Laser Tag
An Experiment With Prices and Lasers

Today, we'd like to look into your future. 

And we see you…buying things—a new sweater, a little booze, some holiday gifts. (And maybe something for someone else, too.) Enter RedLaser, an iPhone app that lets you scan bar codes in brick-and-mortar stores, and then compare prices to what's listed online. To give it the rigorous testing it so deserves, we turned it over to the crack researchers at UD Labs™. They spent some long hours scanning our weekly shopping list of essentials. The results of this hard work below.

Office supplies:
A Callaway driver
Store price: $299
Online price: $299

Research tool:
A 46" LCD HDTV from Samsung
Store price: $1429
Online price: $1449 (from the store's e-commerce site)

Meeting agenda:
A deck of cards
Store price: $3.49
Online price: $1.99
 
Medicine:
Airborne
Store price: $7.99
Online price: $4.99

More medicine:
A six-pack of Bud
Store price: $7.49
Online price: $6.64

Holistic medicine:
A magnum of Veuve Cliquot
Store price: $99.99
Online price: $84.97 (Then again, you can't drink a delivery order…)

All-around essential:
A 12-pack of Charmin Ultra
Store price: $8.99
Online price: $9.79 (But beware: one e-retailer is offering it for the low, low price of $54.60).