Deal Finders

Next-generation shopping sites aim to help you find great prices on the best products, from sellers you can trust. Which ones deliver?

With comparison-shopping sites to guide the way, you can find enormous savings on your favorite tech (and nontech) products--everything from cameras to PCs, and from diapers to bottled water.

But the Web has so many comparison sites to choose from--how do you know which are worth a visit? To save you time, I did the legwork for you. First I sorted through 20 new and old pricing engines and then settled on 9 worth using.

While some of them--NexTag, PriceGrabber, and Yahoo Shopping--are old-timers, others, including Become.com, PriceRunner.com, and Smarter.com, are new to the scene. Still others have undergone recent changes: MSN revamped its shopping channel, Shopping.com is now an eBay company, and Shopzilla is the new name for BizRate.com. (Full disclosure: PriceGrabber and Yahoo link toPC World's reviews; PriceGrabber powersPCWorld.com's price-comparison engine, Product Finder , as well.)

To test each site's price-comparison prowess, I searched for Canon's PowerShot SD550 digital camera, Maxtor's OneTouch II 300GB external hard drive, and Pioneer's DVR-633H-S DVD player/recorder. I also looked at each site's organization, interface, and extras. Overall, I preferred PriceRunner over the competition. Cheapskates will also find bargains at Yahoo Shopping. And research fanatics will find that PriceGrabber provides good tools, such as product reviews and merchant information, before you buy.

Best All Around

PriceRunner features a great selection, low prices, and an easy-to-navigate interface. My pick for the best comparison-shopping site,PriceRunner.com( www.pricerunner.com ), gives me what I want. It's efficient; it has a no-frills design; and, best of all, it finds great deals. The pages are a bit text-heavy, but there's enough white space that the look feels uncluttered.

PriceRunner found the lowest bottom-line price--meaning estimated tax and shipping are included--on all three of my products. And it had the cheapest base-price listings on two of the three items, the hard drive and the DVR. Many of its cheap listings lack a direct link to the vendor's site, though, which creates a bit more work for the shopper.

One nice feature: PriceRunner warns buyers about potentially dodgy merchants. The site's Observation List includes stores that have possible issues with delivery, service, and payment security. If your results include a questionable vendor, a warning icon will appear. However, it would be better if the site allowed you to omit the stores altogether. At this point, you can sort by merchant rating, pushing suspect vendors to the bottom.

BothShopping.com( www.shopping.com ) andShopzilla( www.shopzilla.com ) are good at identifying recommended sellers. At Shopping.com, a listing gets a SmartBuy seal if the product is from one of the site's Trusted Stores. The product also has to be in stock and neither used nor refurbished, and the listing must include tax and shipping. Shopzilla awards its Smart Choice seal to products with the lowest price from a BizRate Certified store, provided that the availability and product information are accurate, and the tax and shipping are included. (To be certified by BizRate, a store must solicit customer feedback via BizRate surveys, have received 20 or more surveys in the last 90 days, and maintain at least a Satisfactory rating.)

Besides finding a reputable vendor, you also want to make sure you buy the best product. PriceRunner offers user reviews, but they can be scarce. I saw one each for the camera and the hard drive, but none for the DVR.

Still, there's plenty to like about the site, including options galore for filtering results in category searches. During my camera hunt, for instance, I was able to narrow my search by features such as the number of pixels, optical zoom, and the memory type.

If you can't wait for a hot item or would rather visit a physical store, PriceRunner also lists local retailers that carry your desired product. But the site could stand to add more stores. When I searched for Apple's 4GB iPod Nano in white, the only "local" store that came up was in Woodland Hills, California--some 400 miles from my house! The company says it's constantly expanding the database.