Cheapism

Just found this website tonight on sitejabber. I am not sure why other sites don't do this too. We all want the best and cheapest product around.

I'm puzzled by this one. At random, I started off with a page titled "Multifunction Printer Reviews, Best Cheap All In One Printers", and yet there were printers on this page costing up to $5429. There were four printers pictured on the left hand side of the page, each with a "cheap deals" panel, but all the panels were empty. Of the others shown, the cheapest was a Canon which according to this was $114 on Ebay, though I found an identical brand new one on Ebay without help for $69. Other prices linked to a list on shopping.com which I could obviously have found by going to that site.

The page also collected about a dozen references from reviews on other sites around the web, some of which were conflicting user opinions, which wouldn't help me much if I were looking to make a sound buy.

On the same page was a promotion for a blog article entitled "Light cheap laptop", which read

"Thin and light laptops that cost less than $1000? No way, you say. But wait... The New York Times reports that by early summer there will be several new products on the market that meet these requirements."

By early summer? But there are already a load of cheap netbooks for under $1000. So I looked at the date of the article - May, making it six months out of date. Not very useful, really.

Another blog article announced the launch of a new range of HP products, but that was also six months out of date.

Soldiering on, I tried the page about netbooks, about which there should be plenty of current information. This was a review of sub-$300 machines, though the cheapest price shown here was $290, and that's about the price everyone charges, it's not a bargain. Again, down the left hand side of the page there were four "best cheap netbooks" but all the "cheap deal" panels were empty. And the rest of the items on the page weren't computers at all, but computer bags and sleeves.

There was a very long article about the generalities of netbooks which wasn't bad, and referenced some other sources for the fine details. However, the only link I clicked on - and I promise you it really was at random - led to a 404 "page not found" error.

Finally I went to netbookreviews.com, I site I found simply by looking on Google, and there was a page entitled "7 best netbooks for under $300" that was written this week, making it bang up to date. The Cheapism page had been put together six weeks earlier and missed out on three out of the seven that this site was reviewing. More seriously, the three it missed out included two that were in the top three best buy choices.

Just to be sure, I opted for a complete change of scene and chose toaster ovens for my last random pick. There were three recommended "best cheap ovens". None of these three appeared in the top recommended on consumersearch.com or pricegrabber.com or toasterovensguide.com or wize.com and after that I sort of lost interest.

Based on these experiences, I couldn't trust this site as a primary resource. I'd do what I normally do and shop around, use Google to search on appropriate key phrases and do some general homework before spending my money. I'm not saying that cheapism.com doesn't show you cheap products, but from this experience I'd have to say that those products aren't necessarily the ones you'd want to buy and may even not be the best value pricewise either.

Footnote: This is an actual reviewer's experience on the live site. Not a copy of the text which appears at MakeUseOf.com, which they got from Lifehacker.com, which they got from wisebread.com, where the original article by Nora Dunn originated. When I found that, to be fair I did read it and noted that she'd had a good experience with the auto GPS page on cheapism.com. So I went and had a look at that. It does - probably correctly - identify the Garmin nuvi 205W as a good choice. However the price it gives, "starting at $167" is incorrect on both sites it links to, shopping.com and Amazon.com. And the photo and description it has is for the 205 model, not the 205w, which is a different size. The Magellan 1340, which cheapism.com lists as starting at $143, can be had for $130 at Google products. The TomTom XL 340S, shown as "starting at $175" is $146 also at Google products. These may all be small and insignificant points, but this is a site you visit to look at prices first and foremost, and they should be both correct and the best deals on offer. Otherwise, you can do better just by using Google.

If you are a bargain hunter, but don't like to compromise on quality, then Cheapism is a website you should bookmark. What it does is simple – it searches for best quality products among the cheapest ones.

The site features budget product reviews in various categories like home & garden, kitchen utilities, computers, electronics, sports, travel and many more.

Have fun with this.

Thanks to MakeUseOf.com.

I just found this site after searching for the best cheap heaters on Google. The site recommends the best cheap products in different areas and I loved the idea behind it because it often annoys me that the products recommended by websites are way too expensive and I end up not being able to make a decision. I hope they'll cover more stuff than what they currently review.

The heaters review I read was very thorough, (in my opinion almost too detailed for a $30 heater) and was supported by links to others heater reviews which seemed pretty useful since I like to know how people arrive at their decisions.

There were also price comparisons from Shopping.com of the "best cheap" products that they recommend though there were too many of prices listed from Amazon and ebay which was a little annoying since i like a bigger selection of stores to choose from. Then again i have come across this problem in the past, of price comparison sites like Shopping and Price Grabber suffering from such limitations. I ended up ordering their top recommendation from Amazon.

There was a big Shopping.com ad in the middle of the page that I think should have a text saying "advertisement" above it since it was a little confusing but at least it had other heaters in it.

There were blog entries on the left side which were about home improvement and i wasn't sure how interesting they were for someone who searched for heaters. But i guess if you browse the site you can find them interesting.

Reliable business with accurate information that all website needs to have. I wish other websites were this reliable.