Note: I received this product for free in return for my thoughts and evaluation of the product - Good or Bad

First of all, I am retired and so is the wife. As retirees, we like to travel. One of our favorite destinations is Walt Disney World where we have season park hopper passes and belong to the Disney Vacation Club. With that kind of investment, we have to make several trips to Florida to get our money's worth. That is not hard to do since the wife and I are both big Mickey Mouse fans and can't wait to get down there for the next jaunt around all the parks - especially Epcot.

We have kids and grandkids, so when we go down to WDW, we of course like to buy the Disney related "junque" and fill our suitcases with gifts for everyone. Before going down, we pack our suitcases and then try to set them on the bathroom scales to check the weight. This is hard when you have a large suitcase and try to set it on a bathroom scale and read the weight since the scale display is usually covered by the bulk of the suitcase. Coming back from Florida, we have the suitcases filled with the "junque" we picked up and sometimes we have been overweight at the airport and had to move stuff between suitcases so as not to pay a penalty. That has been a hassle to open our suitcases at the airport and move stuff around with everyone watching you.

This scale looked like the perfect travel companion and it was indeed. Some other Amazon reviewers said that their unit did not have batteries. Ours had a battery and a tab that you pull out of the unit to get the battery going. So, no problem with my unit. You don't really need the manual to use it as it is pretty simple.

There is no off switch. It turns off itself after a short period of non-use. There is a strap out the bottom that is easy to loop back over a bag handle and attach to a ring on the top of the strap. Hook it up and then hit the power button. It turns on and the display comes on. Wait until the display reads 0.0 and then you just lift the bag via the scale itself. You grab each end of the scale and lift. If you are a small person and can't lift it by yourself, it is easy to have a person on each side life the bag via the scale. Myself, I am 6'-2 inches tall and had no problem lifting my bag with 2 hands.

The display is right on the top so you just have to look down as you lift. The display on the scale registers the weight as you lift and gives you a couple seconds to steady your lift, whereupon it locks into a weight and beeps to let you know it is displaying what it thinks is your final weight. If you are a shorter person, and can't read the scale while lifting the bag, after the beep, you can then put down your luggage and look at the scale for your reading as it displays the set reading for a while after putting the bag down.

What I like about this scale is that it is small and easily fits in your luggage. We just returned from Disney World and it was great to have on hand because we had picked up items of clothing and other Disney related stuff that pushed one of our bags over the 50-pound limit. We were able to redistribute our stuff in our resort room so that when we got to the airport, the bags cleared the scales with flying colors. This scale appears to be accurate as the airline scale was within a half pound of what I had read as the weight in our resort room. That half pound could be a result of the bag shifting around while I was steadying it waiting for the scale to lock in on a weight. I never tried it several times to get an average and that is something I should have done. My feeling is that it is accurate enough for its intended purpose and if you measure 49 pounds for a bag, it will probably pass the 50 pound limit at the airport.

I am thinking of buying several of these for family members for Christmas. Great product!