Zinio review

Zinio is a platform for viewing and downloading digital magazines, with a subscription service so they'll always be up to date.

When you first launch the Zinio app, you're taken to the features section. This showcases a feature from a range of magazines to give you a taster. If you like what you see, you can buy a subscription for them.

The next tab is your library where all your subs are displayed. You can tap on the month icons along the left hand side to jump to issues from that month. If you have new issues to download, you'll see a red notification on the Library icon. Tap on an issue to download the update.

The final tab is where you can purchase new subscriptions. The Shop lists magazines by genre. It's a massive shame that you can't search for a specific title, as this would make it much easier to find a publication you're interested in.

You pay for subscriptions using Zinio's billing system - for this you're taken to Zinio's web page in Safari, which is a little bit disappointing considering in-app purchases are now supported. We'd prefer if we could buy them via our iTunes account.

We experienced some crashing when attempting to use the shop, but that's to be expected in these early days of iPad applications.

The magazine viewing UI is pretty basic, although that's certainly no bad thing when you're reading a magazine.

The magazines display in full page, with the pinch function working to zoom in to a page. If you want to jump to a section, you can do so by tapping the screen and a toolbar will appear along the bottom, displaying a miniature version of each double page spread. Scroll along them to navigate to the section or feature you want to read.

Alternatively, you can tap on one of the icons in the top right corner. to find the section you're looking for.The first is gallery view where you can view the whole magazine in thumbnails. The second is list view, which is more like a traditional contents page.

Zinio is a growing e-magazine platform, and although it doesn't offer a massive amount of functionality or range of magazines, we can expect to see a lot more in future with the growth of the e-magazine market.

Zinio info

Ease of use:
Value:
Features:
Overall

Platform: Apple iPad

Cost: Free

Version: 1.2

Developer: Zinio

Website/Demo: Zinio website