If you are a tech junkie like me, you tend to buy a lot of tech products. So getting the best price on them is critical. Warning: going to the sites on a daily basis may entice you into buying things you normally wouldn’t buy. I still have 8 HDMI cables fom the 10 pack I bought. Of course the 10 pack only cost $20 and came to my door with free shipping. You would pay more than $20 for a single cable at your local electronics retailer.

Pricing and Reviews

When considering a purchase (online or otherwise) you need to be able to compare the cost of the product at multiple retailers. Froogle is the only site you need. (Sorry Google, I know you call it “Google Product Search” now, but that is lame. And if you didn’t want me to call it froogle, stop forwarding froogle.com to Google Product Search) Just put in whatever information you have (Ideally, a manufacturers product code) and hit Search Products. For this example, I will search for the Samsung TV (HL72A650) I have been considering.

If froogle returns an exact match (entries that can be directly compared), it will be listed as the first item. It will show you a price range as well as a Compare Prices button. Below this, all matches will be listed. Since I am looking for the best price on this unit, I’ll click the Compare Prices button.

The result is a sortable list of multiple retailers’ prices (above). Some of them show the shipping cost as well. You can also access tech specs and reviews of the unit. Froogle is a great utility and I use it for every tech purchase.

Note: If you are specifically looking for computer components, pricewatch.com is the site to use.

Reviews are also a great way to determine the pros and cons of a product. I rely on amazon.com. I have found that on any given product, they usually have the largest array of original (non-aggregated) review data. They also display the data in a very usable way.

You can can browse all the reviews of course, but at the top they show you two specific reviews. They are the most favorable review that was deemed the most useful by the user community and the most critical review that was deemed the most useful by the user community. This setup provides and quick look into the most useful review data by cutting out both the “Dude this TV is awesome!!!!!!1″ and the “Mine came damged…LOL SamSung SuX!!!” reviews.

Deal of the Day

Many websites have a “Deal of the Day” where they sell a single product at a great price. Checking these daily will give you exposure to those impulse purchases. The hands-down best site for this is woot.com. Woot sells one product every day and when they run out, the deal is done. The best deals tend to be gone really quick, so check this one early. Every once in a while there is a “woot-off” where they have multiple deals that run one after another. There are usually some great deals to be had during a woot-off, but you have to be quick. The best items can disappear in seconds. Woot is also famous for their $5 shipping. Anything you buy costs $5 to ship. Even the 100 lb. pair of speakers I bought through them. Make sure you read the product stories as well, they are usually really funny.

If you find yourself needing more, there is always sellout.woot.com. It is basically just another deal of the day, without all of the woot flare. Sometimes the deals on woot and sellout.woot go together. (I bought a subwoofer on sellout.woot the same day I bought speakers on woot).

Amazon’s gold box has some great daily deals so check that out too. Buy.com’s deal of the week is usually worth a look as well, and it is always a good price. (Ok, make sure to double-check that using froogle)

Aggregators

Here is where the real danger comes in. Tech deal aggregators are websites dedicated to pulling the best tech deals into one place. They do all the legwork of finding the deals for you.

Techdealdigger.com and techdeals.net are pretty much the same thing. They do however often offer different products, so sign up for both RSS feeds. These sites have consistently great deals on speakers, TVs, computer peripherals, digital cameras, video games, etc, etc. Other sites like techspot’s hot deals, techbargains.com and cnet’s techdeals provide a similar service, but for one reason or another I find myself using them less frequently.

Finally, Gizmodo (a great tech site in general) has a daily (usually) roundup of deals. These deals (tag: dealzmodo) are categorized for you, and include what they call “hobomodo”, which provides links to forms and coupons that will get you free stuff (food, magazine subscriptions, etc).

I hope you enjoyed this roundup and please leave a comment if you have a good site for pricing, revies or aggregation that I can include in this post.