Maxus Dante Milligram Scale

This scale has a potentially dangerous floating zero problem. I gave it a one star rating, because that's often the only way to get the needed info out to other customers so they can hear about a design deficiency, understand the issue, and know how they can still use this scale safely if they want to buy it. This review is a bit long, because I tried to explain the issue and the solution in several different ways.This scale is quite nice, especially for the price, as long as you avoid one potentially dangerous aspect of how this scale works. It has a terrible floating zero problem if you want to weigh out small amounts of something. The included instructions say that this scale is accurate to +/- 5mg, but it also will not register weights lighter than 9mg (SIDE NOTE- The scale I received almost never registers weights below 15mg when starting from zero). That 9mg+ spec doesn't sound like a big deal does it, because all you have to do is always weigh items over 9-15mg in weight and you are good to go with +/- 5mg accuracy right? Wrong. As long as you are putting something larger, like a marble or a stick of gum on the scale, or if you are adding 50mg items one at a time, this scale is excellent for the price, and 95% of the time it will give you a number that is within 5mg of the actual item weight, even with the scale zeroed out before adding the item you want to weigh. There are some reviews of this scale on youtube that show this exact type of testing, and this scale does an admirable job of being consistent. That was why I decided to buy one for myself.However, a potentially dangerous situation comes into play if you are trying to slowly weigh out something very lightweight, while also starting from zero. Zero, as in “nothing at all on the scale” or zero as in “adding something to a small tray that has been first zeroed out with a press of the TARE button”. The floating zero design failure of this scale will often rear its’ ugly head if you are wanting to weigh out things like tiny beads, small plant seeds, a supplement powder, reloading powder, or a chemical powder for a chemistry experiment. These are tasks people often want their milligram capable scales to perform. That's where this scale can be wildly inaccurate if you don’t do things a certain way. I mentioned at the beginning, the literature says this scale will have a hard time reading anything lighter than 9mg. What it doesn’t say is that if you start your scale at zero and then add 8mg of something, then add another 9mg 2 seconds later, then add 6mg two seconds after that, and then 9mg again, the scale will often still read zero, because all of those individual additions were each 9mg or less, with a tiny one or two second delay between adding each one. In other words, if you are wanting to weigh out 50mg of supplement powder and you start the scale at zero, but you add that powder to the scale too slowly, the scale might miss the addition of powder once, twice, every time, or never depending on how fast you added small amounts and how small each amount was. As a result, one time you can get a total of 50mg, you can weigh the same powder again more slowly and get a total of 34mg (because the scale will miss a few of the lighter weight powder additions at the begining), or you can add it even more slowly and in tiny amounts and the scale will always remain at zero.The only way I found to completely avoid this situation, is to make sure your scale never starts at zero when weighing very light things or when weighing things out very slowly. If you want to weigh out 30mg of supplement powder for instance, turn on the scale, then add the included black plastic tray to the scale but don’t press the TARE button and zero out the scale after doing that like you would normally do. Just begin weighing out your powder. As an example, if I put my empty plastic tray on the scale it weighs 3.090g (3090mg). If I want to measure out 30mg of supplement powder I just start adding powder to the tray until the total displayed weight becomes 3120mg (3090mg tray + 30mg of powder). If I do it that way, everything works great and the powder will show an accurate weight even if I add it to the tray slowly or in small amounts. If I instead start the scale from zero, (or tare it to zero before adding the powder) I will end up with some random result between 0mg and 30mg for my total supplement powder weight and the displayed weight will be different each time depending on how fast I added the powder to the scale. That could be very dangerous, especially if you want to fairly accurately weigh something like reloading powder, a chemical powder, etc.The image I included with this listing shows little pieces of cut up plastic that I made. Each piece of plastic shown weighs between 6 and 15mg. My scale in the image was started out at zero before adding the plastic pieces. They were placed on the scale one at a time, with about a 1-2 second delay between each one. As you can see the scale still shows zero. All those pieces shown on the scale actually weigh a total of 172mg (or 0.172g). That’s what I mean when I say this scale has a “floating zero problem” when dealing with small weights. This scale will consistently show the proper 172mg weight of the plastic pieces if they are poured onto the scale rapidly or if they are slowly added one at a time to a known weight (not zeroed out via the TARE button) already sitting on the scale.