Lighten Up with an EatSmart Digital Luggage Scale

If you’ve ever gotten to the check-in desk at the airport and been alarmed to discover that your suitcase was overweight, there’s an easy solution: a luggage scale.

While you can always try putting your suitcase on your bathroom scale at home, a luggage scale is an easier and more accurate way to see just how heavy your bag is. As a bonus, you can take it with you on your trip too, so before you head home, you can weigh your bag in your hotel room to figure out whether all those souvenirs you bought will push you over your airline’s weight limit.

We recently took EatSmart’s Precision Voyager Digital Luggage Scale for a spin. The scale is easy to use, with a simple on/off button and a “UNIT” button that toggles between pounds and kilograms.

To weigh your bag, you attach the scale to your suitcase handle using a sturdy strap and buckle. Then you lift the bag for a few seconds until the scale offers a digital reading. It helps that the scale’s handle is big enough for both hands; that makes it easier to lift a heavy bag for the few seconds it takes the scale to display the weight. The scale can handle up to 110 pounds (50 kilograms).

You may be tempted to pack your bag all the way up to the 50-pound limit (which is when most airline overweight fees start kicking in). However, we’d recommend leaving yourself a couple of extra pounds — not only to pack the scale itself, as EatSmart recommends, but also to allow for variation between the scale’s readings and those of the scale at the airport. When we weighed the same bag several times, we got different readings from the Precision Voyager, ranging from 10.9 – 11.2 pounds for an empty suitcase and 28.5 – 28.8 pounds for a full one. Best to leave a little room for error.

The scale is currently selling on Amazon.com for $19.95 plus shipping.