500 x 0.001g 1mg Lab Scale Digital Analytical Balance Scale Electronic Scale Precision Jewelry Scale Laboratory Scale (500x0.001g)

We have to understand some limitations to see this realistically. This is an electronic scale that relies on much the same technology as $20 scales. This is not a lab balance that costs $2000. One of the issues is always going to be drift - of the zero point and every measurement. If you needed to measure within 1 mg you'd need to resolve 0.1 mg. You'd have to spend more money. And it's going to be very difficult since the slightest change in the surroundings will affect it, things like temperature, magnetic fields, stability of the surface, etc.With this scale the same issues apply. If you work very carefully you can measure within a milligram or two by taking multiple readings, re-zeroing several times, sitting in the same way, etc. You have to learn how to compensate for the inescapable drifting. I use it to weigh medication, say 50 mg portions, where a milligram or two error is alright, and I love this scale. If you have to weigh say multiple 2 milligram portions, you're going to have to pull out your credit card, and work much harder.One big advantage of this over say a GEM-20 is that it does not auto-shutoff. It uses a wall-wart power supply. I keep mine powered 24x7. Another advantage is the smart auto zero. It's constantly re-zeroing. It's always ready. The thing isn't gorgeous, very Chinese utilitarian, fortunately not too greenish. The buttons are big, the display very legible. I use this in my home lab, and it's very functional. It's big and weighty enough to be a real tool. Just don't look at the side panels that are funky, shaky and laughable. Once they are in place you can pretend they aren't there, but keep 3 sides mounted as they help shield it from drafts. The 200 g range is useful, but also important because you don't have to baby the device, you can push things around on the plate without damage. It's good to get a cheap set of weights to get a feel for how the scale behaves and how inaccurate the "calibrated" weights can be. Reality check.Never try to weigh something close to zero, always put it in a beaker or something to pre-load the scale and work outside the auto-zero range. The tare function works well. But use it wisely. Say weigh the container several times. That's the tare. Write it down. Re-zero. Put the container on again and check. Tap the tare button, add the substance, write down the alleged net weight. Remove the container with substance, re-zero, weigh the total. Now subtract and see how close you are. If significantly off, start over. Otherwise average or fudge the difference, but if you did this carefully it's usually within a milligram, sometimes two. That's how you can get a pretty accurate weight. With practice you can do all the steps quickly. The scale settles rapidly, and that helps too. Needless to say, an auto-shutoff would make this very difficult.If you aren't doing several measurements a day, and stay within 20 g, you can go with a little GEM-20 and perfect similar techniques. It's going to be more of a pain, but the accuracy isn't going to be significantly worse. If you do repetitive weighing, save your sanity and spend the extra $60 or so. You'll come to improve your technique and you'll love this scale.

The scale was relatively cheap so I was concerned about its precision and accuracy, so I weight 6 coins to see if the claims could be verified. The test showed the Standard Deviation of the measurements was less that one milligram per gram. As to the accuracy the standard provided was not much use as it was probably used to do the initial calibration of the scale, but it was useful in assessing the repeatability, which was very good. I got 100 grams each time I weighted it. To get an idea about the accuracy I used the coins, which when new have very consistent weights. The coin test showed about 0.25% deviation from what clean new coins should have weighed. As the coins were neither new or clean, in my opinion, this is very good for a scale of this price. As I am going to use the scale to titrate my medicines, the accuracy and repeatability are very important to me. These scales appear to be way within my criteria. The scale appears to be well made, but at this time I have no idea how reliable it is.Now the bad news: parts of the protective shielding were not included in the package. The vendor promised to send me the missing parts but they have not arrived yet. I’ll update this review in two weeks or so with an assessment of the vendors performance. Update: they arrived!I have found the scale is repeatable, but is does not respond to a small load change. Say 4 mg plus or minus. The work around is to put pressure on the scale for a second or so and it will adjust the reading correctly. This second delay is a little irritating but it probably deals with air currents and vibrations constantly changing the readings and the microprocessor spending time averaging the readings. I have been titrating one of my meds to 1.375 mg dose, which works out to 60 mg of the ground up tablets and I was able keep 37 doses all with in +/- 1.5%

I used this scale for a scientific experiment in which I had to weigh a few strands of human hair every day. We're talking about 10 human hairs that weigh only 25 mg (see pictures). The scale has excellent stability. Repeatability is within 3 mg. The shield works best without the top. Just the bottom and the 4 sides. If add the top, the reading starts changing for some reason. The shield does help avoid air currents that at this scale of measurements naturally affect the weight. It is also helpful to turn on the scale for half an hour before starting to make serious measurements, to increase the stability of the measurements, although for most purposes, one can start weighing items almost immediately after turning it on, and once the display reads 0.000. However, one can expect some drift (about 10 mg) over the first half hour after turning on. As with any electronic scale, before placing the specimen on the dish, one should make sure the reading is at zero, and if it's not, simply press the Tare button to bring it to zero. CALIBRATION: mine came with only one calibration weight of 100 grams. I thought it would include several. But this one was enough to calibrate it. Calibration is easy and quick. Press the CAL button for 5 seconds, place the weight on the dish. In a couple of seconds it automatically adjusts the reading to 100.000 gr. All in all, I've come to love this instrument.