Primo Digital Food Scale
Last verified by the Lifetime Picks Editorial Team
Why we picked it
11-pound capacity covers a full bag of flour with room to spare
The Escali Primo is the under-$30 digital food scale Wirecutter, Serious Eats, and King Arthur Baking all recommend as the home baker's first scale. The 11-pound capacity covers a 10-lb bag of flour with room to spare, tare-button works with any container (including the big stand-mixer bowl), and the unit toggles between grams, ounces, pounds, and pounds-ounces with one button. The 0.1 oz / 1 g resolution is enough for bread baking (you don't need higher precision until you're working sub-gram with leavening). Battery life on two AA cells is roughly two years of daily use. r/Sourdough and r/Breadit both treat the Primo as the consensus 'good enough' scale; the premium Escali models add Bluetooth and 0.01g resolution but cost 3x and most bakers don't need either.
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Community & Review Summary
15,239 Amazon reviews
Reddit satisfaction score
Total mentions (0 positive)
Amazon sales rank
Price History
Current price: $25.00
We'll plot the curve here once we've captured a few weekly snapshots. For the full multi-year history, check CamelCamelCamel below.
Pros & Cons from Reviews
Pros
- +11-pound capacity covers a full bag of flour with room to spare
- +Tare button works with any container including stand-mixer bowls
- +Toggles between g / oz / lb / lb-oz with one button
- +Two AA cells last roughly two years of daily use
- +Available in 14 colors; same internals across all
Cons
- -0.1 oz / 1g resolution — not precise enough for high-level espresso dosing
- -Plastic body shows wear after years of countertop bumps
- -No auto-shutoff override — long pauses can power it off mid-bake
- -Buttons can wear out after 5+ years of heavy daily use
Warranty & Returns
Warranty
Limited lifetime warranty from Escali
Return Policy
Most items are returnable within 30 days of receipt for a full refund. Some categories have shorter return windows.
Read full return policy