With the Ipad’s release and its slim sleek design it makes for a perfect device to read the newspaper, magazines, web sites, and many more. The Ipad has brought us plenty of apps, some allow simplified access to web sites, and some allow streaming contact directly from Netflix or sites like abc.com. Even Ibooks allow you to buy books, download them onto your device and read them as you go. Zinio is banking on this new device by releasing an app that allows you to purchase subscriptions to your favorite magazines you would find at the news stand and receive them on your iPad.

Zinio has a very simple interface, when first launched it loads and displays a list of months on the left side that are clickable and on the main contact section you can see what magazines you have. The display shows the cover of each magazine. With the download you are given a free copy of Mac world and national geographic for the month of April and a copy of car and driver for the month of May. At the bottom of the app you can see a shop icon where you can go to browse all the magazines Zinio offers and purchase the subscriptions or individual magazines strait from the app. All your subscriptions are stored and automatically updated when new are released if you have paid for a subscription for that magazine that has multiple issues. If you want to go back and read that PC Magazine issue that was released in April it will be there for you to review.

Browsing and purchasing an individual issue or subscription is very simple. Once you click on shop it brings you to a screen that allows you to filter out magazines by topic. You can also look at new arrivals or top sellers. Once you find the magazine you want just click on it. The next screen will give you a description of the magazines content and let you choose between buying just the newest issue or getting multiple issues for a subscription price. As always buying a subscription is significantly lower than a single issue. For example an issue of Us Weekly runs $3.99 but you can get 52 for $67.08, a savings of $140.40.

At the main screen once you click on the cover of one of the magazines it takes you to a full screen view of that cover, you can view it in portrait mode for one page at a time or landscape to see two pages at a time. A swipe to the left takes you to the next page in the magazine and a swipe to the left take you to the previous page. When you take anywhere on the page at the bottom a list of page pictures pops up and you can swipe left or right to jump from page to page. It will not load the next page until you tap on the page you want. At the top you can have the option to go back to the library see a large view of each individual page or see a list of seconds by page number.

This app is perfect for replacing those magazine subscriptions you get every month in the mail or purchasing a single month to view on the go. The list of magazines you can purchase is quite extensive including; Maxim, Us Weekly, Esquire, Popular Mechanics, and many more. Magazines are added all the time. The down side is the gaming magazine selection is very slim. You also have access to magazines that are not published in the states. I don’t recommend purchasing a Japanese published magazine unless you can read Japanese, because that is an option. I am really excited to see what magazines are coming next and looking forward to ditching my game informer subscription that comes in the mail when and if it is ever added to the already huge library that Zinio offers.

the tribe here at emagascene is working with Zinio to help make your quest for knowledge even better. Stay tuned!