As chief shopper of the family and self-proclaimed Android power user, I’m always on the look for apps that can help to make the process a little bit easier. Not that I hate shopping, in fact, I really enjoy shopping. However, it’s always nice to have a little helper app that helps you to check prices or to remember the things to buy, when you need it.
As part of my quest to find a good shopping list for me and my wife, I have been exploring and playing with different shopping list apps lately. Some of the apps I have tried are really just awful: outdated design and frequent crashes. Now, to be fair, I have only tried the free version of these apps, but I doubt the paid version would offer much of a difference. On the other hand, I have also discovered many shopping list apps that are really nice. In fact, there are TOO MANY of them, each of them with different specialties. I almost feel guilty to pick only three out of this pool of well-crafted apps developers spent countless hours to develop. But it had to be done. And here’s how I come up with the top 3:
Requirements:-
(1) Support list sharing
(2) Support Ice Cream Sandwich and above
Judging criteria:
(1) Intuitiveness – 10 points
(2) Functionality – 10 points
(3) Stability – 5 points
(4) Design optimized for ICS and above – 5 points
Based on the above requirements and judging criteria, I present to you
Top 3 Shopping List Apps for Android in 2013
(1) Out of Milk – Shopping List, Pantry List & To-Do List in a small, intuitive and easy-to-use app
Out of Milk
Out of Milk – Shopping List, Pantry List & To-Do List in a small, intuitive and easy-to-use app
Out of Milk is shopping list, pantry list, and to-do list in one app. Out of Milk is smooth and it works great like a proper shopping list should be. Its design does seem to be a bit out-of-tune with the modern Android theme. However, this small flaw is outshone by its usefulness and stability.
Overall score: 27 / 30
Intuitiveness: 9 / 10
Functionality: 9 / 10
Stability: 5 / 5
Design optimized for ICS and above: 4 / 5
Intuitiveness. Out of Milk is smooth. The controls are intuitive and easy to find. Touch on an item to bring up a quick edit menu; Touch and hold to cross out an item. It takes a few minutes to figure out how to share a list as the option hides in the option menu (the menu which pops up when you touch on the physical menu button). But once you know where to find it, sharing is a breeze. (Score: 9 / 10)
Functionality. Out of Milk works great like a proper shopping list app should be. You can add items by typing, scanning bar code or voice input. You can arrange the position of an item by drag-and-drop. Should you make a mistake, you get the option to undo it (only certain action is undo-able). You can also check price history of an item. Aside from being a shopping list, it also has a pantry list that helps to keep track of your inventory. Moving items from shopping list to pantry list is a painful item-by-item process though. (Score: 9 / 10)
Stability. No issue found. (Score: 5 / 5)
Design optimized for ICS and above. The app looks a bit out of place for Ice Cream Sandwich and later. The two themes that you get without upgrading to PRO are Legal Pad and Classic, both of them bear close resemblance to iOS’s planner app, i.e. notepad with faux leather. Also, there’s no back button on the action bar, which has become somewhat a >ICS standard. (Score: 4 / 5)
Rainbow Shopping List
Rainbow Shopping List is a colorful shopping list with many creative and powerful features. Its developer boasts that it can also predict shopping lists based on the user’s purchases. If you’re looking to improve productivity, this is the app to go for. It does seem to have a few stability issues with the voice input.
Overall score: 26.5 / 30
Intuitiveness: 8.5 / 10
Functionality: 9.5 / 10
Stability: 4 / 5
Optimized design for ICS and above: 5 / 5
Intuitiveness. Rainbow Shopping List is fairly intuitive. It does have the most number of buttons compare to Out of Milk and Our Groceries Shopping List, but it is easy to guess the function of each button due to self-explanatory icons. This app does not support drag-and-drop, but it does have a reasonable sorting option. (Score: 8.5/ 10)
Functionality. Rainbow Shopping List is the champion in terms of functionality. You can add items through typing, bar codes, and voice input. For voice input, it has a feature called Burst-mode which allows you to keep talking to it without having to press on the microphone button every time you add an item. You can attach photos, specify price, and add notes to an item. It has a really neat feature called the Edit Mode, in which you can select multiple items and perform actions such as move, copy, delete, mark as done, and etc. It allows you to import and export shopping lists. My only complaint is that the prediction feature doesn’t seem to working properly, and there are some other features that are still unsupported, such as time and location reminder. (Score: 9.5 / 10)
Stability. This app crashed sometimes when I’m doing voice input. (Score: 4 / 5)
Design optimized for ICS and above. The app uses a flat design and the standard action bar. This app has a modern look and fits well into the overall ICS theme. (Score: 5 / 5)
Our Groceries Shopping List
By HeadCode
Our Groceries Shopping List is a no-frills shopping list app. It has the simplest design yet it still manage to keep the core features (i.e. add, remove, share) of a shopping list well under its belt. Its file size is tiny at slightly more than 200kb. If all you need is a quick-and-dirty (in a good way) shopping list this is the one app you cannot go wrong with. The design does look prehistoric though.
Overall score: 24.5 / 30
Intuitiveness: 9 / 10
Functionality: 7 / 10
Stability: 5 / 5
Optimized design for ICS and above: 3.5 / 5
Intuitiveness. Our Groceries Shopping List scores the highest in terms of intuitiveness. There is a minimal amount of controls, everything is obvious in what they do the first time you launch this app. Its lack of side functionalities allows the app to focus on the core features of a shopping list app: Add list, remove list, add item, remove item, and share. It is also quite fast in its response, compare to Out of Milk and Rainbow Shopping List. (Score: 9.5 / 10)
Functionality. There isn’t really much functionality to talk about aside from adding, removing, setting quantity, and list sharing. You can add items through typing and voice input, but it does not support bar codes. (Score: 7 / 10)
Stability. No issue found. (Score: 5 / 5)
Design optimized for ICS and above. The app looks outdated, seemingly stuck in the past. Expect Froyo-themed user interface. (Score: 3.5 / 5)
Android Mattness 