Magzter | Online Magazine Shop | Unbiased Personal Reviews

It is said that day by day we are loosing interest in reading. What do you think? Well, my personal opinion is, at some extent it could be true, but not entirely.

Actually people are driven more towards exploring various alternative and innovative ways to read books, magazines, newspaper and other stuff. Internet is proving boon for such avid readers for sure. Consider a fellow who is interested in reading a newspaper from his/her hometown to get updates about the current situation there, while visiting some foreign country. He will definitely explore it over the Internet. Almost all remarkable newspapers (including regional ones) are having their digital presence on Internet. They make e-paper available for interested readers, which is pretty good.

Same way, e-books is proving itself a good competitor for printed books without a doubt. Kindle played a vital role in this revolution. The books are available to purchase instantly and you can carry them with you without any baggage. Even at home, you don’t need extra storage for that. And they do provide application for Android and iOS device, making it available on virtually every smartphone.

Magzter and it’s Gold Offer

Magzter is a remarkable player in this arena, when it comes digital copies of magazines. If you are willing to explore various magazine on your Smartphones, you can purchase digital copy of the magazine (if available) from their online store. For many magazines they do offer subscription also.

Recently we got one offer from Magzter, to try their Gold plan free for 30 days! (Well, it is available publicly on their website). So we thought to give it a try (though we prefer physical copies of magazine). Our vision was to explore a new experience. And, here are what we think about what we have explored so far.

One more reason we have decided to give Magzter app a try is Reader’s Digest magazines. As a regular reader of ThinkerViews you know that we have so far reviewed various issues of only two magazines, Safari and Reader’s Digest (India edition). As our subscriber’s copy for Reader’s Digest isn’t reaching us regularly these days, we are unable to post reviews for the same regularly.

As a Gold member you are allowed to explore the past issues of several magazines including Reader’s Digest; we will likely be posting the reviews for even miss issues in coming days.

Reading on website

It is a fantastic experience to explore so many quality magazines on their website (http://magzter.com). The layout is pretty simple and effective. The fonts are good and they uses a technology to prevent users from downloading PDF version (or soft copy in any other version) for any of the magazine issues. Their technology is good and it works on securing their data from bulk download.

For the same reason, whenever you want to read any magazine online at Magzter, you need to be connected to the Internet. You cannot view the content offline.

The bookmarking, sharing, my magazines, news,… etc are the sections available on Website and App in almost similar manner, so let us explore them in next section.

Reading on App

Note: We have explored it our iPhone 4.

Exploring various sections is quite easy. The interface is user friendly and clutter free. Choosing magazine is quite easy. You have search option to quickly find what you are looking for.

Actually, When you are logged in, it asks you your favorite categories and the magazined grouped and classified by those categories are available on your dashboard. This is one of the most useful part of the app.

Reading on the mobile device is not a very user friendly experience as the fonts will appear very small. You can zoom, but then reading each line by dragging content from left to right is very unfriendly. We found that Kindle content always adjust according to the device and gives best reading experience. There is no other digital book/magazine format we found so far which can beat it. To make a remarkable place in reader’s heart Magzter need to work on this area.

You can select a part of content (we found it difficult to clip it on the edges) and clip it.

The clip can be saved on the device and shared via other tools. Reader will enjoy this feature.

Sharing, Printing and Clipping Options

Nowadays sharing on social media become almost an essential part for any content. Magzter provides you various option to let you share anything you are reading easily.

Save on device to view offline later:

This is “app only” feature. You can save (download) any magazine you like to view later. These saved magazines would be available even when you are offline. It is a good choice when you are travelling to somewhere where you might not have internet connection available and you want to read magazine at your leisure.

And yes, there is a section of Free content where there are remarkable number of magazines available so even if you are not a paid member then also there is a plenty of stuff available for you to explore.

Summary:

Overall more hits and few misses. It is definitely worth to go for. And as the Gold plan is still available for free to explore you should give it a chance. The actual price of the Gold plan is also comparatively cheap especially when you compare it with the content available for it. The only thing we wish is the reading experience should be like Kindle book formats.

Are you using Magzter app/website? What are your experiences? Do you wish to explore it?

Do not forget to share this information with your friends, especially the ones who love reading. As this is a limited period offer and reading buffs may not want to give it a miss.