New site helps you analyze electronics prices

As you look around the web for electronics, how can you be sure that screaming deal is really a deal? I’ve been testing a new beta site that can help you make the determination.

For years, I’ve been a fan of DealNews.com, a site that is populated with deals annotated with one to five “hotness” circles by the site’s editors. You rarely see five circles, while only one or two circles indicate a tepid offer. But usually when you see three or four circles, you know you’ve got a smart purchase.

Now there’s a new player that’s somewhat inspired by DealNews called ShopoBot.com. After a brief registration at the ShopoBot site, you have access to current pricing for electronics and historical pricing charts. With that data, you can sense if the current price is higher, lower or the same as it was in the past.

Of course, it will be some time until ShopoBot builds up enough data that you can trust it to give you a solid buy signal. But I think this site has promise.

With electronics, so often you have price drops centered around changing technology. As an example, older models of Nikon’s digital single-lens reflex cameras dropped in price like a rock when the cameras went through a model change cycle. Likewise, you see the same thing happening now with prices bottoming out for Flip cams since they’re being phased out.

So ShopoBot just offers you another tool to figure out what’s going on with electronics prices. Check it out the next time you need to make a purchase.