Pic2Shop Vs. RedLaser iPhone Apps | Battle of the Barcode Scanner apps!

There was a day when an individual went to a store you would actually have to find a customer service representative or a barcode scanner machine to get a price check for a universal product code (UPC). All that has changed due to barcode scanner apps that provide this functionality to iPhone users. The apps both paid and FREE search a scanned UPC symbol for a price, but they do much more. Much to the chagrin of retailers these apps actually are able to provide alternative prices. The prices are from competitors and sometimes changes a consumers mind causing them to purchase the product from another “brick and mortar” store or online. I will compare the Pic2Shop FREE barcode app with the RedLaser paid barcode scanner app to give you the consumer the pros and cons of each app. The following products were scanned by both apps: 1) Lady Gaga “The Famous Monster” 2) Gone With the Wind 2 DVD set 3) Lipton Green Tea 40 count 4) Michael Lewis “The Big Short” (book) 5) CVS Spearmint cough drops 30 count.

Pic2Shop developed by Vision Smarts is a FREE iPhone barcode scanner app. According to the description this app returns prices only on UPC-A and EAN-13. UPC-A is the standard UPC symbol and the EAN-13 is the standard for this type of barcode. However, Pic2Shop does not scan all UPC symbols, which was evident during testing. Pic2Shop faired pretty good when it came to DVD’s and CD’s as well as books. However, when using this app on Lipton green tea and CVS cough drops the app was not able to find these products. This app also was unable to recognize the information when attempted to be put in manually. This app has 4 buttons on the bottom navigation bar, scanner, keypad, product, and preferences tab. The scanner button opens up the camera scanner function and allows the user to input UPC symbols this app recognizes. When this app does recognize a symbol it can process it works very fast. The keypad is for auto inputting a UPC code and is self-explanatory. The only thing confusing here is there are 4 different UPC code symbols above the keypad, 2 of which this app does not describe as being able to find in the app description. The product tab is where all scanned or inputted UPC symbol information is historically kept. The preferences section allows you to select where to search and some other basic settings. Overall this app is decent for most shopping items, but it will not scan all shopping items. The inability to scan everything may be frustrating to the user. This app did provide more local stores on the price and it was able to return a check on the book check that the RedLaser could not. One last point of confusion is the email functionality. The share function through email and library check only work for book product scans. Pic2Shop is FREE so that is a plus, but overall this app gets a 3.5 out of 5 CrazyMikes Head’s due to it’s limited UPC detection.

Pro’s: FREE, somewhat larger search returns, fairly accurate Con’s: Won’t scan all UPC symbols, limited share functionality, in app advertising

Title: Pic2Shop (iPhone App ) Cost: FREE Category: Productivity Developer: Vision Smarts

The RedLaser app developed by Occipital has previously been reviewed by CrazyMike “RedLaser app review” but I will still compare it to the Pic2Shop app. The RedLaser app could not find the book app, but other than shelling out a $0.99 that was the only negative with this app. This app does have a very nice share function allowing the user to email a product link or open that link in the Safari browser. The RedLaser app is fairly robust and does return quite a bit of information for most products that were scanned. The RedLaser app gets 4.5 out of 5 CrazyMikes Head’s for complete scanner app with share function and excellent product search return percentage.

Pro’s: Larger UPC symbol scanning capabilities, great share function, very accurate Con’s: Costs $0.99, unable to scan one book product

Title: RedLasaer (iPhone App ) Cost: $0.99 Category: Utilities Developer: Occipital

Whether you want a FREE scanner app that will work most of the time (Pic2Shop) or a paid scanner app (RedLaser) that works almost all the time the choice is yours. Heck you may want to get them both so you’re completely covered. CM

*Disclosure*The developers at Vision Smarts and the iPhone app “Pic2Shop” are paid advertisers on http://www.crazymikesapps.com.