My recommendations on features to look for in a scale:
- Go digital. Analog is clumsy and not as precise.
- Look for a wide base that you set the food on to be weighed. The wider the better.
- A "tare" button that lets you easily recalibrate the scale to 0 with a bowl, etc. on it.
- Ability to easily switch between grams and ounces. The ability to provide liquid weights (liquid oz, ml) would be nice but not critical. My scale doesn't have the ability to weigh liquids and I haven't missed it that much.
- An off switch would be really nice. My scale shuts off automatically after 3 min of no activity but there's no way to manually turn it off. So every time I weigh something, the scale is on for 3 min, even if I only use it for 5 sec. It seems like the batteries run down awfully quick.
My scale is a digital Salter that I got for about $30 (less with the 20% off coupon) at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. It's served me well. My first scale was a $5 analog Salter model and that was a disaster. Don't cheap out--I use my scale multiple times a day, every day. That and my salad spinner are the only two kitchen tools that I never put away. It was so worth the $30.