If you sell online or have to ship product, a
postage scale is a valuable tool to estimate the cost of shipping your packages. You can also use it to weight all kinds of goods, from crafted items and electronics to books and food. Here are a few tips to select the right scale.
Before buying your scale, you should keep in mind the type of item you are more likely to ship and how much precision you need. If you only need to estimate shipping costs you do not need as much precision, but the ability to weight a big box at once can be very useful so choose a scale that can withstand a lot of weight. Avoid food scales: they are usually more expensive than comparable postal scales for a lesser weight capacity.
Also, if you need to weight small things on the go, pocket scales have a decent precision and can weight items up to 50g to 100g. A digital hanging scale, meant to weight luggage, can also be used to estimate the weight of bigger items as long as you put it in a bag. They are usually pretty compact and light, almost as much as a pocket scale.
But if you need to weight routinely heavy or bulky item that will not fit on a standard digital postal scale, you should check out platform scales. Those are made to stand on the ground and be easy to read even with a big box on it, reducing risks of accidents and injuries.
Finally, make sure you get a power adapter to go with the scale: some scale only come with batteries, which is very inconvenient if you have to weight many packages. You may prefer to use batteries, but it's nice to have a second option if you need to package something in a hurry.
