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DiscountDelight - Outside
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List Price: $47.40
Our Price: $16.00
Your Save: $ 31.40 ( 66% )
Availability: Usually ships in 6 to 10 weeks
Manufacturer: Outside Magazine
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Magazine
First Issue Lead Time: 6-10
Format: Magazine Subscription
Issues Per Year: 12
Label: Outside Magazine
Magazine Type: Consumer magazine
Manufacturer: Outside Magazine
Number Of Issues: 12
Publisher: Outside Magazine
Studio: Outside Magazine
Subscription Length: 365
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: best travel and adventure magazine
Comment: I am mostly a low energy, armchair traveller but enjoy photography and reading about exciting new places and activities. This magazine has fit all these criterias. Outside focuses on exploring different locales that are extremely exciting as opposed to standard vacation hotspots such as Florida, the Carribbean, or Hawaii. The articles transport you to rafting Victoria Falls, deep water dives in South Africa, Alaskan fishing and hiking, plus lots of remote places such as Dominica or the Seychilles. I love how vibrant and rich the photography is and how well covered the articles are. Mind you there is something wondeful about reading magazines that highlight typical vacation spots, but for the adventuresome who like off the cuff travels, reclusive lodges, eco-villages, and remote islands this would be more your speed.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Outside USED to be good - now its pulp
Comment: (I sent the following letter to their customer service last week)
After about 15 years of getting your magazine, I have decided not to renew my subscription. It is a shame that your once great publication has become such a joke.
After receiving your November issue, and spending 10 minutes removing all the inserts and gimmick ads so I could actually read it, I found no substance. Instead there is a fashion section (yikes), a `hot list' with young barely dressed men and women (hey I'm not against a little sex and skin, but I'll subscribe to Vogue or Maxim for that), an article about Larry David's wife that might as well have come from People magazine, an Aussie travelogue that I am convinced their tourist board paid for, all sandwiched in between so many ads for monster SUVs and other crap that you need a compass and a map just to keep up with where the articles worth reading continue from one page to the next.
What happened to the great writers like Krakauer? What happened to having any environmental conscience? Where are the stories of adventure that are real and make you want to go there? Maybe I am just getting older than your current demographic. I haven't lost my sense of adventure, which is why I live in Durango CO and spend a lot of time outdoors. I used to look to your magazine for inspiration. Now I half expect the cover to tout stories on `killer abs'. You've become the Clear Channel of the outdoor magazine world.
Get real again and I may come back.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Inconsistent
Comment: Outside Magazine and I have had an up and down relationship for many years. At times, Outside seduces me with great journalism, awesome photos, and fun facts. I've loved its fearless tackling of environmental issues and its ability to transport me to truly exotic places. At other times, i question its journalistic integrity, emphasis on the latest and greatest gear, and shameless trumpeting of past successes. At times the advice it gives also seems more aimed at insecurities (you need this gear to be successful, you need to live HERE to live a fulfilling life) than I think a magazine focusing on fun in the outdoors should.
Cases in point:
- I'm not sure what criteria it uses for recommending gear but at times I question whether the recommendations come because a certain company is an advertiser or because the editors truly believe that a certain bike, watch, pair of sunglasses are really all that. I don't get the sense that recommendations come as the result of rigorous field testing a la Backpacker Magazine, etc. Also the gear tends to be super expensive. Whatever happened to just enjoying the outdoors via the John Muir approach: just taking off with the clothes on your back and the nearest snack at hand? Because I live in a mountain town I see this ridiculous emphasis on having Just The Right Gear/Clothing for every occasion all the time. It's a little silly.
- Recycling or contradictory fitness advice. Outside did an outstanding series back in 1999 about achieving total fitness but then in subsequent issues redirected its fitness programs under the same type of heading (Achieve your best fitness now!) that made me wonder if they're just running with current fads. I know a magazine has to really work at staying fresh but I think consistency is the best approach here.
- Dudes---John Krakauer wrote a great series and subsequent book about the tragedy on Everest in 1996. But that ship has sailed. If that's the only hook you can hang your hat on the magazine's got problems. We get that your magazine took the lead on that story. Stop reminding us of it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Image vs. Content
Comment: I'm not sure who's at the helm of this operation but I'd be willing to bet they don't get Outside too often. Not to be too cynical about it, but I just don't find this mag to be as USEFUL as it was before. If you like LOTS of articles on who the coolest extreme sports stars are, how they got their abs, and what gear they're wearing, subscribe NOW. The magazine looks amazing, the photography is top notch and they still manage to come up with a thorny article on the environment periodically. But for my money, it just feels like the editorial staff has been plucked from New York image mags that do one thing really well - SELL. I read National Geographic Adventure, and unlike Outside, I USE IT for information because it has CONTENT.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Informative Mag for the Adventurous
Comment: I've been a subscriber to Outside magazine for several years, and it seems to go through its ups and downs in terms of the strength of its editorial content, especially regarding the political side of environmentalism. It is still easily the most informative magazine out there for lovers of the outdoors, but just note that the focus is on active, not armchair, appreciation of nature. Beyond the occasionally great and always heavily knowledgeable product reviews, the key strength of this magazine is the well-written and strongly researched articles on outdoor issues of concern, not just in America but around the world. An outstanding recent example, among many, concerns the economics of environmentalism in the conservative Western U.S. This is the type of strong conservationist reporting that can usually only be found otherwise in books. Other more whimsical articles are just fun to read for those with off-kilter interests, such as recent pieces on urban rock climbing or sauna fanatics in Finland.
Many other articles could be classified more as travel/tourism than adventure, but the accompanying photography is always top-notch, and the editors have a knack for finding out-of-the-way hidden treasures around the world that are ripe for discovery by the adventurous. (But on the other hand, the magazine could be faulted for contributing to the recent trend of hyping previously unknown outdoor paradises that have since become crowded, such as Molly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia.) Personally, I would like to see a little less focus on expensive vacations that extreme sports fanatics can take in hard-to-reach nations, and more on what folks with more realistic means (and amounts of free time) can do in humble parks and forests near home. But despite its habit of losing its focus at times, I will continue to be a fan of Outside for years to come, and might just travel to some of those hyped exotic adventure locations. [~doomsdayer520~]
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Editorial Reviews:
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For active young adults who enjoy contemporary outdoor sports, science, travel & wildlife & are concerned with the use of the environment & other natural resources.
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