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Best All Around

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.

Both Shopping.com (www.shopping.com) and Shopzilla (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.

A few sites, such as Cairo (www.cairo.com) and SalesCircular (www.salescircular.com), are geared toward finding sale items in your area. Cairo didn't have listings for the iPod Nano, but it did offer sale information on older iPod models. SalesCircular's search function failed the two times I visited the site. But you can select your city and a product category to browse items on sale in that category.