I have had four scales for $6 or less. I got them at K-mart, Walmart and Dollar General. They served my purpose for a while but weren't real sturdy for my clumsy hands and I dropped all of them and two broke. One I melted on my stove
. I NEED a scale. I can't eyeball to save my life.
My problem with the less expensive ones is that they aren't super accurate especially at smaller weights like an ounce or two. For example, none of mine would accuratley weigh 1 ounce of peanuts. They will weigh differently everytime I take them off or on, and the scale rarely sets back to zero when I remove the item. But I feel for weighing 3 ounces of meat and such they are fine.
When looking for a scale I don't look for one that goes up to like 5 pounds, for the most part taht is a feature you won't use too often. I use mine on rare occasions when I weighing an entire recipe to determine how many points are in the whole thing so I know how many points 2 ounces of it is. But I don't do that often enough to care if that is a feature of the scale.
DH is supposed to be buying me one that is accurate to the gram LOL, b/c I am always complaining about my cheap ones. We'll see.