Flash in the Pan

SmartShopper is a device that uses voice recognition, a claimed built-in vocabulary of about 2,500 items, computer-aided organization, and a build-in printer to create shopping and errand lists. But it will take some getting used to and runs $149.99.

My entire family was excited when the product arrived. "Cool" was the word I heard most, and it was my reaction as well. Not that anyone really needs automation for writing a shopping or errand list. But the idea of speaking into a device that would recognize what you said, sort everything into categories, and then print out the items did sound slick.

What it became, though, was an unintended source of laughter for a while. All of us tried the SmartShopper, trying various items with, accordingly, various degrees of success. Some things, like strawberries, worked flawlessly. Some would bring up a few items that the device thought the word could be - fine enough, because you scroll through and pick the right one. But then there were the rougher spots. For example, light cream wasn't in the vocabulary list. I tried asking for cream maybe a dozen times and got various suggestions: cumin, meat, creamer, gravy, and radio. At the end I finally was prompted for heavy cream, which wasn't what I needed to get, but, hey, it was closer.

Eventually I learned that you can add items to the list, so I added light cream. Even then, the trick to get the two-word items to pop up is to say each word clearly and distinctly with a brief pause between them. In fact, I just tried asking for light cream again and got a list of three choices, one of which was light cream. Then when I typed this last line, the display went back to a blank because I hadn't chosen an item, so I tried saying it a few times again. Once it said no such item found and twice had lists of three items - for example, whipped cream, white wine, and white wheat bread.

When you press the Print button, the items do come out in categories, so shopping might be easier because you know what items are clustered together by type. Some strange screen activity when I was trying to add the now ubiquitous light cream makes me wonder whether the unit I have might not be defective, so I'll check with the manufacturer and see if I can try another one. If so, I'll be back again with more.