A scale is two numbers: resolution and drift. One-gram resolution to five kilograms covers everything domestic including bread, where five grams of salt in a 500 g loaf is the difference between right and inedible. The load cell is temperature-compensated, which is what stops a reading walking while a bowl of warm dough sits on it.

The platform is stainless and lifts off to wash. Tare is unlimited and the auto-off is three minutes rather than the usual sixty seconds, so it does not go dark between two ingredients. Reads in grams, kilograms, ounces and pounds.

What it is not: a substitute for the piece next to it in this course. We list what each thing does and where it stops, because a catalogue that only records strengths is one you cannot use to choose between two things.

Why this one. Prep tools are bought once and then used every single day, which inverts the usual value calculation — the difference between the adequate version and the good one is paid back inside a year and then keeps paying. We stocked the version whose failure mode we could name, and we have named it above.