Sinclair User

Overview

Sinclair User — usually shortened to SU — was the longest-running monthly magazine dedicated to the ZX Spectrum and its Sinclair predecessors. It launched in April 1982 under ECC Publications, covering the ZX81 from issue one and pivoting to Spectrum coverage when the new machine arrived later that year. It ran for 135 issues before closing in May 1993 — making it, by a small margin, the platform's longest-lived British monthly.

Where CRASH treated the Spectrum primarily as a games machine and Your Sinclair treated it as a vehicle for comedy and reader-magazine intimacy, SU held the position closer to "Sinclair's house magazine" — at least until the Amstrad takeover in 1986. Coverage skewed toward the technically curious: programming tutorials, hardware reviews, machine-code columns, and assessments of the wider Sinclair product line (the QL, the Spectrum +2 and +3, peripherals, third-party hardware).

Publishing history

The magazine passed through several owners:

ECC Publications (1982-1983) — Launch publisher; built the early audience.
EMAP (1983-1990) — The dominant period. EMAP's larger budget allowed full-colour print, cover tapes, and a more confident editorial voice.
Various successors (1990-1993) — Through the early 1990s the magazine was sold and merged several times as the Spectrum market contracted, eventually closing in May 1993 — two months before CRASH and four months before Your Sinclair.

The peak years were 1985-1988, when monthly sales sat in the 90,000-100,000 range — close to CRASH's figures and ahead of YS in some months.

The voice

SU's editorial style was the most "magazine-like" of the three — closer in feel to a 1980s computer-press title than to its peers' more enthusiast-driven house style. Reviews carried writer bylines from established journalists (some of whom moved between SU, CTW, and the broader EMAP stable). The reviewing register was less openly opinionated than CRASH's and far less comedic than YS's. A typical SU review prized factual completeness — what the game does, how it controls, what it looks like — over either reverent praise or cheeky scepticism.

This gave SU a particular value as a buying guide: less likely to give a brilliant-but-niche game an enthusiast's pass, more likely to call out shovel-ware. Some readers found this dry; others trusted it precisely because it didn't try to be the platform's best friend.

Content mix

Reviews (Hit Squad / Gallup chart commentary) — Multi-page review sections graded games on a points-based system; the magazine ran the Gallup Chart commentary for several years.
Programming columns — Notably "Andrew Hewson's Helpline" (yes, the same Andrew Hewson behind Hewson Consultants) — a question-answering machine-code/BASIC column that ran for years and helped many readers move from BASIC to assembler.
Hardware reviews — Peripheral coverage (Multifaces, printers, microdrives, joystick interfaces), Spectrum clones, the QL, and later the +2 and +3.
Adventure columns — Notably Gordon's Adventure Helpline, helping readers stuck in text adventures during the genre's mid-80s peak.
Cover tapes — From 1989 onwards.
Industry news — More serious treatment of the trade than YS; closer to CTW-style coverage.

Position relative to CRASH and YS

The three magazines settled into recognisable niches:

Magazine	Best at	Reader who chose it
CRASH	Games reviews, Oliver Frey covers, reverent treatment	The reader who wanted the Sunday Times of Spectrum games
Your Sinclair	Personality, humour, reader relationship	The reader who read it cover-to-cover for fun
Sinclair User	Programming, hardware, completeness	The reader who wanted Computing Today with Spectrum specifics

Many readers bought two or three. The magazines competed but didn't quite overlap.

Influence on Code Like It's 198x

SU's technical seriousness is the third anchor of the Code198x writing voice, alongside CRASH's craft-respect and YS's humour. When a Shadowkeep unit explains a port read, a screen address, or the FRAMES system variable as a thing the reader can use rather than a thing to be amazed by, the register comes from SU — competent, complete, not selling. The Project's commitment to teaching the hardware is in spirit a continuation of the Sinclair User / Andrew Hewson Helpline approach: assume the reader is here to learn, not to be entertained.

The serious Spectrum monthly