Kaplan GMAT 800, 2008-2009 Edition (Kaplan Gmat 800)

This book is good for some extra questions, but it by no means contains the hardest questions. Like numerous other reviewers of GMAT books have mentioned, the best prep is to use the official GMAT book. For the toughest questions, I would recommend doing the two tests you can download for free from mba.com when you sign up. Do those tests multiple times because while some questions remain the same, the majority change. If you get better, you'll get to the harder questions. The questions in the Kaplan GMAT 800 are of moderate difficulty. They may be somewhat hard from a straight math point of view, but the questions on the actual GMAT are slightly different and trickier in nature. As far as the strategies go, there were a couple useful ones, although they may seem obvious to some. So, to summarize, this book is a decent supplement, but don't think you'll be getting an outstanding score just because you can answer the questions in this book.

After going through all the GMAT books, here is my honest opinion about some of the most popular GMAT books:

Official Guide:
Pros - Excellent source of GMAT questions. Very well organized with real test like questions.
Cons - No review of any math content or test-taking strategies. Not enough explanations of practice questions.
Overall, the Official Guide is a must have for all test-takers. It will give you a good idea about the type of questions to expect on the GMAT; however, if you need more than just a bank of questions, you need to look at some other source.

Kaplan:
Pros - Good for additional practice questions as a supplement
Cons - Review of math content is not thorough but just the very basics. Not enough explanation of test taking strategies. Full of guessing techniques with no real mathematical solutions. Not good enough explanations of practice questions. Unrealistic questions.

Princeton:
Pros - Good for additional practice questions as a supplement
Cons - Review of math content is not thorough but just the very basics. Not enough explanation of test taking strategies. Full of guessing techniques with no real mathematical solutions. Not good enough explanations of practice questions. Weird sense of humor.

Barrons:
Pros - Good math review. Big list of questions. Good test taking strategies. Very well organized. This is by far the best of the all-in-one kinds of books.
Cons - Although the book has a good math review, it doesn't go deep enough into each concept. Not enough explanations to practice questions. Does not have a good section for logical reasoning (permutation, combination, probability, etc) questions, which is one of the most important question-type. Does not break down the concepts/questions step by step.

EZ Solutions (set of 9 books):
Pros - Thorough math review from A to Z. Effective test taking strategies. Abundant solved examples. Numerous practice exercises. Great practice question bank in basic and advanced workbooks.
As with most books, you are expected to already have a good knowledge about the various match concepts, but with these books, you can literally start from scratch and reach the most advanced level of the GMAT.
Cons - To get the best result from these books, you have to invest in buying several books (set of 9 books), but if you compare the cost and benefits, the benefits outweigh the cost, or you can buy a few not all. Missing the verbal section. This is not a good option if you are looking for a mediocre score or just looking for a very basic brush-up. Recommended for serious test takers only.

Some of the other books has no real content; whereas, there are some other books that I haven't yet had an opportunity to review, but may be some of them are good supplementary aids.

I hope my review will help some of you in making the right decision.

Maybe I'm not getting something, but I would call this book GMAT 650-700. I've got 690 on my first on-line trial test simulation (from Manhattan GMAT) and I thought this book would be a helpful guide to close my "gaps". In fact, when I went through Geometry section of this book, I've got 100% of right answers without any guessing (on the test simulation I've got only 55% of my geometry answers right and that number included some questions where I made "educated guess"). Moreover, I spend no more than 1.5 minute for each task in GMAT 800 when on the trial test I really felt that 2 minutes was not enough to deal with some geometry tasks.
Bottom line - this book might be a good review of GMAT tricks, traps and bottlenecks, but don't think it will help you to jump 50 points if you're already in 650-700 range. No miracles here.

The exercises are OK to improve your score. I went from mid 600s to lower 700s after working on the 2006 GMAT 800. And that is exactly why I think this book is not worth it. I went to the store to buy the latest edition of GMAT 800 and to my surprise I realized that 90% of the questions were the same as in the 2006 edition. I think it's morally wrong to sell a new edition of these types of books that it is esentially the same as previous versions.

I used this book the day before I took the GMAT just to gain some extra insight on the areas that I had the most errors on the practice tests. I was scoring about 600 - 650 on the practice tests but got a 710 on the actual exam. I found the explanations to be more helpful in this book than the official GMAT book and I believe that if I had spent more with this book I would have scored higher on the exam.