Most of the magazines available in Apple’s Newstand app cost money (in some cases, a lot of money) for subscriptions. However, there are a handful of Newstand magazines that offer everything for free. Below is a list of what I consider to be the top 5 6 free Newstand magazine apps for iPad. For a complete list, check out our forum post.
1. Sporting News
One of my biggest complaints about the App Store is that there aren’t many great sports news apps. That’s why I love the Sporting News iPad magazine (free). It doesn’t offer automatic downloads, but it is available for a daily manual download that’s entirely free. Once downloaded, the issue can be read offline. Sporting News features big full-spread photos and pulls in the articles from AOL’s Sporting News website reformatted in a professional magazine manner (think Flipboard except with more color). If you do read it offline, some of ads and video are missing, so it’s best experienced with an Internet connection, but it’s not required.
Each issue of Sporting News is usually around 100mb, but you can’t store back issues, so there’s no worry about it taking up too much memory. Hey, it’s completely free!
iPad only.
2. Engadget Distro
Engadget Distro (free) is a weekly magazine that features the best writing from Engadget from the past week reformatted into a slick magazine format. It reads just as well as any print tech magazine, so it goes to show the quality of writing being done online these days. The magazine has Retina-friendly graphics for the new iPad. Every issue is completely free, but unfortunately there is no subscription/automatic download, so you manually have to open the app and download each issue one by one. Memory usage is about 100MB for each issue.
iPad Only.
3. Dash Recipes
Dash Recipes (free) is filled with beautiful food photography and accompanying recipes, and it offers free subscriptions delivered once a month. The magazine’s content reminds me of those coffee-table recipe books you used to see in Borders for like $6.99, meaning it’s heavy on the beautiful photos and light on content (mostly photos and recipes with some videos thrown in). But the photography is second to none and looks great on Retina screen.
Dash Recipes is great for collecting recipe ideas and making my mouth water with top-notch food photography.
iPad only.
4. TRVL
TRVL (free) is a travel magazine that is also one of the most popular Newstand apps. Each issue focuses on a destination, so older issues are just as relevant as new. Currently there are 63 issues available for download for free (the Afghanistan issue is the only one that costs money, at $1.99). TRVL is filled with beautiful photos from travel locations around the world (try viewing in landscape to get the stunning full-screen view). The magazine also features travel stories and advice, but the strengths are the photography. I found TRVL is very useful for collecting ideas for vacations.
With TRVL, you have to download each issue one-by-one. There is an option to subscribe for $0.99 a month, which presumably supplies automatic downloads for each issue. The size of each issue is around 150MB. The developers recently updated the last 20 issues to be Retina-screen compatible.
iPad only.
5. GameQ
GameQ (free) is probably the best looking of all the magazines listed here. It’s a gaming magazine from Gamefly, the Netflix-like game subscription service. There is currently only one issue available, but it’s pretty sweet graphics wise. The content is a bit like most print gaming magazines in that it’s very advertorial in style, meaning it’s more about hyping the game than it is about reviewing games. Still, I enjoyed flipping through, seeing the latest games and what they look like. All gaming consoles/platforms are covered, even iOS. And it looks great on a Retina screen. File sizes are huge, however. The new issue is 485MB in size.
iPad only.
6. Huffington Post
Huffington (link) started out as a paid-subscription magazine but has recently gone free. The magazine is essentially a collection of the best longer-form content from the Huffington Post website from the past week reworked into a slick magazine format. You can subscribe and receive automatic downloads every week in Newstand. Each issues weighs in around 200 MB. If a political bias bothers you, Huffington is somewhat of the liberal persuasion, like a counterpoint to the conservative The Daily iPad magazine.
Thrilled to be on your list! A few corrections regarding Distro: it is not iPad only. It is also available for Android tablets on the Google Play store. In addition, Engadget provides an APK for sideloading an issue to your device, and Distro has a PDF version as well.
In addition, Distro IS available through free subscription, does have automatic downloading, and once the issue is downloaded, all articles are readable–you do not have to download articles one by one.
Thank you for the corrections. As for my “iPad Only” claim, on this site, “iPad only” refers to the fact that there is no iPhone version.
I double checked, can’t find the subscription/automatic downloads on the iPad app.
Hey! Check out our magazine http://www.valeomag.com it’s available on App Store & Google Play as a free app & free subscription. We’re a fashion magazine with trends, shopping, runway, beauty… But also a trending section with music, movies, destination, new apps to get and our trending subject of the month.. Check it out and let me know what you think ;)
valeo is a magazine built independently, by my wife and myself – exclusively. We write, photograph, design, program, Everything just us two.. It’s a lot of fun, and we try make share that passion & fun with our readers.
We launched last month and we’d love to get comments from experts
Thanks !!
C
Thanks for adding TRVL to the list. We are now at 80 free issues. I’ll not bore with the reasons why we had to have a (voluntary) 99c subscription option but that has now been removed completely with the launch of our own software – called Prss – to run TRVL. (Two paid photo books remain as revenue raisers.) Being version 1, we still have a few bugs but plan to have them fixed in the next week or so. Any feedback welcomed. That said, we think Prss is a great tool and sets a new standard for how an iPad magazine should function. ;)
PS One of the most notable things about Prss is that issue download sizes are now a fraction of what they were before; from 180MB to 20MB and much less on non-Retina screens. We’ve done that while adding functionality. GameQ looks great, but 480MB!? Such large file sizes are a major problem for the iPad magazine market IMHO.