The best food scale for macros, ranked on the things you'll notice on Sunday

What actually matters in a macro scale

Five things, in the order the rubric weights them. Resolution and capacity (25): 1 g is the floor, 11 lb is the floor, and 22 lb means a full mixing bowl tares out. Database and app (25): whether the scale turns grams into calories and macros for you, how big the food list is, and whether the result lands in the app you already use. Tare and units (15): one-touch tare, grams and ounces, milliliters for liquids. Platform and readability (15): can you see the display with a dinner plate on it. Battery (10): rechargeable or a drawer of AAAs. Value (10). The full rubric is on the methodology page, and we haven't weighed anything on any of these — every figure is the maker's.

1 g is enough; 0.1 g is a different tool

Macros are logged in grams of food. A gram of chicken is about a third of a calorie; a gram of rice is about 1.3 calories; a gram of olive oil is about 9. At 1 g resolution the worst case — rounding oil — is a 9-calorie error per pour, which is noise against a 2,500-calorie day. Every scale on this page is 1 g (Etekcity states 0.05 oz / 1 g; COSORI states 1-gram increments from a 3 g minimum; RENPHO states 1 g; Greater Goods states one gram accuracy; OXO states 1 g or 1/8 oz). The 0.1 g resolution people ask about is for supplements — creatine, pre-workout, salt — and it belongs on a pocket scale with a 500 g capacity, not on the kitchen counter under a pot of rice.

The apps, and what syncs where

Etekcity and COSORI share the VeSync app and the Nutritionix database (Etekcity says about a million foods; COSORI says 1M+). The ESN00's page states connections to Apple Health and Fitbit; the Luminary's and NutriLens's pages don't state third-party sync, so we don't claim it for them. RENPHO uses the Renpho Health app and reports 23 nutrition facts including vitamins and minerals, with no stated sync. Greater Goods keeps its 2,000-food database on the scale itself and uses a free app only to look up food codes. OXO has no app; you type the gram figure into whatever you log in. The smart-scale-only ranking, with more on each app, is on best smart food scales.

One honest note: an app-connected scale saves the lookup, not the weighing. If you already log in MyFitnessPal or Cronometer, a plain scale and a barcode scan is the same number of steps. The database matters most for whole foods you'd otherwise search for — chicken thigh, cooked jasmine rice, avocado — and for that, the million-food databases beat the 2,000-food one.

The mistake buyers make

The second mistake is the two-minute auto-off. Portioning five containers takes longer than that, and a scale that sleeps under the bowl makes you start over. The ESN00's scale auto-off is 120 seconds; the Luminary's is adjustable to 300 in the app; Greater Goods and OXO don't state a figure. If you portion in long sessions, that setting is worth the Luminary's premium. The method is on how to use a food scale for macros.