Peek cuts Peek Classic, Peek Pronto prices to $19.95 and $59.95

Peek's already offered lifetime subscriptions and all sorts of other incentives in the hope of wooing folks away from more expensive smartphones, and it looks like the company's now giving good old fashioned price cuts a(nother) try. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the basic Peek Classic has been slashed to just $19.95, down from the original $99.95 (or $49.95 more recently), while the Peek Pronto, which adds push email and Exchange support (among other features), will now run you $59.95 instead of the $79.95 it demanded when it launched just back in March. Service, however, remains at the same $20 per month as before.

[DanielT @ Jul 17th 2009 11:31AM]

Is that pink or red? My monitor was made in Mexico. If pink, I want.

[Templarian @ Jul 17th 2009 11:35AM]

It's crimson.

[Hackettman @ Jul 17th 2009 11:32AM]

Great..... Still dont want to buy one.....

[Nikesh @ Jul 18th 2009 10:52AM]

With service charges that high, who would? They need to bring the service cost to under $5/month if they ever want to get a large following.

[Dr. Evil Genius @ Jul 17th 2009 11:36AM]

Great concept but I still don't see what will make me want to add that to what I already have...

[TIMMAH! @ Jul 17th 2009 11:37AM]

I think they'd get way more uptake if they cut the service price rather than the price of the unit. $20/month just doesn't make it that much more attractive than using a data plan on a phone (that's already in your pocket.)

[Benson @ Jul 17th 2009 1:04PM]

Certainly, but it would also cost them a lot more. ;)

But yeah, it'd either have to come down to about $10 a month, or sprout some cool hacks allowing the data plan to be (ab)used for other purposes, before I'd consider it.

[anodynewake @ Jul 17th 2009 2:18PM]

Heck, I'd even buy the device for $100 if the monthly cost was only $10... $20/month is my only hesitation right now. Otherwise, I'm fully crouched and waiting to jump on the bandwagon.

ARE YOU LISTENING PEEK?!

[jalapeno @ Jul 17th 2009 11:39AM]

I think the Peek Pronto service goes down to $15 a month if you buy a year in advance. Not a bad deal if all you want is basic emailing, but I have found that reading PDF, Word or Excel attachments is hit or miss. It does do push gmail very well though.

[Eddie.exe @ Jul 17th 2009 2:12PM]

And you can also send and receive sms through your email so...If you don't have a phone, and contracts keep you from phones...I think this is a good buy. For texting at least..

[bob e @ Jul 17th 2009 11:47AM]

Next step,
bankruptcy...

[Avuton Olrich @ Jul 17th 2009 12:01PM]

Maybe painfully obvious, but if that does happen, then that means the lifetime subs are out the window? Phew. I'm actually interested but I would have lifetime to equal a few months.

[Spinfusor @ Jul 17th 2009 12:02PM]

This article should have mentioned that if you pay annually it's $15/month and if you pay quarterly it's $16.67/month.

[BiddleBubbly @ Jul 17th 2009 9:03PM]

It should also really be mentioned is that the Pronto can do SMS as well as email. They have actually been this price for at least a few weeks. I kind of doubt Peek will go bankrupt, their overhead is really low and these devices are wonderful for deaf or hearing impaired people.

[TechNewb @ Jul 17th 2009 12:09PM]

While this looks like a neat tech, I think only people such as older business types or grandparents would find it useful. 20 bucks a month sounds like an awful lot of money to just send texts. Maybe if this came out in the late 90's it would fair better.

[J @ Jul 17th 2009 12:10PM]

These are great little devices - my girlfriend loves hers. I find it limiting because of the lack of basic web access - but she just does email, so that's fine.

[ben murray @ Jul 17th 2009 12:13PM]

i can haz peek uk pleez?

[ant @ Jul 17th 2009 12:16PM]

im paying 40 a month for data and email for Tmo. it make sense that theyre leaving it 20 because the extra 20 is for internet and this has no internet browser.

15 and below would be a steal.

[jay jay @ Jul 17th 2009 12:27PM]

$40 thats way to much i pay 25 on my g1 and it's 20 for regular cell phones data plans

[telepheedian @ Jul 17th 2009 4:02PM]

It's only $10 a month if you get the shadow.

[sracer @ Jul 17th 2009 12:18PM]

The price of the device itself was always a secondary concern, it was the monthly charge that was the deal killer. I think that a $5/month service fee would really draw some attention.

[nick @ Jul 17th 2009 12:20PM]

I agree with some of the earlier comments, this device needs to have the plan lowered more than the unit price. Maybe bundle deals? 2 for 100 and 20 bucks a month is a much better deal.

[PEZOLLA @ Jul 17th 2009 1:03PM]

I agree - I am thinking $10-12/month, or paid $30 quarterly would be an attractive deal for people who want occasional or a backup portable email gadget.

[Brady J. Frey @ Jul 17th 2009 12:47PM]

Jesus - I wanted to go to their site and see better pictures (although it won't be replacing my iPhone anytime soon)... but I can't, because every craptastic link you put in that article is to an internal tag... and every link in the other articles is also to an internal tag. Seriously, I get you guys want to try and improve your ranking, but please put a real link to the product. It wastes my time, and I start reading other sites that don't do that.

[jason @ Jul 17th 2009 1:32PM]

Yea same here, I think a clearly defined link to a product page should be obligatory on every posting.

[Chris @ Jul 17th 2009 2:21PM]

There's also a $25 coupon available if you order from the Peek website:
http://www.getpeek.com/snapask.html

[BeyondtheTech @ Jul 17th 2009 12:38PM]

$15-20 a month is just not worth it when you've got a little more for voice plans with limited internet capability.

Shoulda left the device at $150 and charge $10 a month for service.

[Eric @ Jul 17th 2009 1:10PM]

I had one of these, and had it packed up and RMA'd in less than 45 minutes from the time of unpacking. They charge extra for the pronto for the ability to have push email and text messaging. What they don't tell you is that at the moment they don't offer push email due to "Network Capacity issues." They told me it would be about 2 months before they would enable push on my account. I told them no thanks, and got a full refund.

[nick @ Jul 17th 2009 1:36PM]

Yeah, I get the vibe this company won't be around too much longer, it's a great idea that could be done better by a larger company, but the fact is that mobile phone companies are going to be forced to lower prices soon once the era of hero phones ends and LTE starts going. Once people can get whatever phone on whatever network, it will go a long way towards making phones cost what they should, $50 a month. In this day and age I cannot believe that Verizon and ATT have the audacity to ask for 150 dollars for unlimited voice and internet/texting usage of phones. Hopefully the government steps in and breaks up this rampant price fixing and helps the consumers.

[chefgon_ign @ Jul 17th 2009 1:54PM]

It's a neat little device if you don't have a smartphone. My brother got one and uses it to complement his freebie Samsung flip phone he got from Verizon. Since he just got that phone like six months ago, upgrading to a smartphone would have been super expensive, so he got one of these and pays less than $17 a month for email access.

If you already have a phone with a keyboard and a data plan, getting one of these would be pretty pointless, but it is a fairly inexpensive way to get access to email and a few other things (you can look up the text of wikipedia articles, post to your twitter account, read rss feeds, or get driving directions by sending a request and waiting about a minute for the response to land in your inbox) if your main cell phone isn't really up to the task.

I think that the Peek's days of relevance are numbered, as more and more cheap dumbphones come with keyboards and decent email clients, but for right now I feel like there's definitely a market for it if you're in a contract with a cheap phone and you'd like to have some basic smartphone features available to you on the cheap. The great thing is that there's no contracts to sign, so when you feel like your Peek has outlived its usefulness you can simply cancel your service and never think about it again.

[BigD145 @ Jul 17th 2009 2:02PM]

This is a load of desperation.

[bcurran @ Jul 17th 2009 2:12PM]

This company is going out of business, plain and simple. Anyone who needs to keep up on email that badly already has a Smartphone that can do email. Nobody wants to carry around a device that can only do one thing. I give them 6 more months till doom.

[TDogg @ Jul 17th 2009 2:30PM]

These things have been on clearance for $14.xx at Target for at least a couple of months now. I still can find them in stock at the stores. No one wants to buy them.

Unless there's a hack available, these things are worthless.

[JS @ Jul 17th 2009 2:35PM]

When will Engadget quit flogging these useless devices? For a device that no one wants, they get way too much coverage on this site. Seriously, I look forward to seeing these guys go bankrupt pronto.

[sosteen @ Jul 17th 2009 2:55PM]

test

[slumbermachine @ Jul 17th 2009 3:03PM]

Blah, these aren't very usefull to me.

[Rob @ Jul 17th 2009 3:15PM]

I saw some of these on clearance at Target a few weeks ago. I almost got them. But, I don't see myself using it.

[sweet greggo @ Jul 17th 2009 3:27PM]

This is great news for the 4 people that were planning on buying one of these.

[Andrew88 @ Jul 17th 2009 3:55PM]

WHY DOES THIS THING STILL EXIST???!!!

[cjstuff @ Jul 17th 2009 5:42PM]

Actually, the price drops aren't all that recent. I think that Peek is trying to react to the bloated closeout and secondary market for older versions of these devices, all of which can be flashed to the latest, greatest release for free.

I have a Peek, and while I have some gripes with the device, it actually does more than what I expected it could do. I agree that the constant price adjustments and service plan jiggering doesn't inspire a lot of confidence in the Peek company. If they do go under, I hope someone buys up their IP and the warehouse of existing Peeks and continues/restarts the service for a lower monthly charge. There *is* a market for these devices, even though Peek has had some difficulty figuring out how to tap it.

[Edward @ Jul 17th 2009 5:43PM]

This thing is less functional than the RIM BlackBerry 950 of 10 years ago! Maybe if it used paging networks instead of more expensive GSM networks (I think they use T-Mobile), it could be more affordable.

[cragger @ Jul 17th 2009 10:06PM]

well i just bought two from Target for $11.95. yeah. you heard right. they wouldn't ring up at the register so they asked me how much it was... and obviously didn't believe me. my father is caring for his aging parents and is away from a computer for a week at a time. this is DEFINITELY worth it for him.

$11.95!!!!! tear it open for parts at that cost!

[Cargojack @ Jul 18th 2009 8:15AM]

I have been using a Peek for about six months, and it really is a great device. Those of you who criticize it have not used it.

[Bill @ Jul 18th 2009 12:10AM]

Bought mine at Target yesterday for $9.95. At that price it's a throw away item.

[Kevin @ Jul 18th 2009 12:25PM]

These things are pretty sweet if you don't feel like blowing a ton of money on a smart-phone or the plans that go with them. I use a crap-tastic phone along with this thing and my monthly total comes to a whopping $25.

[ApologeticKid @ Jul 19th 2009 5:45PM]

You know, they make cell phones that do e-mail now.

[anon @ Jul 20th 2009 7:09PM]

Blackberry with data-only plan is $35/month at ATT. That includes full internet access and a powerful PDA with lots of available apps. Why would I pay $20 for email on a severely limited device? Unless non-tech savvy customers are also rich & stupid, I don't see a thriving business here.

[Brian Yorks @ Jul 20th 2009 5:52AM]

Since just about everyone has a phone, why would you want this when you can just a phone that does email and has much more data capabilities then this?

[daviscarson58 @ Nov 9th 2009 11:50PM]

here is the thing i am thinking of getting one of these devices cause its way better than what i am paying now. but paying 20 dollars a month just for txting an e mail is kinda STUPID if they lower it to ten dallars a month and lower the pronto i would invest in their product. lets come together and convince them the price is TOO HIGH.