Fast Weigh MS-500-BLK Digital Pocket Scale, 500 by 0.1 G
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List Price: Our Price: $4.50 You Save: $7.45 (62%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Kitchen See more product details |
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Kitchen and Housewares Reviews of Fast Weigh MS-500-BLK Digital Pocket Scale, 500 by 0.1 G
Customer Review: Surprising Mighty Mite
Summary: 4 Stars
When I first opened the envelope and looked at the Fast Weigh MS-500-BLK Digital Pocket Scale, 500 by 0.1 G, I thought that I had really goofed. How could anything this small and inexpensive be anything but a ripoff. As I recall the sales literature said it came without batteries. However, it came with batteries installed and would not turn on. After a replacing the batteries, it turned on and worked fine. It fits in your pocket, and is no bigger than a pack of playing cards. Weighs both positive and negative from tare setting. In other words a container of food can be placed on the scale, and the scale re-calibrated to zero, then if food is removed from the container, the weight of the food removed is shown as a minus weight in either grams or ounces. As with all small scales it can be hard to see the readout because the food container sometimes covers up the read out.
Due to that problem and the capacity limit of 500 g, I bought a Oxo 1130800 Good Grips Food Scale with Pull-Out Display. This scale is has a 11 lb capacity, pull out display (large bowls don't cover up the display), and all of the features of the pocket scale discussed above except it won't fit in your shirt pocket. It also will remember a weight for 45 minutes. That is, if you set a bowl with food in it, zero the scale, and go eat dinner eating some of the food from that bowl, then come back in less than 45 minutes you will find that the scale has shut off. If you then push any of the buttons the scale will turn on, if you now put the bowl back on the scale, the scale will register the weight of the food removed form the bowl. The 11 lb capacity also makes it easy to record the weight of individual ingredients in a cake for instance. This is a real help in determining the nutritional information for a single serving. That nutritional information and the weight of individual servings used on website fatsecret.com is really helpful for someone watching their diet due to diabetes or someone trying to lose weight.
Customer Review: Just What I Needed
Summary: 4 Stars
I've yet to buy a calibration weight, but checking with some brass weights that I have around 20,10,5 and some even smaller I see that they don't weigh what they should, i.e, the 20 gram weight is registered as 18.1 on this scale. However those weights were cheap and came with a balance scale I bought from a vendor who imported them from India. That balance scale, weights and case, came to less than $10 so I don't know how accurate they are. I would like to calibrate with a 500 gram weight (the required weight for calibration)and see how accurate it is after that.
Anyway, for the purpose I bought it, it works fine. I buy a lot of convenience food and they come in boxes made for a family of four. I have to apportion these into at least three portions to avoid gaining a lot of weight, and I have incipient type 2 diabetes so I have to measure other things. Found an easy way to do this: bought a bottle of blank grape juice (I don't know if I can use brand names here). Cut off the top portion. Now with the cap off you have a nice wide-mouthed funnel and with the cap on it makes a nice container to put food in and sits nicely on the scale. That is, 1 and 1/2 to 2 inches with the cap on. Set the cap on the center of the scale and you can easily put, say, a box of macaroni (from Kraft's Macaroni & Cheese) in there. This makes it easy to separate packages, say, of Hamburger Helper's Noodles Stroganoff into thirds. Both the potatoes and the dry sauce powder and a lot of other things. It's very sensitive, e.g., when weighing the small macaroni tubules from Kraft's macaroni and cheese just removing one tubule makes a quite noticeable difference. Whether it's super accurate after calibration won't matter that much to me as for the purpose I'm going to use it, it's fine. I guess I did mention a brandname or two after all but only because they're familiar to most of us and not as an endorsement.
Customer Review: Fast Weigh 500gr Pocket Scale
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a fine little scale but I do emphasize little! If you can picture the size of a pack of cigarettes that is exactly the size of this scale. So even though this 500 gram capacity scale can weigh the equivalent of 17 ounces the tiny size will limit weighing items of this weight since most would not be able to fit on the weigh platform or tray. But for six bucks its a genuine bargain and coupled with other items in the order the shipping was free.
The batteries that came with it (2xAAA) were fully charged and powered up the scale right out of the box. Auto zero'ing occurs shortly after power up and its ready to go. The Tare function to zero the scale with an empty container on it takes one push of the button. In order to calibrate the scale (if that is ever needed) you will need a 500 Gram calibration weight sold separately on Amazon. As long as you don't drop or abuse this unit it probably won't need calibrating. The backlit digital display is very bright and very easy to read. It does come with a 5 Year Warranty too so hang onto your paperwork if needed. But again, for this price a Big Mac meal costs more.
Accuracy: I have a second scale for weighing ammunition components like shotgun lead pellets and gun powder. I weighed out exactly one ounce, 437.5 grains, of lead pellets on the reloading scale and then weighed that amount on the Fast Weigh. The result was 1.005 ounce so accuracy was within 5/1000th of an ounce. Close enough for anything I'll use it for. The weigh units are ounces, troy ounces, pennyweights and grams. The DWT pennyweight unit will come in handy this summer weighing gold nuggets and gold dust at our mining claims. All in all I'm satisfied and recommend this scale. And I may buy the 1000 gram scale later for weighing nuggets over one pound. :-)
-KK-
Customer Review: quick, easy, accurate, no-frills
Summary: 5 Stars
I use this to measure smaller ingredients (yeast, salt, etc.) for bread. (In fact, if making a very small batch of bread, I use it to measure _all_ the ingredients.) The 0.1 gram resolution works fine for smaller ingredients, and it's better than a "digital spoon" because I can set it down on the counter rather than having to hold it in my hand.
I've been fairly careful not to drop it or overload it (it's pretty easy not to put more than 500 grams on it as larger loads just won't fit). So I don't know how "sturdy" it is.
It's fast and easy, and seems very accurate-- I'm used to after "sneaking up" on a measurement lifting the bowl off the scale and putting it back and seeing a different reading, but with this scale the reading is usually the same!
Get this one, not very similarly named items either MISbundled with the wrong calibration weight or at well over twice the price.
Use is quite sensible ...but not always well documented (and sometimes different than what the documentation says). When shipped new, batteries are wrapped in insulating tough cellophane so they won't go dead; you HAVE to take the batteries out and remove the clear cellophane from them and put them back before first use. Blue backlight flickering off much of the time means simply batteries are getting low. Display of nonsensical information and/or refusal to operate normally often mean simply that batteries need replacing. (Don't assume scale is "broken" without first trying new batteries:-) Batteries can get low and die without the scale ever displaying the "LO" the user's guide says will appear.
Unit easily switches units to any of a) grams, b) ounces, c) pennyweights, or d) troy ounces, and remembers what you want even across power cycles until you change it again.
Customer Review: The Lollipop Guild Would Love This
Summary: 5 Stars
This has to be the teeny tiniest scale I have ever seen. It definitely fits in a shirt pocket. And it is a great deal to boot.
Two AAA batteries, included, run this scale. Power on is very fast. The blue back-lit screen is surprisingly easy to read. The scale stabilizes very quickly. The weigh pan is a stationary type - there are no moving parts, (some scales have a pan that moves up and down when a weight is placed on it, this scale pan does not move). You can flip the cover over and use it as a weigh pan if you'd like.
There is a lot of noise about a 500g calibration weight (this scale requires one for calibration). There are some simple free alternatives to buying a calibration weight. If you assume the scale is calibrated on delivery, simply find something in your house that weighs 500g - put it to the side and use that as a calibration weight in the future. If you aren't sure about the calibration, find an object that weighs almost 500g according to the scale. It can be anything in the world - a one-pound can of peaches would work. Next add smaller weights or tape to the object, until the object weighs exactly 500g according to the scale. Next, go to a deli or the post office and ask them to kindly weigh your object (both of these locations are required by law to have accurately calibrated scales, and 500g is in the sweet spot of their scales). If it is 500g exactly, you win; you just built a calibration weight for the scale. If it is off, add or remove tape or other things to get the object to exactly 500g according to their scale. Now calibrate your scale with this weight.
The directions are a lot more complicated than doing this in practice. There is no need to purchase a calibration weight for this scale.