sick and tired of ads in magazines and online like you but I got so fed up with ads on TV that now take up about a third of the show time, but if that wasn't enough time for them they have to throw up splash ads in the middle of the freaking show! So I cut cable because I'm not spending all that money to watch ads, and then I had a outside antenna put up (with a separate FM antenna) so I can watch ads for free, and I also subscribe to Netflix and watch all sorts of TV shows without any ads which as a bonus cuts down on the viewing time because a one hour show is done in about 40 minutes.

What pisses me off now about the internet is that I have several ad blockers but in the last 4 to 6 months the internet has defeated all of them and now I get pop ups all the time with no way to stop them. In addition I now go to some sites and the sites won't display unless I turn off the ad blocker!

All this advertising gets maddening. And with magazine subscriptions and cable companies losing business because of all the ads, you would think they would stop a lot of it.

rydabent

Sad to say that most of the cycling magazines anymore are picture books that are mainly just full of ads.

drlogik 

I like Peloton. Well done magazine and the only one I subscribed to.

16 Tons

Track expansion was another big appeal in the early days. Now almost everyone has a 64 track board but still have to have thousands of dollars in compressors make it sound warm again in PP

fietsbob

Consensus? No.

deapee

On the iphone app, you get Bicycling on there. So I will browse through that one once a month. Sometimes there's interesting stuff in there.

I must say that for me, as well as a lot of others, the internet just kind of killed the magazine movement.

I remember heading to the grocery store with my mom when little just to pick up the latest magazine in whatever I was into that month...now, everything is a click away.

16 Tons

Bike shops used to sell all the best mags. Not any more. Not around here anyway.

milkbaby

For road cycling, Ride Cycling Review from Australia is awesome. If I remember correctly, it's quarterly and half of the content is pro cycling and the other half is tech and reviews. Tour magazine from Germany is often cited the best for road bike reviews, but I find that Ride is actually even more thorough (plus Tour is only available in German). Ride disassembles every bike they get in to review, weighs each part, measures stiffness of the frame in a jig, and has multiple riders ride each bike reviewed for multiple viewpoints.