Red Laser
Price: Free
For: iPhone, iTouch, and
Android 5/5 stars
Everybody who shops
wants to pay the best price possible for the products they purchase, especially
in today's economy. Wouldn't be
great if you could just take your cell phone, scan the barcode on the item you
are looking at, and get a listing of where you can buy that product for the
lowest price? Fortunately, there
is an amazingly useful app called RedLaser, which does exactly that. It is available for both Androids and
iPhones, and is free.
RedLaser is really
easy to use.When you find a
product you are interested in buying, hold your smartphone steady and align the
product's bar code on your phone's screen and scan.RedLaser immediately searches online using Google Product
Search, TheFind, eBay and Half.com. It then lists, from the lowest price to the
highest, where you can buy the product online. Christine Requa, a recent
graduate of Miramonte HS, said that "RedLaser does the on-line price searching
so fast that you quickly know what the internet prices are."
But RedLaser does not
just check for your product among online merchants.It does much more than that. It also uses your phone's
location to do a local search of all nearby retailers that have your particular
item in stock.It displays the retailers
name, location and current price they are charging. Bobby Taylor, a senior at Miramonte High School, said that
RedLaser is great because "you might find that you can save quite a bit of
money just by driving a few miles down the road to another store."
A few other neat
features include the ability to email yourself barcodes of items that you may
be interested in buying, but at a later date.RedLaser also has the ability to list allergen and
nutritional information on just about every brand-name packaged food.And, if you are looking to buy video
games, scanning the barcode on the will bring up reviews on the games.If you want to be sure you are paying
the lowest possible price for any product you buy, you definitely should download
RedLaser on your phone.
Eric Pawlakos is a senior
at Miramonte High School. When not at school he can be found playing
rugby with Lamorinda Rugby, or learning guitar.