Outside Mag

[Greyhound]

I hope I am not offending anybody, but I just picked up the Outside Magazine Gear Guide, and what a load of crap! This is the most worthless gear guide ever. Backpackers gear guide was better, but also pretty unsubstancial. Anybody else checked either of these out, or is it time to give up on Magazines and stick to the internet :rolleyes: ?

[GreatDivide14]

Oh, believe me, you're not offending anyone. (In an earlier thread, I actually recommended Outside to someone, with the qualifying statement that it's useless to anyone who actually does anything outside and is all about the pretty pictures.) I've occasionally admitted, usually in a penitent tone, that I still subscribe to Backpacker, but the abomination that is their latest gear guide will cause me to cancel my subscription. I'll miss knowing about all the latest Things, but the magazine is a festering pile of crap. The gear reviews used to be comprehensive, detailed, and meaningful; now, they have a lot less substance, but they're using more colors of ink on every page, that's for sure. Quasi-philosophical musings through a backpacker's eyes used to be interesting; compared with Jon Dorn's beautiful account of a miserable solo trip through Alaska's Lake Clark NP (Feb 1999, a truly great issue), I want to retch as I read their latest saccharine soliloquoy on a thru-hiker with a dark past. (It could have been interesting, but seriously, Hayden Christensen romancing an interplanetary senator is less awkwardly written.) And don't get me started on this infernal "Social Climber" bit where I learned that the <B>FANNY PACK</B> I've taken up so many peaks is unfashionable. The inexcusable recent gear guide is vaguely worthwhile in that it offers so many figures on so many pieces of gear, but the same service is available at their website at no charge. So yeah, most of the magazines out there are useless. You'd probably have a hard time getting anyone here to argue otherwise.

[Greyhound]

So are there any good magazines out there? And I was thinking, is the reason behind the drop in quality in gear reviews a fundemental flaw: each year they have to come up with a new favorite, even if last years is still better? I guess I should have seen it coming after watching the OLN programs with Outside Magazine's name attatched.
I would like to eventually work in journalism, preferably about the outdoors, but now I don't know...

[Hiker Boy]

Gone are the days where I relied on magazines for their gear reviews and guides. There was a time when BP mag supplied tables and tables of usefull stats in their annual gear guide. I found it quite helpfull when comparing items because I didn't have to take a lot of time and effort researching the info online. Now the magazine reviews and gear guides seem to be no more than shallow advertizements for a dwindling number of products . I generally get most of my gear info online from two or three select sites or from the sales people at the local gear store.

[NoKnees]

Current "outdoor" magazines are definitely falling short of expectation, and the gear guides are without a doubt the biggest let down of them all. I too used to look forward to that issue alone, and keep in handy until the next one came out. It used to be a reliable one-stop reference book that outlasted everything else on my coffee table.. (or bathroom magazine pile more accurately).

So having said that, what sites, other than the manufacture's own site, do you folks turn to for quick product reviews and stats?

Oh, and manufacturer sites seem to be getting worse too. Harder and harder to find relevant info on a lot of gear...

[GreatDivide14]

I fear there aren't any really good sources like the old gear guides. The current BP gear guide is available at their web site, with a poorly designed search feature that at least makes it sort of useful for comparison shopping. Manufacturer's web sites are one of the best sources of info, but as you've observed, they aren't consistently useful. I've done most of my research through places like backpackgeartest.org and the reveiws here at Outdoorreview. Sadly, none of these are anywhere near as good as a real, detailed head-to-head review like BP used to do. It seems like at this point, the best option is to learn about pack suspensions and parabolic seams and the fundamentals of heat loss, then head to the local store to count stitches.

[Hiker Boy]

I completely agree. Nothing beats the old BP Gear Guides. To be honest, I don't completely trust most online owner reviews because all too often they become nothing more than validations for purchases rather than honest objective reviews. The only time I will take owner reviews seriously is when there is a consensus amongst many reviewers. I go to sites like backpacking.net, backpackgeartest.org, or backpackinglight.com for info.

[ND Sol]

I hope I am not offending anybody, but I just picked up the Outside Magazine Gear Guide, and what a load of crap! This is the most worthless gear guide ever. Backpackers gear guide was better, but also pretty unsubstancial. Anybody else checked either of these out, or is it time to give up on Magazines and stick to the internet :rolleyes: ?

And to top it off, Outside is hypocritical. They have as a big tag line on the front of the May 2005 issue about the different persons who are "Anti-Enviros" that have the Clout and are Winning, when about half of the ad space in the issue is for SUV's, pickups or performance cars.