Purchase App $0.99                 About our AppStore Bite Articles

I’m pretty obtuse when it comes to being familiar with restaurants down the street from me or if I’m visiting a frequent travel destination. This, I’ve found is quite common, people not knowing what’s in their own back yards.Fortunately sites such as Yelp and Google make life easier and one can find new places to explore. A new app Placebox, takes these different search tools and rolls them up into one convenient and tidy app.

Placebox is a Google powered app that makes searching for destinations on your iPhone a bit easier. The UI and searching features resemble my Garmin GPS but of course the info is kept current. Placebox allows you to quickly search for a place by location name, keywords, as well as selecting a category. For instance, if you live in a somewhat populated city like myself and click on “Entertainment” the list is going to be huge. Luckily you can sort through these by using different methods. The most convenient methods (or at least for myself) is either by distance or rating. All of this is done quickly and finding a new place is frustration free.

-Why on earth would so many people vote Panda Express to be the best Chinese Food in my area?! Or McDonalds as a top Italian restaurant…thanks Google…

Once you select a place, Placebox maps out directions, links to the store’s (restaurant, etc.) website if there is one, and has the ability to call them if you so choose. While these features are great as well as expected, there’s a bunch of extra handy features that makes Placebox über low price tag of a buck quite a bargain. First off is that you can store places into personalized folders (you can also reorganize or edit on the fly), take notes on the place, as well as snapping a photo for future reference (a swell feature). You can  now easily remember what to order next time you go to a particular restaurant, mark off a future sale day at a retail store….

The Bottom Line: 7/10

Placebox isn’t entirely original nor innovative, but the UI is clean and streamlined and allows easy navigation, organization of visited destinations, and quick note taking (best feature), and you can share all of this information thru common social media. We recommend this helpful app.