Help. Need a reccomendation for a digital scale.

[Andrew Brinkman]

Can anyone recommend a digital scale that isn't super expensive to accurately weigh backpacking gear? Thanks.

[Bob Gross]

Thirty years ago, when this whole ultralightweight thing came around, we did not have good digital scales that were cheap. I used a 16-oz postal scale for the little stuff, then a 30-lb baby scale for a fully loaded pack. I would don that pack and step onto a bathroom scale as a check.

Now that we have good digital scales, I use a tiny 1000-gram digital scale (US Magnum), then enter in line items on a spreadsheet to get a total for a whole pack. I don that pack and step onto a digital bathroom scale as a check. The spreadsheet total weight is generally within a few percent of the actual total weight.

–B.G.–

[Jerry Adams]

I got 2000g scale on ebay for $8. Works good. Had to wait a couple weeks for it to ship and get through customs.

[Bob Gross]

Harbor Freight Tools often has some inexpensive scales like this. I think that is where I got mine.

–B.G.–

[William Zila]

+1 got a centech I bealive for 15$ weighs up to 12lbs in gram or .1 ounce increments

[Sumi Wada]

I think I just went to amazon.com and typed in "kitchen scale" and bought one that got decent reviews. There were a bunch in the $20 range, free shipping, no sales tax. Most have similar features — oz and grams, tare function, auto off.

[Chris S]

I got this one and really like it: http://www.amazon.com/EatSmart-Precision-Digital-Kitchen-Silver/dp/B001N07KUE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313181345&sr=8-1

[Dan @ Durston Gear]

eBay is hands down the best spot to buy one. Search for 'digital pocket scale 2000g' and then sort the results by price + shipping. They're pretty much all the same scale. There's lots of them on there for under a dollar (starting bid) with no bids, or you can just use 'Buy It Now' and grab one for $3-5 plus a few more dollars for shipping. If you're paying more than $10-$11 including shipping then you're doing something wrong.

These scales work great, run on AA batteries, last forever and they're super accurate (to 0.1g). I've used a couple of them and verified their accuracy with items with known weights from other scales and these are always bang on.

Here's them on eBay:
http://shop.ebay.com/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=digital+pocket+scale+2000g&_sacat=See-All-Categories

For the few occasions when you need to weigh something really bulky, you can set something tall on the scale (ie. water glass) and then zero the scale and balance your bulky item on the glass, or you can just suspend the scale in the air (ie. two chairs back to back) and then hang the item off the scale using a coat hanger (minus the weight of the coat hanger of course).

[Jake Willits]

I got my Cen-Tech 500g scale at Harbor Freight as well. It was cheap enough, and it suits my needs perfectly.

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