(Spoilers Below:  If you want to compare your techniques to mine, don’t read any further in this article.  Take the test yourself by trying to decide what Digital Voice Recorder you would purchase.  I wanted a recorder that would download data to a pc that I could use for both documenting ideas and sampling sounds to use in my music.  I was looking to spend about $150 but would be willing to spend more for great features if there was a compelling reason to do so. What model would you pick?  How long did you spend looking?)

For an electronics decision at some point I like to visit a physical store to look at the products I’m considering.  Usually this occurs after I’ve done my online research.  In this case though, the idea to buy the recorder came at a time when I had good access to physical stores, but very poor web access.  So, I went to both Walmart and Staples and looked at what they had available before I had ever looked online for information.  This trip made me aware that for a top of the line recorder I would likely spend $160 or more.  Some recorders had absolutely no output port so you couldn’t transfer files to a pc.  Some recorders were compatible with transcription software while others weren’t.  Some played mp3 files and supported multiple formats.  None of them seemed to have removable storage or use rechargeable batteries. (I later found out that some do offer removable storage, which became a feature requirement for me). 

For a purchase decision like this I usually first of all look for an expert community and begin looking at popular products mentioned in that community (something like http://www.notebookreview.com/, a great site if you’ve never seen it).  After trying a few variations around the basic idea of ‘digital voice recorder reviews’ in google, I did find http://www.voicerecognition.com/solutions/digital_recorders/ which looked initially like a potentially useful resource.  This was an ecommerce site though, and like so many info-commerce sites (sites that are giving you ‘useful information’ in the context of trying to sell you something), it was hard to determine to what extent they could be trusted.  Many of the other sites I ran accross of the same nature were clearly biased, always telling you the most expensive item was the best, and never really giving you any negative reviews. 

If I can’t find a category specific expert community, I then go to more general expert communities like CNET or Anandtech for electronics.  Neither of these had a particular section around recorders and didn’t have specific reviews of some of the models I had registered from my search efforts so far.  

After exhausting expert communities, I then look for user opinions.  Amazon is still my first place to go for these, and then usenet groups via google’s group search (I still type in deja.com every once in a while for old time’s sake - gotta give it to google on one thing, they make good purchases). Amazon had some useful information and there were lots of newsgroup reviews that helped.   In particular, one user on Amazon helped me quite a bit by pointing out that some of the Sony recorders actually came bundled with transcription software that if purchased separately was almost as much as the recorders themselves.  This made bundled transcription software a new required feature for me.

At this point, I had narrowed my search down to two models.  I went looking for the lowest price point for both models, and then would have to decide given the price difference, whether the difference in feature set pointed towards getting the more or less expensive model.  I used a couple of different comparison shopping engines for this purpose.  I don’t go directly to any particular engine though, and usually just type the product name plus the word “prices” into Google.  After looking at several comparison engines, I located the merchant to buy from, and made my purchase.  If I was being super diligent, I would have looked for merchant reviews in google groups to see if there were any complaints as well as looking on BBBOnline to see if there were any cause for concern.  The merchant looked quite legitimate though and had a good rating in all the comparison engines, so I made the purchase without undergoing this step. 

One thing I noticed in going through the comparison engines is that they added different markups to the products depending on what their revenue model is.  Most of them are affiliates to the merchants and either they or the merchants mark up the products according to the commission rate.  So, if you have a comparison engine (dealtime, mysimon, bizrate) that you’ve used in the past, before you make a purchase, go and shop around, as they make not be showing the you bottom line rate the merchant will give.  Another way to get around this issue would be to find the lowest cost merchant in one engine, go to their site, bookmark it, clear your cookies, and return.  If they have any special channel based pricing, hopefully this would eliminate it.

At the end of this process, I felt quite good about my searching methods.  I ended up with a recorder I’m very happy with (a Sony ICD MX20VTP) and only spent a few hours researching the decision.  I would say though that my test was conducted in one of the easiest topic areas imaginable, consumer electronics.  There are lots of great review sites, people share information about the products they buy on news groups, and the product line is very well represented in all the shopping engines.  This is also a product search, which the web is very well setup to handle. Finally, this is a search for information that is available online.  There are lots of searches that are not so readily handled online.  For example, how do you find your wallet when you’ve lost it?  So, over the next few weeks I’m going to be working on a more thorough test writeup for a variety of different information scenarios. 

Check back if you feel you are up to the test.