Art of the iPhone

Grocery IQ ($4.99) is a very useful, well-designed app that helps create quick and accurate grocery lists. Begin typing an item’s name, and suggestions appear that predict the name of the item. This can save a lot of finger taps, especially with longer brand names. It’s sort of like Google’s suggest feature.

Check out our video review below for a closer look.

The app currently has 130,000 grocery items in its database (with more to come), featuring everything from general food names like “Frozen Pizza” to specific brands like “California Pizza Kitchen – Thai Chicken.”

Grocery IQ automatically groups together items by aisles. This helps save time when shopping by letting you grab all the items located in the same aisle at the same time. You can even rearrange how the order of the aisles appears to match your grocery store. I know I’ve got mine memorized.

Creating a list of favorites will allow for quick adding. A history view shows all the items you’ve checked off on past visits to the store. Items in the history view can also be added to your current grocery list.

The app’s icon even has a notification feature that let’s you know about many items you have on your grocery list.

Some other features are the ability to email a grocery list to your significant other, set the quantity and size/weight of items, change the aisle (for instance, if you want the cheese in the gourmet section), and add your own notes to items.

What I like most about Grocery IQ is that its advanced features don’t get in the way of creating a quick-and-dirty grocery list. However, if you take the time to learn the other features, you can build grocery lists even quicker and become a more efficient shopper.

My only complaint would be the price of the app at $4.99. But there’s obviously been a lot of work and thought put into making this a superslick app. I experienced no bugs, hangups, crashes, or other operating quirks.

The developer says they working on adding support for multiple stores and lists for version 1.1, and version 2.0 will add synching of grocery lists for multiple iPhones, so you and your significant other can always be in sync on what’s needed at the grocery. The synching will occur via a free service hosted by Grocery IQ servers. Version 2.0 is scheduled for late November.

Conclusion

Grocery IQ is a very useful tool for creating grocery lists quickly and accurately. Its ability to retain a history and remember favorites will make you a smarter, less impulsive shopper. And the ability to arrange items by aisle will make you a more efficient shopper. And since you’ve always got the iPhone in your pocket, you’ll always have a way to “remember the milk.” We like it so much, we’ve made it one of our Best of iPhone Apps.

Name: Grocery IQ
Version reviewed: 1.0.1
Developer: Free State Labs
Price: $4.99
iTunes Download:

To see all of Art of the iPhone‘s Best of iPhone Apps, click here.