Grocery iQ & Tablet Edition. An Amazingly Robust Grocery Shopping Application!
by Jonathan Lonczak
Jun 13, 2011 7:00 AM –
Install
Grocery iQ – Tablet. Grocery iQ includes all the features you’d expect from a great shopping list app. Build new shopping lists quickly by: saying the item name or using predictive search. Sync/share your shopping list with other Grocery iQ users. Now you can edit your list at http://groceryiq.com and sync it to your phone.
Price: Free
Tested on: Motorola Xoom
Content Rating: Everyone
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- Features an interface specifically designed for Android 3.0 Honeycomb!
- Manage and create separate grocery lists for each of your grocery stores!
- Add new items to your shopping lists easily with auto-complete item adding, barcode scanning, and voice input!
- Hundreds of coupons for select stores!
- Save your grocery savings cards to your tablet for select locations!
- Easily share your grocery list with your spouse, friend, roommate, or significant other!
Cons
- Coupons only supported for a few select locations.
- Savings cards only supported for a few select locations.
Features:
Grocery IQ for Tablet is an amazingly robust grocery shopping application for Android. Grocery IQ for Tablet allows you to create grocery lists by store, auto-detects product names, provides coupons for select locations, allows you to electronically store savings cards, and provides for grocery list sharing between multiple parties.
Grocery IQ allows you to create grocery lists for all of your favorite grocery stores. When you first load up the application there are two panes on the screen: Stores and Items. In order to begin using Grocery IQ you will hit the “+” by stores to add your favorite stores to buy groceries in to the application. You can even limit the application to only showing food suggestions and coupons from within that location. Once you have added a store the application automatically detects what aisle each food item is in. After adding all of your stores you are ready to begin creating your grocery lists.
First you choose the store you wish to purchase the food item from, then you click the “+” sign under the store’s list of items. This action brings up a prompt where you can begin to type the name of the item you wish to purchase. You can also speak the name of the item or scan it’s barcode instead to save time and select exactly the right item and brand. If you wished to purchase a bulb of garlic all you would need to do is type in garlic. The application then suggests Garlic Bulb, Garlic Bread, Frozen Garlic Bread, Garlic Cloves, Garlic Salt, etc. This allows you to easily select the correct items and add them to your list with as little effort as possible. After adding your items you can view them by store or as one giant all inclusive list.
Grocery IQ also allows you to add favorite items. Favorite items are a user generated list of your most purchased items. This feature allows you to add repeat items without much difficulty to your weekly shopping list.
Grocery IQ also allows you to add grocery store savings cards to a virtual keyring so that you do not need to carry these items in your wallet every time you go to the grocery store. The downside of this feature is that it only supports 9 different stores: Safeway, Vons, ShopRite, Randalls, Genuardi’s, Carrs, Tom Thumb, Pavillions, and Dominick’s. So unfortunately this application can’t replace savings cards for everyone.
In the upper left hard corner is the “Coupons” tab. This is where the application stores all of your coupons. Grocery IQ breaks the coupons down in to these categories; Baby, Bakery, Beverages, Breakfast & Cereal, Cleaning & Home, Condiments, Dairy, Eggs & Cheese, Frozen Foods, Fruits & Vegetables, Grains, Pasta & Sides, Personal Care & Pharmacy. Snack Foods, and Other. After selecting a category a list of all of the coupons in that category is displayed. This feature suffers from the problem as the savings cards unfortunately and has a very limited selection of supported stores.
Finally, Grocery IQ allows you to share your grocery lists with others. Under the Settings tab is the option to enable list sharing. This allows you to include others in on editing and viewing your shopping list. In order to add a user for sharing all you have to do is type in their email address and hit the “Send Invitation” button. Then an email will be sent to that individual asking them to participate in the creation of your grocery list. You can also manage your shared users right through the Grocery IQ application.
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Coupons
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Widgets
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Item List
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Preferences
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Grocery iQ – Tablet List Sharing
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Savings Cards
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Grocery iQ – Tablet Help
Usefulness:
Grocery IQ for Tablet is extremely useful for creating and sharing grocery lists by store and sharing them with other users. It allows you to easily find the items you need with it’s item suggestion feature and keeps your shopping organized through it’s item by store feature. Also the ability to be able to share a grocery list between me and my girlfriend is extremely important since I make the money and don’t have the time for shopping, but she knows exactly what we need for the house.
Unfortunately not everything about Grocery IQ is as useful as these features. I find the Coupon and Savings Card portion of the application utterly useless. None of the locations in this application that are supported are anywhere in my area and I have only heard of one of them in my entire life. Better support for major chains like Walmart, Weggmans, Hannaford, Price Chopper, Target, and Aldis is a must in order for this application to be valued at all for it’s money saving features.
I also feel that the tablet version is a little impractical given the current state of affairs with Honeycomb Android Tablets all being large and at least ten inches in size. I personally would not carry my Xoom to the grocery store with me. However, this application does sync to Grocery IQ for your phone and there are smaller Honeycomb tablets rumored to be released this year making this less of an issue.
Ease of Use:
Grocery IQ for Tablet is extremely easy to use. The auto-suggest feature for adding items is extremely useful and makes adding the right items easy. If you do shop at one of the supported stores coupons are no more than a click away, and all you need to do to add a savings card is enter your member ID. Also to add shared users all you need to do is input their email address.
Frequently Used:
I would use Grocery IQ frequently to share the weekly grocery list between me and my girlfriend. It allows us both to easily keep track of what we need to buy and where we need to buy it. I am working on teaching this application to her now because I think it would be a huge time saver. I would input the grocery list on my tablet because it is an easier interface to use than the phone, but I would never take my Xoom with me when I am doing my groceries.
As I stated before the coupon and savings card features of this application are extremely limited and useless for the majority of users. I have only opened up these features twice. Once when I first downloaded the application and didn’t know it didn’t have any stores in the Northeast, and second when I wrote this review.
Interface:
The interface for Grocery IQ is excellent, intuitive, and extremely easy to use. Once the supported store list is increased this application will be a perfect, all-in-one, grocery store shopping and savings application.
Tags:
Android App,
Android Apps,
Android Tablet Apps,
AndroidTapp.com App Review,
Coupons,
Groceries,
Grocery IQ,
Grocery iQ - Tablet,
Grocery list sharing,
Motorola XOOM Apps,
Shopping
Categorised in: Shopping
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