After reading about these and hearing Stewart Bloor waxing lyrical about their accuracy, I actually bought a set after resisting temptation for about a year.

Searching the Internet for a supplier at a price that was right and after a pointer from a BFW fellow reviewer, I found that the cheapest price was from a supplier not more than ten miles from me. So without any more delay went off to buy a set.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the scales came complete with a padded pouch, battery and removable T bar handle.

The Package

The scales weigh less than a pound and measure approximately 12" long x 4" wide x 2.5" deep (310 x 100 x 65mm) and have a light grey plastic body. I chose the 55lb capacity scale which weigh to half an ounce – there are also 22 and 100lb versions which I believe weigh with finer or coarser resolution respectively.

You have a choice of read out display which can be changed during weighing if you wish – pounds, ounces and halves, pounds and decimal points of pounds (0.05), and kilograms and decimal points of a kilo (0.02 = 20g).

The control panel that is situated below the LCD display has a ON/ZERO, OFF, HOLD and UNIT selection buttons. The scales will also auto turn off after a couple of minutes of non-use. There is a TARE and HOLD facility, the latter allowing you to hold/freeze the display as long as the HOLD button is depressed.

The slanted display is easy to read with 12mm high numerals. Maybe it would have been nice to have a backlight facility.

The Control Panel and Display

Having been ‘caught’ in the past by claims of manufacturers on the performance of their pieces of kit, I tend to treat everything with scepticism and check things out myself where possible. So armed with some scale weights which I know to be pretty well spot on, I set about checking the scales for accuracy. To be perfectly honest I got bored testing these scales as after about an hour I just couldn’t ‘trick’ them. Adding a quarter of an ounce to various known weights through the range and waiting for the display to change or not was a bit sneaky in retrospect and after reaching around the 30lb mark decided the scales would be OK for my requirements. They also faithfully returned to zero after a few successive, variable and rapid loads. Make no mistake, this particular set of scales are accurate – and if they tell me something weighs 10lb 15 ounces and a half, I’ll believe them.

Scales

After trying a number of mechanical scales and another set of digitals, I’m very impressed with the Salter Electro Samson Scales and only wish I had bought them earlier and not wasted money and time by looking at both cheaper and approximately same price dial versions. One word of warning, the close proximity of a mobile phone can sometimes send the read out a bit wild - but you have to get close.

I don’t think it would be fair to immerse these scales in the river and then expect them to work - but I might be surprised – I don’t suppose that a set of ‘sub-aqua’ dials would perform very well either. If someone would like to try this then by all means buy your own set and try – let me know the results.

They have also gained favour in the kitchen and garden – sad but nice to know how much rabbit food or wheat is left in that 25kg sack – so partner is also impressed and has helped to justify some of the expense.

9 out of 10 – may go up or down depending on performance over a longer term and in the damp, cold conditions of winter - if you are looking for accurate scales then these are the ones.