Grocery Apps

I have been working with several of the available (and "free") grocery applications for Android since my last post.  A few were tossed out of the competition quickly; having proved themselves to be unacceptable for normal use.  The 3 that are still installed on my phone have immense potential for everyday use.   List Ease, Out of Milk and Our Groceries are those lucky apps.
Let's discuss the good, bad, and ugly of these 3 Inventory/Grocery List Applications


List Ease

• Keeps track of $$$$ -- Allows you to input the cost of each item, as well as sales tax.  Will estimate the cost of your shopping list.
• Large barcode "vocabulary"  recognizes most products when scanned.
• List share and sync
• More features available when you upgrade to a subscription

Out of Milk

• Different types of lists -- Shopping, To Do, and Pantry(Inventory).  User creates sub categories within each to further organize items.
• This application is tied to an account, which means that you will not lose your lists if you uninstall for whatever reason (Like your SI surprising you by making Google Wallet work while you're putting groceries away; yes this happened during the course of my testing)
• Customization seems to be a huge part of this app.  Not only within the lists themselves, but in the settings as well.  The ability to change what actions do what is easily available, and fairly idiot-proof.
• List Sharing -- share lists using whatever means you wish

Our Groceries

• List Sharing/Sync -- can be requested or allowed from the app.
• Recipe section -- allows user to add ingredients to a shopping list

List Ease

• No dedicated section for recipes (although this could be done by making a new list for each recipe)
• Switching phones means lost lists.  Syncing does not work, leaving me to think that the developer abandoned users.

Out of Milk

• Scanning an item multiple times does not increase item count; instead creating another instance of the item, which can be slightly helpful if you have scanned two entirely different things, and the scan has resulted in identical item information.

Our Groceries

• Having switched phones this weekend I cannot access lists on the new phone that were created on the old. This was expected since there is no "sign-up" or "log in" to lead anyone to believe that it would sync.

I had totally planned on putting in the Ugly section as well.  Unfortunately, between life (aka looking for work and parenting) and a change in technology (I am now rocking a Moto X, and handed off ownership of my Note 2 today) I was unable to get as far as deciding just what the Ugly for each one was.