Decide what to buy

In our newsletter last month, we asked you all to let us know how the credit crunch was affecting your shopping. The results are in and amazingly, all of you had the same attitudes towards shopping and money saving:

If you’d like to subscribe to our newsletter, just go to the Reevoo homepage and put your email address in the box in the bottom right, then click “submit”:

We’re onto DVD recorders this week. I know that most Christmas telly is awful but you do get the odd great film that’s worth recording. They’re also really handy for recording series of your favourite dramas and sitcoms so that you have your own set.

Top ten DVD recorders

1.       Samsung DVD-R155 - £101

2.       Sony RDRHXD890 - £160

3.       Panasonic DMR-EX78 - £205

4.       Panasonic DMR-EX768 - £171

5.       Panasonic DMR-EZ28E - £115

6.       Sony RDR-HXD870 - £100

7.       Toshiba RD-17 - £100

8.       LG DRT389H - £103

9.       Panasonic DMR-EZ27 - £100

10.     Sony RDR-GX350 - £80

The Samsung DVD-R155 has some impressive reviews, despite its lack of a tuner which means that you won’t be able to record two programmes at once:

“Good solid recorder, easy to use, very impressed with the upscaling.”

“Does what it says on the tin. Great quality recorder/player for the money and looks slick.”

“Not multi regional but you can re code it for all regions easily from the internet”

If you want a good all-rounder that’s great value for money, go for the £155 Panasonic DMR-EZ28E. It comes with built-in a Freeview digital tuner and it will play and record on most discs.

When you’re looking for a DVD recorder, make sure it has the functionality you require. If you like recording the odd episode of Eastenders quickly, make sure it has a hard drive so that you don’t have to fiddle around with discs before you can record anything. Also check for how many tuners the machine has. If a DVD recorder has more than one tuner, it will let you record more than one programme at the same time. Do you need a recorder with built-in VHS so that you can still watch all your classics? And finally, make sure it will play and record on the discs you’ll be using.

After our best mobile phones of 2008 post last week, we’ve moved onto digital cameras.

Whether you’re after a nice compact or a DSLR packed full of features, we’ve got the highest rated and the most popular in both categories on Decide What to Buy.

All ratings are by consumers who have all bought the products. They voted the £182, 13 megapixel Sony CyberShot DSC-W300 as the top compact digital camera of 2008.

There are great reviews on this camera with comments like:

“the picture quality is amazing”

“Brilliant little touches to the camera, like the musical slide show playback and the photo doctoring within the view back, love this camera!!”

It also gets great scores for categories like image and build quality:

And the compact that everyone’s looking at in the run-up to Christmas? It’s the 10 megapixel Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5. It came out a few months ago but people still love the fact that it’s packed full of features. It’s currently around £125.

When it came to SLRs, the highest rated was the £478 Canon EOS 450D. With the same image quality score as the CyberShot DSC-W300, this camera really impressed its owners. One reviewer said it was “outstanding”.

The most popular SLR is the Olympus E-420. It’s a nice upgrade from last year’s E-410 and has face detection, shadow adjustment technology, 3.5fps continuous shooting rate for up to 9 Raw images and a one-touch white balance function. It’s around £350.

Here are the rest of the favourites:


TOP COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERAS

TOP FIVE MOST POPULAR COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERAS IN LAST 30 DAYS:

1. Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS5

2. Nikon Coolpix S710

3. CASIO Z200

4. Olympus FE-350

5. Canon IXUS 980 IS


TOP FIVE HIGHEST RATED COMPACT DIGITAL CAMERAS OF 2008:

1. Sony CyberShot DSC-W300

2. Canon Digital IXUS 90IS

3. Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5

4. Fujifilm Finepix Z20

5. Fujifilm Finepix F100

TOP SLR CAMERAS of 2008

TOP FIVE MOST POPULAR SLRs IN LAST 30 DAYS:

1. Olympus E-420

2. Canon EOS 50D

3. Nikon D300

4. Sony Alpha A700

5. Canon EOS 1000D


TOP FIVE HIGHEST RATED SLRs OF 2008:

1. Canon EOS 450D

2. Sony Alpha A350

3. Nikon D90

4. Sony Alpha A300

5. Nikon D60

This week’s gadget watch is possibly one of our favourites. If you’re a peanut butter fiend, read on.

The Peanut Butter Machine allows you to create your own buttery peanutness at home! Just add peanuts! And it will take care of the crunchy/smooth debate too - just pick which kind you like and it’ll deliver it in minutes. You can use any kind of shell nut so you can create your own nutty buttery mixtures and best of all, you’ll know exactly what’s going in them - no additives or other nasties. Try macadamia or even cashew butter for a really interesting spin on a classic.

These fabulous machines are available for US $49.98 and will soon be working their way over to the UK. We’ll keep you posted!

Just in time for Christmas, Reevoo has launched its own iPhone web application. This means that all you lucky folks who own iPhones will be able to take Reevoo with you to the shops. If you’re looking to buy an MP3 player, camera, laptop or any other product that is available on Reevoo.com, you can check out what people have said about it before you buy. Not only that, but you will also be able to see how much it is online! Very useful for saving some valuable pounds over Christmas.

If you’d like to have price comparison and helpful reviews in your pocket this Christmas, just follow these three simple steps and Reevoo will guide you through all your Christmas shopping.

To add the Reevoo iPhone app to your home screen just take your iPhone:
1. Open Safari
2. Go to http://www.reevoo.com/iphone
3. Tap the + button in Safari and choose ‘Add to Home Screen’

And to use it:
1. Simply tap on the Reevoo icon on your home screen

2. Tap search and enter the product name - you’ll get a list of search results with scores and the cheapest price available online from over 100 retailers

3. Tap on the product itself and you’ll be taken through to read the 10 most useful reviews (as voted by our community) on the product.

We’d love to hear your feedback on this app. If there’s anything else you’d like to be able to access or if you’d like to see something done differently, just let us know at feedback@reevoo.com.

Mums can be tricky customers when it comes to Christmas presents. It’s very easy to find them gifts that they’ll need but will they be something they actually want?

We’ve come up with a few suggestions to help you out on your quest to find Christmas presents for Mums:

For Mums who like to look their best - These Babyliss 2099U straighters (£28) have great reviews and they’re pretty cheap too. One reviewer even claims “i have tried expensive straightners..such as ghds and since trying the babyliss, i will never go back to any others”.

For DIY mums - Let’s face it, some Dads are useless at DIY so in some households, it will be Mum who does all the handy work. Make it a little more fun with this Rolson 25 Piece Pink Tool Kit (£20).

For Mums who love to cook - they can create hundreds of different types of breads and cakes in this Morphy Richards 48245 (£50) bread maker. It’ll save them loads of time as it mixes and does all the kneading too - that leaves more time for extra cakes in my book!

For Mums who love to take photos - Get this Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS3 (£87) compact digital camera. It’s not too expensive, has great reviews and owners say it’s especially easy to use. So even if your Mum isn’t a tech whizz, she shouldn’t have many problems with this.

For Mums who need a break - All that housework can be such a bore. Treat your Mum to this Domotec Roomba 560 Robot Vacuum Cleaner. It’s a little pricy at £199 but it will single handedly tackle all the rooms in your house, switch from carpets to hard floor mode and even take itself back to its charger to be charged up before getting back on the case again!

For Mums who love pink - If your Mum is still girly at heart, there are loads of pink gifts from pink laptops and MP3 players to pink mobile phones and cushions. Find them all here: www.reevoo.com/pink

For Mums on the go - Get them a mobile so that you can always keep in contact. With all the free minutes deals around at the moment, you could even talk for free. This Nokia 2630 phone is not only stylish but it’s also user-friendly (prices vary according to contract). One reviewer says, “Everything is easy to use and the design is very nice and compact”.

For Mums who like to be organised - Why not invest in this family calendar (£8)? There are five columns which can be used for different members of the family so she’ll never have to miss a football or music class again.

For healthy Mums - All Mums want to make sure their families eat healthily. With this Philips HR 1861 juicer (£63), she can make tasty juices and ensure everyone gets their daily intake of fruit and veg. This juicer has great reviews too. One reads, “Best juicer around for the money. Powerful motor and large feeding tube. Looks great on your worktop…Highly recommended.”

Presents on a budget - Everyone likes music, get her a CD that she’ll love. At the moment, the Mamma Mia Movie Soundtrack is particularly popular and it’s a bargain at £7.

Right, hopefully that’s helped you out a little bit. If anyone else has any other ideas, just leave a comment.

Following on from our Christmas present guides, we’ve decided to focus on a popular gift - mobile phones. There are so many on the market these days that it can be a nightmare to read up on each one. But don’t worry, we’ve done it all for you.

We’ve read all the reviews for over 200 mobiles and picked out the most popular - the ones people are looking at in the run-up to Christmas, and the most highly rated phones of 2008 - focusing on what people think after they have bought and tried out their phones. We’ve also got our recommendation for the best value for money mobile.

So, I bet a lot of you will be thinking that the iPhone must be a key player in this year’s favourite mobiles but surprisingly, it’s not in the top 10. Problems with application crashes and battery life meant that people rated this year’s 3G iPhone lower than you might have expected. It gets a score of 8.2/10 which is even beaten by its predecessor, the original iPhone, which scores 8.3/10.

The UK’s favourite phone of 2008 is actually the BlackBerry Bold 9000. Here’s what some reviewers had to say:

+ Great keyboard for e-mailing and texting. Cracking screen which is nice and bright and videos look lovely on it. The sound from the internal speaker is really good. Just a great phone overall.

- Out of the box battery life is bad but gets better with regular charges.

+ The Bold is undoubtedly the most impressive Blackberry yet. One of its greatest advantages is that in spite of many new features, it feels very familiar. Web browsing is almost broadband speed.

But what about the most popular phone? The phone that everyone’s looking at in the run-up to Christmas this year is the Nokia N96. But although it’s created a lot of hype, it actually gets marked down by reviewers for poor battery life and software problems. It’s also a little expensive at around £500 for Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) customers, but it does do the business with its design and features. One reviewer writes “great picture and video quality, very easy to find your way around, fantastic features…looks good”.

So let’s take a look at the most popular phones, which are getting lots of atention, and those that actually get rated the highest when consumers take them home:

TOP TEN MOST POPULAR MOBILE PHONES IN LAST 30 DAYS:

1. Nokia N96

2. Samsung F480 Tocco

3. Blackberry Storm

4. Sony Ericsson C902

5. Samsung Omnia

6. Samsung J700

7. Samsung Soul U900

8. BlackBerry Bold 9000

9. Sony Ericsson Xperia X1

10. LG KF750 Secret

TOP TEN HIGHEST RATED MOBILE PHONES OF 2008:

1. BlackBerry Bold 9000

2. Sony Ericsson W980i

3. Apple iPhone 3G 8/16GB

4. Samsung F480 Tocco

5. Sony Ericsson K660i

6. Fly SL600

7. Sagem my411C

8. Samsung J700

9. Samsung Steel

10. Sagem my300C

If you had your heart set on buying someone, or yourself, a stylish yet affordable phone this Christmas, we think the Samsung F480 Tocco is the one to go for. Whilst other phones with similar features tend to get poor scores for battery life, the Tocco impresses with 7.7/10. Here’s what some other phones score for battery life:

Nokia N96 - 5.8

iPhone original - 6.8

iPhone 3G - 5.6

BlackBerry Bold 9000 - 6.3

The Tocco also impresses with its design and features and is £150 for PAYG customers or free on some contracts.

Cars aren’t the greenest of things so we’re always glad when we find something that we can use to save energy in them. This week’s Green Piece is all about the Sunsei 150 solar car battery charger. It will trickle charge a 12v car battery but can also be used in tractors, small boats, motorbikes and other small vehicles.

It’s ideal if you’re trying to use your car less or take it off the road but you’re worried that the battery will go flat. It will also save electricity if you need to charge your battery via a mains charger. And, of course, it will help all of us who don’t have that handy bleeping noise that alerts us to the fact that we’ve left our lights on when we get out of the car.

All in all, a pretty handy green gadget. You just mount the panel on the inside of your car window, using the suction cups and connect it to the cigarette lighter or directly to the battery with the crocodile clips provided.

You can pick one up here for £29.99 if you’re in the UK or here for $48.88 for US readers.

If you’re always getting lost, you may also want to invest in a sat nav - just think how much petrol you waste and how much CO₂ you emit when you’re correcting ‘navigation malfunctions’!

There are lots of exciting things happening over on Reevoo at the moment. One of the most recent is something that I think lots of you will find really handy. It’s a way to see all of the products that you have been looking at on Reevoo so that when you need to find that MP3 player you were looking at last week, you can. We call it your “recently viewed”.

You can always get to your recently viewed with the link in the top right of the page, just under the search box.

Just click on the link and you’ll get a nice list of all your recently viewed products. Pretty handy, hey?

If you have any other things you would like to see us doing to help you decide what to buy, just let us know by leaving a comment or by emailing us at feedback@reevoo.com.

It’s not a particularly great time to be moving house at the moment so for those of you who just want to spruce things up a bit, you can do so for less than you think.

The kitchen is where all the action happens, food action, that is. It’s also one of the most expensive rooms to totally redo because of all the appliances that have to go in it. But there are some great bargains to be had in the appliances department. We’ve been through all the reviews to pick out a load of cheap appliances that have great reviews from their owners.

We’ve even managed to find a fridge-freezer, washing machine, oven, hob, dishwasher and microwave all for under £800!

We’ve also included some smaller items like kettles and toasters. Check them out:

Best cheap appliances

Washing machine - Indesit WIB111 - £175

Oven - Indesit FI21KB - £135

Hob - New World NWGHU60Ss - £78

Fridge-freezer - Hotpoint RFA52 - £209

Microwave - Russell Hobbs SMS21 - £40

Dishwasher - Beko DWD4310 - £160

All the above for under £800!

Kettle - Kenwood Mona Kettle - £15

Toaster - Kenwood TTP103 - £18

Food processor - Kenwood Delia’s Cheat Gadget - £17

Some real bargains there. I can’t believe that food processor is only £17! It’s been reviewed by 333 people and has a score of 9.1/10 so it’s definitely a little gem. It was also recommended by TV chef extraordinaire, Delia Smith, so it must be good.

There are plenty more bargains to be had too but just make sure you read the reviews first to ensure the product is actually any good.