Review: Ozeri Pro II Digital Kitchen Scale

For most cooking, I’m a Nigella style cook, just put in the vague amount of whatever ingredients and it always seems to work out fine.  But with baking I’ve always used either the scales that were the first item the OH and I bought together, or more usually the dry cooks measure that I love (because it’s easy on washing up and no faffing with a scale).  But I’ve had the chance to review some Ozeri electronic kitchen scales and I might actually be a bit of a convert.

When the scales arrived I was surprised at how neat the box was.  I was expecting a much larger product, so was very definitely happy to see a small set of scales that wouldn’t take up lots of room on the worktop amongst all the ingredients.  The mirrored weighing platform was new to me – I’m not sure if that’s standard for electronic scales, but it was a nice touch and makes it look like a pricier product than it really is.

The scales have lots of features.  As well as being able to toggle between imperial and metric, lb/oz and g/kg options, there’s also a timer.  Not just a timer counting down, but you can count up as well.  The words on the buttons didn’t make immediate sense to me (it’s a US product), but the instruction booklet was clear enough to understand and ensure you could set it up as you wanted.  I used the timer for a cake we were baking, and it was nice to have a digital, accurate timer, rather than the really cute, but not particularly accurate old fashion twisty timer I currently use!  There’s also a choice of alarm – either sound, light or both; I found the beep was loud enough to hear from the living room.

The scale doesn’t come with a container to put the ingredients on but that means you can use whatever container you want, even the mixing bowl if you use a light plastic or metal one.  I used a Tupperware style small container, easily set the display back to zero and started weighing.

I do think there are benefits of digital scales, as it’s great when you have children helping you so they can see the numbers rising.  N added the flour and kept saying ‘some more?’ and ‘that’s enough’, even though it wasn’t enough.  The display was easy to read, and pleasingly not ultra-sensitive where sometimes you might see scales flickering up and down and not deciding the final weight.  None of that with these.

The only improvements I could see that would make the scales better would be to have some kind of prop to enable them to stand on their side when not in use.  I don’t have space on my shelves at the moment for them, so they’re sitting on top of my old scales, whereas standing sideways, there’d have been room.  Also, they’re battery powered, which makes them compact and no faff – in a house with a child in that’s not a problem as I always have a supply of various sizes of batteries, however, it might be useful to have a mains adapter option for people who prefer it.

Otherwise, these scales do the job and more, than I’d expect for a set of kitchen scales.  They’re available at Amazon, with a current price of £9.95*. I’d say that’s a good bargain and worth checking out if you’re in the market for some new scales.  There’s a good choice of Ozeri products, specialising in digital gadgets for in and out of the home.

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Disclaimer: I received the Ozeri Kitchen scales for the purpose of review.  All opinions are my own.  *Price as at 17th October 2013