Australian Dirt Bike Mag Reviews

Australasian Dirt Bike Magazine

ADB is arguably the leading dirt bike mag here in Australia, it's been around for over 25 years. I've been a long time reader, ADB is the only magazine I actually have a subscription to, and over that time I've heard stories about the editors being 'cliquey' with particular bike manufacturers. I don't know how true that is, readers will write in asking about it but obviously the editors will say they're not, but I've found the magazine to be fairly even handed with bike reviews and shootouts etc.

One thing I will have a whine about though is the amount of ads creeping into not just ADB but all of the dirt bike mags. I've heard them defend it saying that it's the advertiser's money coming in that pays the bills and I'm sure that's true to a point but I'm forking out 6 or 7 bucks to buy the mag as well so where's that money going? The same goes for their website (www.adbmag.com), there's banner ads top and bottom of every page, block ads partway down the page and also annoying little video ads popping up as well. I make a dollar or two from advertisers right here on my site myself but I try to make sure that it doesn't become too intrusive for my visitors, you visit a website to look at their content, not be bombarded with, what are in a lot of cases, unrelated advertisements.

Now that I've gotten that off my chest ADB follows a pretty standard formula for a dirt bike mag. They have bike test and shootouts, these vary between road registerable enduro and offroad bikes as well as motocross bikes.

There's product reviews as well as long term test bikes, these are more pertinent to your average reader than a review that's done on a brand new product and then left at that. By using a product or riding and racing a bike for a period of time and then reviewing it I think you get a lot more useful information about the quality/longevity/faults/performance of a product or bike.

ADB has a group of rider columnists, Chad Reed has been a longtime contributor to ADB and there are also columns from younger Aussie riders who are racing overseas as well as riders racing here at home.

Overall Australasian Dirt Bike magazine is a good choice for a reader who wants to read not just about motocross but other disciplines of off road as well as trail riding, they have a good tech section towards the back of the magazine as well, it has handy tips on maintenance and bike/suspension tuning.

Dirt Action

Dirt Action also pretty much follows the standard formula for a dirt bike mag, they also have their regular rider columnists as well as bike tests for motocross as well as competiton offroad and trail bikes and again you have to wade through a few pages of ads first up.

The magazine has reports from race meetings, not just motocross but enduro and off road and desert racing as well as articles on places to ride legally off road. There's profile interviews with riders, team managers or industry figures and gossip and tid bits from the dirt bike scene.

I used to be a regular reader of Dirt Action a few years ago and one of the things I liked best about it was that it had an irreverent edge, they weren't afraid to, if you'll pardon the expression, take the piss out of other mags (namely ADB) or bike manufacturers. That seems to be gone now and the mag has become more sanitised which is a bit of a shame because some of the stuff they used to go on with was pretty funny.

The photography in Dirt Action and ADB is first class, they obviously have some talented photographers on the payroll, quality photography makes such a big difference to how a magazine looks.

Stroke

Stroke is Australia's only dirt bike mag that's dedicated purely to motocross and has only been around for a little while. It's not as slick as ADB or Dirt Action but focusing only on motocross will win it a few fans who have no interest in the other facets of off road racing or riding. It still seems to be finding its feet, the issue I reviewed had a few typos and grammar errors and it isn't as polished as the bigger mags, but for purely motocross news and interviews it does a fair job.

There are some other dirt bike mags on the Australian market but they tend to focus just on their own niche, ie. just trail riding or adventure riding as they also call it. The mags reviewed above are the main publications covering offroad competition, motocross and trail riding.

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