February 07, 2008
February 7 Dealhack Market Report Now Live at Dealhack
 The February 7, 2008 edition of the Dealhack Market Report is now live. The Market Report is a ten-minute podcast summary of what's going on in the deal shopping marketplace right now. Here are the highlights:
- Dealhack Market Review - What are the key features to consider when buying a GPS?
- Lightning Round - a quick rundown of eight great deals.
- Dealhack Deal of the Week - our pick for the best deal featured in the last week.
There are many different ways to access this Market Report:
+ Dealhack Podcast page
+ Subscribe via iTunes, Bloglines, Google, or Pluggd
+ Subscribe via Generic Podcast Feed (use with any feed reader)
+ Or just download the audio directly: Dealhack Market Report - February 7, 2008 (10.9MB; 15:44)
Read the Dealhack Market Review transcript after the jump.
Chris: Clearance sales on winter apparel have begun to ramp up with savings on jackets and other outerwear along with skis, snowboards, and winter sports gear. Low cost GPS devices continue to multiply new portable automotive navigation models hitting as low as $100 in extreme cases down from a floor of $150 just a short time ago.
With holiday entertaining largely passed, we’re also seeing a surprising amount of deep clearance discounting of kitchen tools, small appliances, cookware, and related home items. Cooking.com, chefs, and Amazon are all running substantial sales with lots of discounts on small kitchen gadgets all the way up to full multi-piece sets.
With February here, now is also a good time to get started on your taxes. For most filers, all of the necessary forms like W2s from employers and 1099s showing interest, dividend, and other earnings should now be delivered. Turbo Tax online is again offering a completely free service for preparing the most basic federal returns along with discounts if you need to file a more comprehensive option. Federal e-filing will remain free for all users, though.
Michael: Just a few years ago, adding a GPS to your car could easily cost more than a thousand dollars, but with the development of high efficiency GPS receiver chipsets and the improvements in LCD manufacturing, the costs of GPS devices has dropped an amazing amount. With so many low cost models available now, we wanted to take a look at the key features. What’s the most important element to consider with a new GPS?
Chris: Well, as is often our advice when it comes to buyer's guides, it starts with just thinking about how you plan to use it. Is this a device that's mostly going to be a little fun add-on for your car that you might occasionally use for directions or are you constantly driving to new areas where you really need ease of input for adding a location and getting the routing information? But when it comes to the actual features, there are a few things that you can focus in on quickly. The first one is the size of the screen. One of the tricks that we often use just to get a rough idea of how this is going to work is look at the dimensions of the screen and make a little paper cut-out to get a feel for how big that screen going to be, even to the point of sitting in your car and kind of holding it up by the dash. Is it going to be big enough for you? Because obviously, the least expensive models tend to have the smallest screens.
The next thing to consider is the map coverage and the points of interest database. So with the map coverage, generally all of these models include the contiguous 48 states in the U.S. Many also include Canada and some include all 50 states. Others include Mexico and even a handful will come shipped with European maps or other territories. So obviously it helps to think about where you're going to use it and whether it has the coverage. Points of interest are things like gas stations, post offices, stores, and you know, is that going to be useful. It depends. If you're traveling to new cities a lot or spending extended periods of time on the road, that might make a difference for you, how deep and how rich that point of interest database is.
Finally, the third major category to consider is how the directions are presented to you. All of these devices offer navigation that says okay, you see as a GPS, you know where I am, here's where I want to go, get me there and it'll give you some options like fastest or most direct route; but how that gets communicated to you varies a lot by model. For example, all of them of any consequence today will offer spoken word feedback. As you're driving along, it'll tell you, you know, prepare for a right-hand turn in half a mile and turn at the next intersection, for example; but if you again really want to depend on that information it's important to have a model that will actually read to you the name of the street so you're not just getting directions that say turn ahead, turn now, but actually turn onto interstate such and such and it'll actually show you that information.
So those are the types of things to keep an eye out for and, of course, certainly the models that we feature we make a point of calling those things out, but we do tend to bias towards those least expensive models where the most extreme deals are, but there are others available, too.
Michael: I've been watching the space with interest because I noticed that there are still models out there that are $650, $700 and then there are models that are $100 or $200
and as I look at them, I have a hard time really getting a sense of what distinguishes the two levels. Is there a time that makes sense to pay more for a device? Does that mean that you're getting more value?
Chris: Well, there are definitely features that only appear in those higher models. Some are very obvious to spot like the screen size--you can get a larger screen. There are some that have a wide screen as opposed to a 4:3 type layout. So you get quite a bit more just LCD display. There are some user interface differences. For example, better models tend to offer more options as to how to look at the map. For example, just about every model offers an overhead view...just a straight down, typical map view, that puts a triangle where you are and moves you along, but many also offer, in the higher-end models, they offer an isometric view, sometimes they label it a 3D view. It's not quite at the stage of showing you buildings yet although give it a few years and those will be in there, too, at least in the big cities; but what it does show you is sort of an isometric view as if you were flying perhaps a little bit over your car and looking at the road in front of you and for some folks that's just a lot easier to understand. When they're driving, it feels much similar to what they're actually seeing. So that's one thing to consider; but the real big differences you're getting to those higher-end models are the additional data. So, for example, as you move up the chain a bit you can find devices that are Bluetooth enabled, for example, that may connect via a telephone to pull down real-time traffic data.
So now much like what you can get with the higher-end integrated GPS models, you know, a NAV system that's built into your car when you bought the car, these devices will allow you to get real-time traffic and give you routing that is affected by that traffic information, which is really powerful especially if you live in a big city, especially if you have a long commute where you have choices. That can be invaluable and those few hundred dollars of additional spend pay themselves back very, very quickly when it saves you time.
The final thing on the extreme end are the more innovative devices. For example, at CES I had a chance to take a deeper look at the Dash GPS navigation system. Now this is a much more expensive system. It's hundreds of dollars, but it has a built-in cell radio. It receives data. You can go on the web. You can customize maps, customize trip plans, and it'll transfer that data right down to your GPS. That's pretty cool. You don't have to enter it into an awkward interface, but it also reports back some basic traffic information. For example, if you're driving along on the freeway and you're slowed down driving at a very low speed on the freeway, it'll pass that data back in an aggregated form to be reported to other users. So for example, there's only so much traffic data supplied by the state and the departments of transportation, but Dash users will have information from other Dash users about slow-downs at certain intersections and places. So, is it worth it? Well, not if you have a two-mile commute every day and you don't do a lot of travel, but it may be worth it if you have a long commute or you are in a sales role or have a job where you're on the road and in places you're not always completely familiar with, or familiar with the traffic patterns. That can be just a huge benefit. So again, like with so many things, you start with how you're going to use it and what you need, but for most people, especially now at $100, $150, $200 for a very nice GPS, it's a low-cost way to give it a try and see if it helps you. You know, most people have a preconceived idea of whether it'll work for them or not, but the reality is it's quite different when you actually get it in there. It's a piece of technology that is pretty foreign until you give it a try and then suddenly you recognize, hey, this is good for me or you know what, I really don't need it, I don't like it, it's distracting.
Michael: One last question. Is there a model that is a breakout hit? I think about in cameras, the PowerShot SD1000 just keeps on rolling as a popular camera. What about GPS, does anything come to mind?
Chris: Well, there are two that come to mind. One is the TomTom One series. And TomTom is interesting because they really focused on certain elements of the user experience. Most of their models allow tremendous voice customization. You can pick from celebrity voices, a tremendous range of other choices. But some people look at that and say that's just stupid. Who's got the time or cares about what voice it is? So it's a segmented market. The monster in the market frankly is Garmin, which is a U.S.-based company, and they've been in the space for a long time wotj marine and hand-held GPS units going back ten years and more here in the U.S. They don't have quite as clear of a single model standout because they have so many models. They're really trying to segment the market, but the current Nüvi series is very popular because there are so many steps in the product line you can really just pick the one that you want...A little bit bigger screen, a little bit more storage, a little bit of some of these extra features like the traffic integration and such.
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