Popular Mechanics

The 'content interest' factor has gone down a lot... no longer fun to read.
Also in their cost-saving effort, the print size is now way too small... I increased my reading glasses to 2.5 (from 2.0) just to read the print which didn't help much... It gives me a headache to read it. THIS IS THE ONLY MAGAZINE THAT HAS GONE THIS ROUTE OF DECREASING THE FONT SIZE. Will not be renewing! SAD

Their articles on LNG trains and hurricane threat to the Houston ship channel were so shallow, one-sided and ignorant that they give journalism a bad name.

I'm nearing my 70th birthday soon and memories of this magazine are very strong. I remember years ago reading my father's Popular Mechanic magazines and sometimes building projects from the Magazine with him. Over the years Popular Magazine slowly fade away and I stopped buying it. So last October I purchased a new subscription hoping to see they had improved it a little. Finally, after 2 months of waiting the January issue arrived. I was excited to see the de Havilland Mosquito on the cover but soon after reading through the magazine I wanted to throw it away. What have they done to this magazine? The magazine is nothing more than a book of advertisement's, page after page. At my age I cannot believe I did not do my review on Popular Mechanics. Anyway, getting to the point I would like to express my extreme sorrow I threw my money away on this magazine. Do the Owners or editors read these reviews? Guess not!

The magazine contains very few articles from the website. The magazine features none of the headlining articles on the website. It's a completely disjointed customer experience that begs the question "why even offer a print version at all?" I suppose it's simply for the nostalgia of having a print version. When I was a kid I remember the magazines being so robust and chalked full of cool stuff, now their just a shell. Skip the print subscription and pay the extra $20 for the all access pass to the website instead. You'll get what you paid for.

Now you can find medical articles and even recipies. They've lost their way. It's become more of a woman's magazine with articles related to anything but mechanical, tools, and popular fixs

I thought I was loosing my vision, I could not read the popular mechanics articles. I then layed out a article beside a article in readers digest. The font in popular mechanics is about 60% of their size. Making the magazine worthless. The articles have became also worthless. I am a thirty year client. Bye.

If engineers they have failed to take the Ethical course. The fact where they do not use physical laws nor logic to prove their statements seem a bit unethical from a professional

I have subscribed for years and always renew my subscription. The continuing phone calls from a call center to my job and personal email to buy gift subscriptions has reached the end of my patients. I had found out that my last time I resubscribed I had been put on an Automatic re-up. I cancelled that, then started the phone calls and emails. Very unfortunate. My subscription will probably never be renewed because of this. Shame PM can't just give a customer what they want!

This is awful. Truly awful. Everything looks so professional, you think you're getting a steal. Hell no. For starters, everything is misinformation. If you check their sources, reviewers mark them as awful. Secondly a lot of their $#*! you have to pay for. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, ITS A BLOODY SCAM. I created an account to get the PRO membership and received a valid email. When I forgot my password, they told me my account didn't EXIST. To make matters worse, the only way you can actually contact them through a proper link is by actual mail! Their email link doesn't WORK at all. I will never ever read this magazine or anything else by Hearst AGAIN!

Ive bought this magazine for 30 years off and on, always good how to articles, interesting mechanics tool review. The TRASH POPULAR MECHANICS free gift mag that was delivered last week was nothing like it was in times gone by. Stupid Articles like " Jessie James lost Gold" or Wood working tool review that lacked depth...and...Unless you own a Classic Morgan Auto Worthless. Oh yea there was a 3 page Article on the THE DEAD AND HOW TO EMBOMB... No *hit it was in the mag. Sad Sad Sad you have destroyed a great mag.

The website has contact button, but it doesn't work. Guess they don't want to hear any critique of their content...
Pop mech used to be a great magazine, but no more. They only have green new deal crap, and the latest is a 10 page listing of their most influential tools...I know what these are, it's just filler for no relevant content. Sad to see a 100+ year old magazine go this way.

Their recent podcast on UFOs is a puff piece that shows very little critical thinking when examining this issue.

While some articles might be completely well factchecked and well written, there is clearly little oversite as to who can post what. Popular Mechanics has no issue publishing nonsense such as (https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/moon-mars/a*******/mushrooms-on-mars-nasa-photos-life-on-mars/). The article is not satire even though this whole mushrooms on mars thing is a hoax and to date has not been taken down or amended. While I understand it can be difficult to know if something is real, the lack of fact checking is beyond reasonable for a publication to associated itself with anything close to science.

Keep passing away from this kind of site, unless it's OK for you to be deemed miserable and mislaid, forget it right away!

Can the content of a single magazine span topics such as how to build a garden shed, through to the discovery of a new marine virus, and smoothly move on to which jet fighter the USA is likely to attack Libya with? Indeed it can, and without any apparent connection to the magazine's title. Odd. And that's my overall opinion of this publication, which really does feature the article on how to build a garden shed, even though it dates back to 2004 and includes a reader comment that it's the worst "how-to" he's ever seen.

Under the very thin excuse that weapons are "tools", the current edition jumps into the field of tabloid speculation, pondering on which weapons, sorry, tools of destruction from America's arsenal will be used to attack Libya, if the Americans happen to choose the same ones as Popular Mechanics and if the Americans attack Libya anyway, which at the time of writing is far from certain. It's all a far cry from building that shed, unless it's bombproof, of course.

The local library has a copy of this magazine which dates back to July 2010, nine months ago at the time of writing, which is about a week after the Japanese earthquake and nuclear disaster. It just happens to be the last issue of this magazine that the library has on its shelves, which is unfortunate for the editors of Popular Mechanics since the cover, which features "The Truth About Energy" with "No More Hype" includes a highlighted "Why Nuke Power Is Safe (Really)".

Inside the magazine, we're told that it's a "myth that nuclear power isn't a safe solution" to the world's energy problems. Coal and petroleum, it continues, are a lot deadlier, especially to coal miners and people living in the Gulf of Mexico. "The amount of radiation put out by a coal plant far exceeds that of a nuclear power plant" says a retired nuclear physicist.

Another source is the deputy associate director of a nuclear lab, who observes that "people are willing to reconsider the benefits of nuclear energy." and the article ends with another criticism of coal plants and the suggestion that all we need is "a few hundred nuclear facilities" to supply almost all our energy needs here in the USA.

The rest of this several-page article tackles all sorts of energy solutions, including ethanol and switchgrass (maybe, one day, but barely feasible), wind power (inconsistent and limited, but worth bearing in mind), algae biofuels (too expensive, too complicated for now), tidal power (too soon to give up, but...), clean coal (don't be stupid), deep geothermal (odds on serious earthquakes are very low) shale (forget it) and finally, solar power (wow, this one actually works, and you get your money back eventually). All this is good stuff and it's presented in a friendly, accessible way, but after the nuclear section, I wouldn't have bothered with the rest if I hadn't been reviewing it. It may all be accurate and useful. I'm no longer interested.

The current online issue does feature an interesting article on toxic plume prediction, with no further praise of the safety of nuclear power in general. It doesn't always screw up, and it can handle bigger science than which bagless upright vacuum cleaner works best (as it happens, another contentious review). I can't see the need for it to get involved in promoting its own energy agenda or speculating on war in the Middle East. If it had stuck to teaching people how to wire their ceiling fittings and grow their lawns, it would have got a better mark from me.