What Should I Buy? OzBargain Community-Powered Product Guide

Over the last couple of weeks scrimshaw has been posting multiple polls in the forum asking community members to give recommendations on some of most frequently asked "what should I buy" questions on OzBargain.

Moderators at OzBargain have decided to run yearly polls to decide the best products in popular categories that get asked repeatedly in the forum. Our aim is to have a central thread where users can vote on the items, suggest options and also change their vote throughout the year. The polls will end once the year is over.

OzBargain is a sizeable community with experts of all sorts, and it's only natural for us to ask for other people's opinions before making important purchasing decisions. Which phone? Which laptop? Which car? Which washing machine? Which investment option to park my $80k other than a motor vehicle? They just get asked again and again in the forums — sometimes the same question got asked every single week. The answers to those "what should I buy" also ended up scattered in multiple threads, if people bothered to make detailed suggestions in the first place (rather than just "please search previous threads").

The initiative here is to use these new consolidated What Should I Buy polls to cover many questions that our community might want to ask (or have already asked multiple times). For example for mobile phones we make polls for the community to recommend the best flagship, mid-range and budget phones this year. That should hopefully cover 75% of "which phone should I get" posts in the forums.

These will be running until the end of the year — new models will be released, and some older models might not be attractive anymore. You can change your votes any time, and hopefully the poll result will reflect what OzBargainers' opinion on the best product to recommend at that point in time. When 2018 comes we will be making new polls, archiving the old ones for record keeping purpose. It's always fun to look at what OzBargainers recommend 5 years ago :)

Here is a list of current polls and recommendations. We are still developing this feature and we will keep you updated in this thread.


FAQ

How do I suggest products to What Should I Buy polls?

If you have a product that you would like to suggest for the poll (that is currently not in the Poll Options), you'll need to make a top-level comment (i.e. not replying someone else's comment) and fill up "Suggestions" text box just above your comment:

Suggestion box

Make sure you provide clear argument in the comment why this is the product you would like to suggest. Suggestions will be in "Pending" state after comments have been submitted, and will need to be approved by moderators or poll's OP.

I have a "What Should I Buy" question not covered by existing polls!

Please use this thread to suggest to the moderators.

At the same time we also understand that those polls won't cover everything, as we are only aiming to answer some of the most frequently asked what should I buy questions. People have very specific needs, and if you think your request is unique, feel free to post up your question in a new forum thread.

This is part of What Should I Buy poll for 2017. Check out other recommendations from the OzBargain community.

Comments

  • How about one for best new and used cars to purchase? perhaps some categories based on age, size etc?

    • The amount of different polls would be endless, just like all the different threads for various price points, sizes etc.

  • +1

    I think it would be great if we had some reviews linked with these posts. Often ozbarginers post essentially reviews in the comments sections of deals etc. It would be nice to be able to find it more easily.

    • +1

      Reviews show up as yellow stars on the "Related Products" infobox on the right hand side (but only if a product tag exists).

      like this

      You can click on them to read the reviews. They'll usually be Amazon.com reviews.

      Some of them are missing, but I'll try and see if I can scrape Amazon and link it to each product.

      • Gimili was referring to reviews on this site, not Amazon I think. Maybe the top helpful comments could be collated together into a single post of "OzBargain notes"

  • +1

    Can there be a poll for best phones under 5.5 inches? Too many flagships are revealing their new products that are over 5.5 inches and its getting worse to hold heavier and bigger phones.

  • +1

    Just a note that scrimshaw has been posting up some new What Should I Buy polls for 2018. You can still access last year's polls here — those were the community's choice for 2017. We'll be releasing new polls over the coming weeks so put in your suggestions and help the community to decide what's worth buying in 2018!

    • How do I bookmark this page within Ozb login? The page doesn't seem to have bookmark options available to other post/deal pages.

      https://www.ozbargain.com.au/what-should-i-buy

      • +1

        Since it's not a node page you can't really bookmark it. However if you hover over "Pages" at the top and "What Should I Buy" should be one of the list entries there.

  • +1

    What about a poll for the best credit cards for
    1) Points
    2) Frequent Flyer miles?

  • I want to upgrade to mirrorless but I can't decide between Sony A7 iii or Sony A7 r iii or to stick with Nikon (Nikon z 6)

  • Best budget ~10" tablet

  • Ethical banking options, both for everyday banking as well as superannuation please

  • Please make one for Robotic Vacuum Cleaner (https://www.ozbargain.com.au/tag/robotic-vacuum-cleaner) =)

    The Xiaomi Roborock S50 used to be the go-to, but now the S50 seems to be discontinued (?) and Roborock massively increased its prices. The market also has considerably grown to have many different models. It'll be great to have a post to discuss, at maybe <$450 and >$450 mark?

  • Child car seats

    It'd probably have to be broken down by age ranges, though.

  • Can we have a poll for robot vacuum grouped by price range please

  • Can we have 2020 and 2021 be added to the "Previous years" section?

    I know we all want to remove those years from our memories, but not in that way!

    • +1

      Yup. I'll put that under my todo's.

  • Noticed the smartphone polls scrimshaw posted. Should we have one for laptops? It seems to me that it gets asked frequently.

  • How about an eSIM subcategory in mobile phone plans?

  • How about we add a section for Household electronics? and basic home service providers?
    Microwave Ovens, Fridge, Washing Machine, Vacuum Cleaner, NBN Router, TV, etc.?
    NBN Provider, Electricity provider, Insurance provider, etc.?
    We are spending much more on these things than phones and laptops, so why not have an opinion poll where we have many experts across Ozbargain community.
    Besides, all the compare websites like Canstar and Comparethemarket are very much biased.

  • Coffee machines?

  • Couldn't OzB webcrawl some product tables at large stores/marketplaces—Amazon, eBay, etc—and autoadd categories and items? Isn't that what PriceHipster and C³ do (for price history)?

  • HP E344c has never let me down

  • Which Robotic Vacuum to buy sub $400.

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