A wide choice, from digital pocket scales to traditional medicine scales for clear-cut calculations every time. Whatever size bowl you use, it won’t obscure the front located and angled digital display but you will probably need to bend down when selecting the required unit measurement, which is in tiny letters at the top of the display and not visible from a fully upright standing position. I bought this one because I needed the calibration weight anyway, so it kind of justified the extra cost.

Most of the digital scales that we offer are pretty small and could be classed as a pocket or portable scale.Using reverse osmosis water as a base point, you will undoubtedly be adjusting your water profile to suit your style or region.

The Escali has a simple design and an intuitive interface with two buttons: one to turn the unit on or off and to tare, and another to switch the unit of measure between grams, ounces, and pounds plus ounces. Some of the digital kitchen scales we looked at here will measure dry ingredients only, but all come with the ability to go back to zero after a bowl or plate is placed on top.

Our best performer had a pull-out display that extended the distance to a full eight inches, allowing the tester to easily weigh ingredients into wide mixing bowls and large pots without ever struggling to read the results. Rubber feet: A convenient but surprisingly uncommon feature, little rubber feet help prevent the scale from sliding around on counters. Cookbook author Peter Reinhart told us that for years he has happily used a cheap food scale that offers only an on/off button and a tare feature. It’s compact enough to slide away in the drawer unnoticed or if you prefer to keep it out, it takes up very little space on your counter. Bright, clear displays and sensitive buttons really help with accurate measuring — having to press down hard on buttons can make the scales unstable, and not seeing the display clearly makes it easy to overshoot the mark when adding ingredients.

It was important to pick a stable scale, too—one that didn't annoyingly tip or slide around the counter every time you pressed a button. Some scales read the penny as two grams, others three, while a couple of scales didn't register the weight of the penny at all. Owning a good set of scales is vital if you are wanting to make sure tobacco weights are correct, and long gone are the days of using manual scales where you try to need to balance the weight out.These scales weigh in grams and pounds only, with a maximum capacity of 5kg/11lbs, though, when tested, these offer a little extra weight, too.