IPhone app RedLaser is one of those apps that really shows off the power of mobile technology. At its core is a barcode recognition engine. It doesn’t shoot out red lasers, but instead uses the iPhone’s camera to read bar codes.

The engine is really amazing as it can read almost any barcode very quickly. As soon as the barcode comes into view, it recognizes the numbers in about a second. The lighting doesn’t even have to be that good, and your hand doesn’t have to be very steady. RedLaser is also very fast when looking up products by their UPC numbers and confirming their identities with names and pictures.

RedLaser excels at all of the above functions, but unfortunately everything else is not as great. As with all technologies backed by a database, the results it returns are only as good as the database. This is where RedLaser fails fairly often. Its database simply does not—and cannot—contain every barcoded product sold.

Through no fault of its own, RedLaser fails in cases where a manufacturer may have recycled a number or did not bother to assign a number to a product. It also cannot find matches for many foreign or imported products, and some products simply don’t have UPC numbers. Your results may vary, but you will probably find many items that it cannot identify or misidentifies.

RedLaser bills itself as a comparison shopping tool. So along with identifying the product, it also finds retailers that carry the product, and lists how much they charge. You’ll know immediately if you are getting a good deal or if you’re paying too much.

If you are scanning a book, it will also let you know if the book is available at a local library. For some foods, it will also list known allergens in them. For video games, it will look up the reviews.

On note, it would be nice if it also looked up reviews for items other than video games. RedLaser seems to be most useful with entertainment products such as games, books, and movies.

For other items, such as health care products, you already probably know that the biggest retailers sell the same items for less than small pharmacies, so you don’t need RedLaser to tell you that. But for the curious, it would be nice to see the price differential. RedLaser is not necessarily an app that you would whip out every time you go shopping, but it’s definitely useful when you are unfamiliar with a product.

Online auctioning website, eBay recently purchased RedLaser and the app is now available for free.

[etRating value=“ 3.5”]

IPhone App of the Week—RedLaser 2.7

App of the Week: Scribblenauts Remix

iPhone App of the Week: Waze 3.0

App of the Week: YouMail 2.1.5

iPhone App of the Week: Talkatone 1.0.3