Etekcity vs Greater Goods: the same scale, two places to keep the food database

The verdict

As scales, they are a tie

It is worth being blunt about this, because the marketing on both sides implies otherwise. Neither of these is a more accurate scale than the other in any way either maker publishes:

• Capacity. Etekcity ESN00: "176.4 oz / 11 lb / 5000 g". Greater Goods: "11 pound capacity". Identical.
• Graduation. ESN00: "0.1 oz / 1 g / 1 mL". Greater Goods: "One gram accuracy", and the retail listing says it "provides readings down to the gram". Identical — and worth noting that neither resolves to 0.1 g, so neither is the scale for weighing creatine or oils in single-digit grams.
• Platform. ESN00: 9.2 × 6.3 in. Greater Goods: "9.3 inches wide, and 6 inches long". A wash; both take a dinner plate, which is the thing that actually matters when you tare a bowl and keep adding.
• Tare and units. Both tare in one touch. ESN00 switches oz / lb:oz / g / mL; Greater Goods switches "between grams or pounds & ounces" and tares "an entire meal".

If 1 g is not fine enough for what you weigh, neither of these is your scale and the finer-resolution options are covered on best food scale for macros. If 1 g is fine — and for chicken, rice, oats and vegetables it is — then stop comparing the hardware and go straight to the database.

Where the database lives

This is the only difference that will change your day.

Etekcity ESN00 — in the app. The scale pairs to VeSync, which Etekcity says is "supported by Nutritionix, which holds about 1 million food data", and connects to "Apple Health and Fitbit". You weigh, pick the food in the app, and the macros are calculated and stored there. The scale itself shows a weight and nothing else.

Greater Goods — in the scale. "2,000 pre-programmed ingredients" are coded into the unit, with 99 custom slots for your own entries, and the macros appear on its backlit LCD. There is a free Food Code App, but its job is to look up the three- or four-digit code for a food — it is a lookup table, not a tracker. Nothing syncs anywhere.

Those are genuinely different products wearing the same body. Two thousand foods sounds small next to a million, and it is, but the honest version is more nuanced: 2,000 covers nearly every raw single ingredient a person actually weighs. Where it falls apart is branded and packaged food — a specific brand of Greek yogurt, a protein bar, a jar of sauce. That is exactly where a million-food app database earns its keep, and it is why we rank the app scales above the on-scale one in best food scales with a nutritional calculator.

Which one is faster to actually use

Count the steps, because this is where buyers are most often surprised.

Step counts are the published workflow for each product, not a timed test — no unit was in our kitchen.

The Greater Goods is faster per food once you know the codes for the eight or ten things you weigh every week, and genuinely slower the first month while you are looking them up. The ESN00 is slower per food forever, but it is the only one of the two that leaves a record you can look at next month — and if you are tracking a deficit, the record is the point. The weight-loss framing of that argument is on best food scale for weight loss.

One practical note that favors the Etekcity for meal prep specifically: a 120-second auto-off is short when you are portioning five containers in a row, and you will tap it awake repeatedly. The Luminary on this page fixes that with an auto-off adjustable to five minutes in the app, which is a small feature that matters a lot on a Sunday afternoon. The routine it belongs to is the meal prep Sunday routine.

The bundle problem

This is the single most important thing to know before buying the Greater Goods scale, and no review that skips it is being straight with you: Amazon currently sells the Nutrition Facts scale only as a two-scale bundle with the brand's AccuCheck bathroom scale, whose "two-step color-coded process" verifies a body-weight reading. You are buying two scales.

That puts the Greater Goods in a clearly higher price bracket than the ESN00 — not because the kitchen scale is a premium instrument, but because there is a bathroom scale in the box. If you want a bathroom scale anyway, the bundle is reasonable value. If you do not, you are paying for one.

We will not print a price here, because affiliate prices move weekly and a stale number is worse than no number. Both buy rows on this page show the current live price pulled from Amazon; check them, because this comparison can flip on price alone. If the bundle premium is too much, the ESN00 does the nutrition job better for less, and the under-twenty-dollar alternatives are on best food scales under $20.

Platform, power and warranty

The small stuff, where there are real differences:

• Surface. Greater Goods uses "easy-to-clean food-safe glass"; the ESN00 is a flat plastic platform at 0.6 in thick. Glass wipes down better and feels more solid; plastic is lighter and has no edge to chip. Call it a preference.
• Display. Both backlit. The Greater Goods display has more to say, because it is showing nutrition rather than just a weight.
• Power. Both run on three AAA cells, and Greater Goods includes them. Neither recharges — if a battery drawer irritates you, the Luminary's USB-C is the reason to look at it instead.
• Warranty. Etekcity publishes a "2-Year Limited Warranty" plus a 30-day money-back guarantee on both its models here. Greater Goods publishes a "limited warranty that is active upon registration" — a conditional warranty is weaker than an unconditional one, and registering it is on you.

Which one to buy

Buy the Etekcity ESN00 if you track food in an app already, if you eat branded or packaged food, or if you want the numbers to exist somewhere next month. It is the cheaper scale, it has the vastly bigger database, and it exports. For most people reading a meal-prep site, this is the answer.

Buy the Greater Goods if the phone step is the thing that makes you stop logging. That is a real failure mode and a scale you will actually use beats a scale with better specs. Buy it knowing you are getting 2,000 foods, no export, a conditional warranty and a bathroom scale in the box.

Buy the Etekcity Luminary if you prep in bulk: 22 lb instead of 11 means a full mixing bowl of chicken tares out without complaint, the stainless platform cleans up after raw meat, and the five-minute auto-off survives a long portioning session. Same database, same app.

If you want the whole field rather than this pair, the rankings are best smart food scales and best food scale for macros. The two other Etekcity head-to-heads are Etekcity vs RENPHO and Etekcity vs Cosori.