Another set of kitchen scales.

I have a set of electronic scales at home that I bought about five years ago.
They’re pretty good scales, and they occasionally show up in photos in my reviews.
But they have one quirk: besides their main purpose, they can measure the air temperature, show the time, rob caravans. But they chew through batteries so fast that sometimes I feel like I replace them more often than I actually use the scales.
Anyway, I got tired of all this and decided to order a set of scales that are just scales.

Here are the specs for the scales:
Weighing capacity — 5 kg (maximum 7 kg)
Accuracy (or, more precisely, resolution) — 1 g
Power — 2 AAA batteries
Selectable units of measurement
Tare function
Dimensions — 140 × 178 × 10 mm
Weight — 245 g

The scales were packed pretty well, but I’ll hide this part of the review under a spoiler.

The package includes:
The scales themselves
A one-page instruction sheet
Two AAA batteries


The instructions are in English, but I don’t think these scales will need them. It all seems pretty self-explanatory.



There’s a battery compartment underneath, and the case is made of glossy plastic.
The feet have rubber pads, so the scales don’t slide around on the table.



While the scales were waiting for me to write a review, I discovered a quirk.
The old scales have a weighing platform separate from the bottom of the housing, so it's hard to interfere with their operation. On the new ones, the entire housing is the platform, and measurements are taken relative to the feet.
There's a gap between the housing and the feet where something can get stuck.
That's exactly what happened to me. When I started testing them, I was surprised to find that the scales were reading way low (by about 25%). I thought I'd received a defective unit.
Then I happened to turn them over and found that one of the bits lying on the table had gotten into the gap between a foot and the housing, interfering with the scales.


The scales have green backlighting from a single LED. It turns off after a few seconds, and comes back on when the load on the platform changes.


The top panel looks like stainless steel. It shows fingerprints easily—every single one will be visible right away—but it looks pretty good.
There are just two buttons, though in practice you only need one: it turns the scales on and off, and a short press zeros the reading (tare).
The buttons give a distinct click when pressed, which my wife really liked—you can tell for sure whether a button has been pressed. Touch controls may be more fashionable and expensive, but as it turns out, they're not always convenient in real-world use.


As a test, I compared them with my old scales (I had to buy a couple of batteries for them specially). They’re pretty accurate—I checked them after buying them (they cost around $17–18 offline).
I noticed the difference right away: the old scales take longer to start up (about twice as long), but their readings stabilize faster (also about twice as fast).
And as I mentioned above, the old scales go through batteries like crazy. They use a pair of lithium 2032 cells, so replacing them isn’t cheap.



And of course, I had to measure what was causing the problems with my old scales.
That’s their current consumption. I mentioned that the old scales devoured batteries, and since the batteries were quite expensive, that was doubly frustrating.

Summary.
Pros
Good packaging: neat, and sturdy enough to withstand shipping.
Acceptable accuracy (as far as I could tell).
Minimalist design, nothing unnecessary—exactly what I was looking for. I wanted scales, just scales.
Batteries included (though that depends; tracked shipping costs more than it would without the batteries).

Cons
Price.
The digits could be a little bigger.

My opinion: the scales themselves are pretty good. I do have one minor complaint: the display is a little harder to read than on my old scales, even though the digits are bigger on the new ones. But I don’t consider that a deal-breaker for household use. They weigh things accurately, they’re easy to use, they look neat, and my wife is happy.
The price was a downside. After I’d placed my order, I saw some much cheaper scales in a store. There were some kind of sales on, and they were selling for about $8 (though who knows what the quality is like).

The scales for this review were provided by the chinabuye store.

I don’t know whether this review will be useful. The scales are good, but I probably wouldn’t buy them—the high price is the reason, and even 5% discount coupons don’t help :(