Ask HN: How do you search for products / apps given a list of requirements?

[meta-level]

Very often (for example right now) I get the impression that at least for some products market evolves backwards. Or maybe it's just flooded with crap making it just close to impossible to find the "tip of the pyramid" (nicely demonstrated by Adam in his rant on search engines [1]).

Right now I'm searching for a Music/MP3 player device that comes with a list of attributes that I'd take for granted. Apart from modern technology like Bluetooth - most of them existed 20 years ago!

But looking the length alone of the list of features I don't want to pass on fill my mind with hopelessness nowadays:

[ ] lightweight / has a clip

[ ] plays from filesystem

[ ] supports resume from last played for large files (must have for audiobooks)

[ ] support for at least OGG and FLAC next to MP3

[ ] auto-connects to BT headset

[ ] equalizer or at least bass/treble control

[ ] playback modes (continue alphabetically, shuffle, etc.) (no - not obvi

[ ] auto-off after N minutes

[ ] display easy to read in sunlight (why not e-paper?)

[ ] support for firmware updates (I don't dare to ask for open source..)

[ ] nice: audio jack for analog headsets

[ ] nice: support for multiple (2) bluetooth headsets

I know today it's profitable to throw cheap crap on the market - most people will just buy and forget. But what's with those who'd like to spent quite some money for a quality product? Do they have a chance to search nowadays?

How do you do it? Just with standard search engines and endurance? Reddit? Special keywords? Are there reliable platforms for product recommendations? Build your own ([2])?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31476069

[2] https://www.instructables.com/ESP32-Audio-Player/

[woojoo666]

I have this problem every time, and really what we need is some crowd-sourced open database that lets people add attributes to products. I mean Wikipedia already has great tables for comparing software, for example version control systems [1]. There are specialized sites for things like Android phones [2] or PC monitors [3]. Amazon and Google Shopping often let you filter by attributes, but since many products aren't comprehensively tagged, you'll miss a lot if you use the filter (something that crowd sourcing could solve). Looking online, there only seems to be one project like this called Datakick [4] but it's not very functional.

This kind of database would be a big win for smaller niche product manufacturers, who would be able to easily reach the customers looking for their feature set. And for contributors, the crowd-sourcing could be as simple as a browser extension that overlays on top of product websites (eg Amazon) and lets users easily tag products. I'm surprised something like this hasn't taken off yet.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_version-control_...

[2]: https://www.phonearena.com/phones

[3]: https://www.displayspecifications.com/en/display-finder

[4]: https://www.gtinsearch.org/

[andsoitis]

I might consider reframing. For instance, instead of enumerating the list of features, enumerate what you want to accomplish, which is really something different. And then see whether that can help guide you towards a solution.

One thing I recommend being comfortable with is that you will probably not find something that satisfies 100% of your use cases.

[bradwood]

This. OP has posted a classic first world problem.

I'd get the closest thing I can find that does the job at a reasonable price and be happy with it, my life, and move on.

[olalonde]

A useful trick is to start with a known product/app and try those queries in Google: "alternative to <product name>" or "<product name> vs". I often do that to find software recommendations and usually end up on https://alternativeto.net/, but I suppose it could work for other types of products as well.

[idlehand]

Has Google gotten worse in the last few years? I instinctively try to Google these kinds of things, but it is getting harder to find the results I want.

[gernb]

Not an answer to your question but similarly, I've been searching for clothing lately and I have no idea how to search effectively. Example: I wanted to find a shirt I saw. It was a pretty straight forward mens long sleeve shirt with vertical red, white, and black stripes.

Putting that in Google, Google doesn't know what "vertical" means. It doesn't limit the search to "red+white+black" shirts. Of the first 60 hits only 4 actually match the search.

It's no better on etsy. first page of hits, (48 results, 3 matches that actually fit)

ebay has 2 matches of its first page of results and as for how bad it is, the 2nd results is for a woman's shirt. If the search engine had any smarts whatsoever it would prioritize "mens" over "womens" for a search for products with "mens" in the search string.

I know search must be hard but sometimes it feels from the outside that there's a ton of low-hanging fruit to be grabbed.

[kissgyorgy]

If you have a picture about the thing, you can use Google image search, which will show similar images.

[tcmb]

I try to find a comparison of a relatively large number of devices to get an overview first. Some sites do summary tables in which they list attributes similar to those you listed. Heise.de for example often does that in their product tests. If I'm lucky, there will even be a site that lets you filter down a list of products by checking boxes (like [1] for monitors) [2].

Even if not all my search criteria are listed in the tables/filters, it allows me to reduce the number of individual products that I need to take a closer look at afterwards. If I cannot find information on whether a specific product has a certain feature from the manufacturer's pages or an independent review, I check Reddit or similar forums.

An initial problem with discovering good comparison and overview sites is of course the amount of SEO spam out there. I've made good experiences with using Kagi [3] instead of Google in these cases.

[1] https://www.prad.de/test-kaufberatung/produktsuche/monitor-s...

[2] Idea: Someone should make an 'awesome' list of such product comparison sites, if it doesn't exist already.

[3] https://kagi.com/

[thih9]

> How do you do it?

I don't. I find the closest thing that I already own (in this case perhaps an iPhone?) and make sure to use that for a while.

When something about the existing solution annoys me, I move to a product that solves that particular annoyance; At the same time I keep in mind that the search itself can be an effort and I make sure that the search isn't more annoying than the actual annoyance.

In the end it often turns out I can solve 90% of the problem with 10% of effort.

If you've already tried an iPhone, maybe pick a random used mp3 player, try using that for a while and see where this gets you?

[balaji1]

Word-of-mouth, popularity, familiarity and availability are the biggest factors for using some products; and of course how well it works. A lot of times products find us. I usually start using an app or product, until I find something that is better.

OP has a long list of very specific list requirements. When I have specific requirements, it is usually about ingredients in food items, or things like 100% cotton shirts; and it is rather a short list. How do I find them -- it is usually hard.

[larrydag]

Find a user group, hobbyist group, or consortium in that domain and ask them for their recommendations. Domain search technology is great but nothing can beat asking someone or some group that has been using the niche product for years.

[IG_Semmelweiss]

The answer you seek is really an authoritarive source niche page.

I had the same problem as you when trying to find a scooter. I was looking aimlessly until I found a website that literally showed every feature of every scooter and had them side by side.

Obviously, scooters being pricey and a more recent product...made the existence of the blog in the format that has, much likelier . The table of scooters was quite impressive aa the reviews of each one with videos etc were effectively professional.

But I suspect there are similar projects out there for digital products. The issue is finding them and also, whether they are up to date.

[lapaz17]

Could you share the scooter website?

[visarga]

This shows a clear fail of Google to close the sale at the best possible moment. Instead of answering your question to the best of their abilities, Google just returns another pile of web spam wasting an opportunity.

[daniel_iversen]

While Google’s mission does include making all the worlds information “useful” it is an extremely difficult task to have an automatically generated taxonomy of everything in the world that is also useful to users. It usually requires some thought and curation (the taxonomy).

[eternityforest]

Yep. Standard search engines, with a wardialer level of persistence. Probably unhealthy, since it takes a lot of time....

I usually start with whatever the biggest name brand is that isn't Apple-ized(Made with lots of incompatibilities, a "think different" attitude, expensive, prioritizing "luxury craftsmanship" over high tech, etc).

I usually use a lot of quotes in searches. And I generally will always look for the more generalized versions.

In this case, my first search would be "Bluetooth" mp4 player "ogg" "opus" "flac" "type-c" which has some interesting results.

Related features are also helpful and can sometimes be used as proxies for features that aren't always clearly described. Most of the ones with FM radio also have a 3.5mm jack.

I'm not rich, and I generally trust mass produced tech, so I'm not really sure about the top of the pyramid or how to find it. Ideally I like name brands, but in general solid state stuff is a lot harder to mess up than older stuff. A bad record player might be truly bad, a bad mp3 player is probably just kind of OK. and will probably continue working for 10 years, just a bit annoyingly. A more midrange MP3 player is probably pretty great.

With a lot of things, there's only so much you can do. Playing MP3s is mostly solved, there's no reason a $30 device can't do it very well, if it has all the features.

I've never tried to find something like an MP3 player or any of those "Phones do it now" devices though. That might be a bit harder now that they are mostly a low end thing, and most(Myself included) just focus on making sure you have a great phone, and not bothering with dedicated gear.

Building my own is the one thing I try to almost never to. Yes, I generally describe my job title as embedded systems engineer. No, I do not want to add another custom project to my life.

What I might do if I was really dedicated is to look for something unrelated with moddable open firmware. Perhaps one of the keychain sized ESP32 game consoles.

Last resort, it is in fact totally reasonable to DIY things these days.... I just prefer to curate my projects list very aggressively and I'd rather just use a phone app.

[vignesh_warar]

Is this fits your requirement?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/shanlingaudio/shanling-...

I've been building a product search engine that uses only organic indicators to rank products. I just tested with a query "mp3 device player" and the url mentioned above showed up.

[ranger207]

find the appropriate subreddit, see if they have a buying guide, if not go to ddg and search "[best product/beginner's guide/whatever] site:reddit.com/r/[subreddit"

[dyeje]

I used to spend hours researching products, so that I buy the “best” one. Now I just use the Wirecutter, haven’t been let down yet.

[amelius]

Hah. It's not even possible to find a pair of jeans in a nearby shop given brand, waist and length, using a Google search.

[asciiresort]

Recently Google’s barely able to find movie showtimes near me in Japan.

It’ll work half the time in the megacity, but in the cities with several million population I usually end up going through each movie theater’s website and check from there after rearranging over half a dozen queries of combinations of keywords such as “movie showtimes near me” (the granting my location data to no avail ), “movies today in <city>”, “movie theaters today “.

[minhmeoke]

I happened to be looking for a similar portable music player / conference call headset recently.

My process was to first identify a close-enough product using a search engine like Google or Amazon, and identify the relevant search terms (in my case, "portable DAC Amp". Then, if possible, I'll find a specialty forum for that product niche, and read user reviews there and on Reddit, Amazon, AliExpress, and/or blogs and dig into products that users compare it to or suggest as replacements (or use "$PRODUCT vs" search queries and see what shows up on top).

Then finally read the product manual. This is a very manual and time-consuming process. Or you could just ask here on HN :)

For your requirements, I'd recommend putting Rockbox onto something like an iPod:

- https://www.rockbox.org/

- https://www.rockbox.org/wiki/TargetStatus

- https://www.rockbox.org/manual.shtml

[X] Plays from filesystem

[X] Support OGG, FLAC, other file formats

[X] Equalizer

[X] Shuffle, Fade, etc.

[X] Open source firmware

For my particular use-case, the objective criteria were slightly different:

[X] lightweight / has a clip: 25g, metal clip

[X] high quality audio output via audio jack, that can drive a headphone

[X] move the bluetooth antenna farther away from my head: https://news.berkeley.edu/2021/07/01/health-risks-of-cell-ph...

Since I use a phone for media storage, I dropped the "plays from filesystem" requirement, and can play virtually any audio format using apps.

- Fiio BTR5 (get 2021 or later version for better Bluetooth range):

[X] Display

[X] Easy to use interface

[X] equalization, but EQ does not work with LDAC codec

- Qudelix 5K (if you can drop the display requirement)

[ ] Display

[X] Very powerful/configurable app

[X] equalization with LDAC codec

https://www.reddit.com/r/HeadphoneAdvice/comments/vo8dua/wha...

[ImKevinArcher]

Well, you just need to become an expert by yourself. I mean when I need to buy something for example "headphones" or "gaming mouse" I just watch reviews on YouTube and read negative reviews on Amazon. So I can better choose a product for my needs. I tried to find some useful sources but in the end, all of them have some relation with the products they suggest.

[natch]

I hate to add another bullet. and I don’t know if you care or not, but a lot of people take it for granted that Bluetooth music devices have stereo playback over bluetooth, when in fact many of them surprisingly do not.

Yes the content matters when deciding whether stereo helps or not; that is obvious… I was adding a point about stereo that is less obvious.

[natch]

My first thought was could you convert OGG and FLAC to MP3 and then you would be able to play them on any player player that supports MP3?

But then I realized maybe not because this would create friction / a speed bump impeding the direct playing of files acquired in those formats.