Best grocery list app

Dear PropellerHeads: Hey, I just got a new Android smart phone and I need a grocery list app. Do you have any recommendations?

A: I see how this works. You don't want to go through the trouble of downloading and fiddling with each of the two dozen (at least) shopping list apps available on the Android Market yourself so you ask a geek like me to do it for you. Do you think I have time for that? Generally no, but in this case I'm equally as interested in the outcome so here goes.

Like I said there are tons of shopping list apps, so for succinctness I'll only consider free ones with more than a quarter million downloads. With that we end up with a manageable number of candidates: Grocery IQ (groceryiq.com), OI Shopping List (openintents.org), Our Groceries (ourgroceries.com) and Out of Milk (outofmilkapp.com).

All of these operate on the same basic principle: You have a list of everything you can possibly buy at the store, a list of the items you are buying on your next trip, and "shopping mode" which removes items from that second list as you are shopping. Each of these products offer this, but how easy it is to add items to the various lists or remove them during shopping mode can vary greatly.

Each of these apps also offer you the ability to store multiple lists, not just grocery lists. Most allow you to store a price so you know when a good deal is afoot, and also indicate the quantity desired. Finally they all provide a mechanism to share the list with others, even if it is just via SMS or email.

First on the list (hah!) is OI Shopping List. It gives you everything you need, but it isn't horribly user friendly. Anything that requires a lot of typing isn't user friendly in my book. It does allow you to tag the items in the list and sort on those tags. This comes in handy when selecting items or when actually shopping. By using tags you can group all of the dairy items together, or if you always go to the same store, tag something Aisle 32. Yeah, I go to the big stores, what's your beef?

Out of Milk is a step closer to bliss. It has a really nice interface, complete with water stains! Items can be added to the list via barcode scanner. The barcode scanner worked pretty well and returned matches for most items. Sometimes you got an understandable description but sometimes you got things like "Mt Olv Fr Ck Str" which is bordering on an obscenity. Out of Milk doesn't offer any sort of tagging or categories though so you are always faced with a huge list which is a bummer.

Our Groceries is simpler. Although it does not offer barcode scanning, it does store your list on their website. This has two major benefits. First, when creating your master list, you can do so on their website with your home computer allowing you the luxury of a full-size keyboard. That goes way quicker than the chicken pecking method on your phone.

But the far cooler benefit is list sharing. Thus, if my wife calls asking what she needs to pick up at the store, I can add the items to the list at home so that she will have it by the time she reaches the store. Or, if we are both shopping my wife will know immediately that I just got the Krispy Kremes so she doesn't have to. That is so sweet! However, the free version of Our Groceries hits you with ads, which isn't so sweet.

Finally there is Grocery IQ and I have truly saved the best for last. This app puts together the best of everything. Barcode scanning? Not only does it have it, but I think it found everything I scanned. And if you enter something manually, it has a nice auto completion feature containing things found at the grocery store, not the entire world.

Categories? Yep, both while shopping and during list creation, which I find equally as important because I don't want to scroll through a list of a hundreds of items indicating I need both cookie dough and ricotta cheese while I have the freezer door open.

Online list sharing? Check. However I found that it wasn't as seamless as Our Groceries and was a little glitch at times.

Grocery IQ doesn't offer up ads, but something far more useful: coupons! Unfortunately you have to print these off at home before you go to the store. It would be awesome if you could just scan the coupon UPC off the smart phone, wouldn't it?

The one downside with Grocery IQ is its verboseness. It's not just a can of olives; it is a can of Early California Premium Sliced Ripe 8-ounce Olives. War and Peace is shorter in comparison.

So, in a nutshell, any one of these would probably fill your needs, but Grocery IQ seems to package up everything you need. Now go out and shop!

When the PropellerHeads at Data Directions aren't busy with their IT projects, they love to answer questions on business or consumer technology. Email them to questions@askthepropellerheads.com or contact us at Data Directions Inc., 8510 Bell Creek Road, Mechanicsville, VA 23116. Visit our website at www.askthepropellerheads.com.