Nice, but could be improved.
Written: Jan 28 '01 (Updated Jan 28 '01)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Great tips on safety and good gear reviews, interactive.
Cons: Too many ads, same destinations always featured, too U.S. oriented.
The Bottom Line: Very informative and serious magazine, featuring great equipment and travel destination reviews.
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| Raf_K's Full Review: Rodale's Scuba Diving Magazine |
I've started subscribing to Rodale's Scuba Diving about four months ago. The main reason I became a subscriber is because the newstands here in Switzerland don't carry this magazine, so for me this was the only way to get it. I was pleased to find out the magazine often features informative guides to buying various types of gear. It tells you what to look for when shopping and they're constantly featuring articles on new gear that comes out.
Another nice thing about Rodale is that each issue has at least one destination featured, with many pictures and dive sites. There's a little problem though: it seems to me these travel articles are almost always on the same destinations. I have yet to see a travel article that doesn't feature Belize, Cayman Islands, Bonaire or Cozumel. The Caribbean seem to monopolize all the attention. I understand that they are the closest tropical waters American divers can jump into. But they seem to ignore altogether beautiful places like the Red Sea, Asia and Southern Africa. Not to mention that there are rarely articles about non-tropical diving, such as ice-diving, cave-diving or dry-suit diving along the coasts of Washington State, Northern England or the Mediterranean. For that I think the magazine tends to become repetitive and loses interest among non U.S. divers.
Nevertheless, for those who are interested in diving in the Caribean, this magazine is just about perfect: each issue carries a good list of budget options for tropical diving, and good lists of diving operators.
The articles on safety are also interesting, and there are always case studies presented, so hopefully divers will learn from their fellow's unfortunate experiences.
Another great thing about this magazine is that it interacts with its readers. Reader's questions are always answered in the magazine, either by experts or fellow divers. Just recently I've received an e-mail from the magazine where they ask their readers to choose on their web-site among a list and pick the articles they'd like to see featured in the next issue. I found that was really great, not to mention that their web-site is a great complement to the magazine, with quizzes, competitions and past articles.
The main complaint fellow readers seem to have is the fact that there are just too many ads. While I couldn't disagree, I must admit that find a certain amount of ads pretty useful so you can do you shopping (most of the advertisers have web-sites). It is not obvious for a reader just to pick an operator out of the blue, and the ads give them at least the opportunity to check out what's on offer. It is true that the amount of ads can be overwhelming, but then, no one's forced to read them and the quality of the articles more than make up for this flaw.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
Raf_K
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 - Top 1000 |
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Member: Rafael K
Location: London, UK
Reviews written: 101
Trusted by: 49 members
About Me:
Back after a long work-inflicted absence.
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