RogerS
Established Member
Ever one for the gadget, I bought one of these
Hitting the on/off button gives a range of different display units..
mm (integers ..not fractions)
cm
feet and fractional inches
fractional inches
Another button adds on the case to the length of the tape..handy for measuring the internal dimensions of a carcass, for example.
You can store values in memory locations and there is a hold function. Memory recall and memory clear complete the electronic buttons.
The final control is the big blue button that acts as a lock on the tape.
The tape comes marked in imperial and metric. Max length 16 ft. There is a lip on the case beneath the tape that is your reference point when measuring in from the edge of a board.
At first sight, sounds promising. But what is it like to use? Is it any better than a normal tape measure?
A resounding no.
Having a digital display adds no benefit as far as I can see. OK - it's marginally easier to read 631mm than work it out by reading the tape itself. It would have been so much more useful if the display was in the top of the unit. You have to squat down to read the digital display.
The blue locking button doesn't...or not very well as it's all too easy to nudge the tape and lose your setting. Like when squatting down to read the display.
Sure..it's great to measure out from the edge of a board by simply reading off the digital display but, like many other tape measures, the end of the tape splays out so losing that mm accuracy. If you reference back from the other edge then you can't easily get a marker knife or pencil underneath the tape to mark off from that lip which is the reference point for the display.
It would have been infinitely more useful if they'd put some intelligence in the digital side of things. For example, take a measure and hit a button that remembers it (just like the memory location) but now whenever the tape gets to that point again, it sounds a beep.
Another useful function would be to be able to take a measure, save it then move to a board that is oversize, pull out the tape further so that you measure the actual length of the board, hit a button and the display tells you how much to cut off the board.
As it stands, I find myself asking the question...digital tape measure...why?
Prices range from £20+ to around £9.95 which is what I paid for mine IIRC (but please don't embarass me by asking where I bought it from as I can't remember
)
Hitting the on/off button gives a range of different display units..
mm (integers ..not fractions)
cm
feet and fractional inches
fractional inches
Another button adds on the case to the length of the tape..handy for measuring the internal dimensions of a carcass, for example.
You can store values in memory locations and there is a hold function. Memory recall and memory clear complete the electronic buttons.
The final control is the big blue button that acts as a lock on the tape.
The tape comes marked in imperial and metric. Max length 16 ft. There is a lip on the case beneath the tape that is your reference point when measuring in from the edge of a board.
At first sight, sounds promising. But what is it like to use? Is it any better than a normal tape measure?
A resounding no.
Having a digital display adds no benefit as far as I can see. OK - it's marginally easier to read 631mm than work it out by reading the tape itself. It would have been so much more useful if the display was in the top of the unit. You have to squat down to read the digital display.
The blue locking button doesn't...or not very well as it's all too easy to nudge the tape and lose your setting. Like when squatting down to read the display.
Sure..it's great to measure out from the edge of a board by simply reading off the digital display but, like many other tape measures, the end of the tape splays out so losing that mm accuracy. If you reference back from the other edge then you can't easily get a marker knife or pencil underneath the tape to mark off from that lip which is the reference point for the display.
It would have been infinitely more useful if they'd put some intelligence in the digital side of things. For example, take a measure and hit a button that remembers it (just like the memory location) but now whenever the tape gets to that point again, it sounds a beep.
Another useful function would be to be able to take a measure, save it then move to a board that is oversize, pull out the tape further so that you measure the actual length of the board, hit a button and the display tells you how much to cut off the board.
As it stands, I find myself asking the question...digital tape measure...why?
Prices range from £20+ to around £9.95 which is what I paid for mine IIRC (but please don't embarass me by asking where I bought it from as I can't remember
)
