This is my third or fourth kitchen scale, and even though I've only had it for two days, I absolutely love this one. I looked at so many descriptions of the various scales for sale on Amazon, and sorted out these differences. 1) This scale has a 15-lb capacity, so you can use heavier bowls and plates than you could for one with a 5-lb capacity. Although some have 11-lb capacities, the extra 4 lbs offers a little ease of mind that you won't over-weight the scale. 2) It's made of stainless steel - including the platform. If you look at a lot of other scales, they might say "chrome finish" or "silver color," and they might LOOK like they're made of metal, but they're really plastic. Stainless steel offers more ease of mind, like the extra weight capacity. 3) It weighs in grams, ounces, and pounds, and switches easily among the three. Before you ask - if you set it to grams, the readout will automatically switch to kilograms/grams when it goes over 999 grams (so 1078 grams will read 1k78g), and it also switches to pounds/ounces when the weight is 16 oz or more. If you set it for pounds, it will read the ounces in decimals (fractions of a pound) rather than ounces. I assume it does the same thing for kilos, but I rarely weigh anything in kilos so I didn't check. 4) the smallest unit is 1g. For me, this is a godsend. I've been weighing and measuring my food for several months, and prefer weight portioning to volume portioning. In other words, I'd rather weigh out an 80-gram portion of a fruit or veggie than try to figure out how much shredded lettuce fits into a cup measure. Many packaged foods indicate serving size by grams rather than ounces, which is curious, considering that in the U.S. we don't use grams. I used to whip out my smartphone and open up my conversion app to figure out how many ounces a serving size was, but now I just switch the scale to grams and I'm all set. Many nuts and fruit/nut combos say that 30g or 1 oz is a serving, but I actually have a cereal that says a serving is 53g. Now I can just weigh it out quickly and not worry about it. 5) it uses regular AA batteries, which is soooooo convenient. 6) it's sensitive to changes in weight when you add tiny amounts. On my old scale, I would weigh out my cat's medication, and it was supposed to be precisely 0.5 oz. It would get to 0.4 and I'd add, and add a little more, and add a little more, and it would still read 0.4, and suddenly it would read 0.7. So I'd subtract a little, and then a little more, and then a little more, well, you get the picture. The EatSmart scale reads out to 0.05 oz, so it's much more precise than my old scale. 7) it's a decent price. At about $37, it's not cheap, but for the sturdiness of it (and it is a very sleek and pretty looking item) and the fact that you can use a fairly large bowl or even a large plate without losing sight of the LED display is worth the extra money. And it's not as expensive as some of the fancier ones priced at $60 or more. One minor gripe. The LED display seems a little sluggish in response to the button presses, but it's just a matter of getting used to the timing of it. On the other hand, the display is quite big and bold. The buttons have icons rather than labels on them, so, if you're like me, ahem, MATURE (read: old) enough to remember when we didn't need picture symbols to tell us what something was meant to be, you might want to just doublecheck the user's manual. The button the left is the unit switch (grams, ounces, etc) and the button on the right is both the on/off and the tare button. For those of you who don't know how to work the tare - put your plate or bowl on the platform and press the on/off button. The platform sets itself to 0 so the only thing you're weighing is what you put on the plate. The tare button will work regardless of whether you put the plate on before or after you turn the unit on. So. Bottom line. I love my new scale.
