If you regularly check luggage, a small digital scale is one of the easiest travel accessories to justify.
Checked baggage, family travel, shopping-heavy trips and strict airline weight limits
Carry-on-only travellers who rarely need to check luggage weight
Etekcity Digital Luggage Scale
Compact, simple and well established, with enough capacity for normal checked luggage without unnecessary extra features.
Digital luggage scales are one of those small travel accessories that are easy to dismiss — right up until you're standing at the airport trying to work out whether your suitcase is over the airline's weight limit.
For checked baggage in particular, a compact luggage scale can be a very cheap way to remove that uncertainty before you leave home, and again before the return flight after you've added shopping, gifts or souvenirs.
Travel + Leisure tested 19 luggage scales for its 2026 guide and found noticeable differences in accuracy, comfort and ease of use, despite the category looking very simple on paper.
Our view is straightforward:
If you regularly check luggage, a small digital scale is one of the easier travel accessories to justify.
Worth considering if: you regularly use checked baggage, fly with airlines that enforce strict weight limits, tend to bring things home from holiday, or share baggage allowance across several cases.
Probably unnecessary if: you travel carry-on only and your airline is mainly concerned with bag dimensions rather than weight.
What matters most: accuracy, a clear display, a strap that's easy to attach, and a design you can comfortably lift with a heavy suitcase attached.
Most digital luggage scales are very simple.
You attach the strap or hook to the suitcase handle, lift the bag off the floor, and the scale displays the weight.
That's useful because airline baggage limits are often strict, and they vary by ticket, route and airline. Which? notes that luggage rules differ from airline to airline and that getting them wrong can become an expensive mistake.
A luggage scale won't tell you whether your bag meets the airline's size limits, but it does remove the guesswork around weight.
You can.
For a suitcase that sits comfortably on a bathroom scale, that's perfectly reasonable before you leave home.
The problem is the return journey.
You're unlikely to have bathroom scales available in every hotel, apartment or villa, and weighing a large suitcase accurately can be awkward even when you do.
A handheld luggage scale is small enough to leave in the suitcase throughout the trip, so you can check the weight again before flying home.
That's probably its biggest advantage.
Some are very good, but not all of them.
Travel + Leisure's testing found that several scales produced inaccurate readings, glitches or awkward handling, while the better performers stayed close to known test weights and were easy to use.
That means we'd be wary of simply buying the cheapest unbranded scale available.
You don't need a premium travel gadget, but accuracy is the entire point of the product. Saving a few pounds isn't much of a bargain if the reading is unreliable.
A scale rated to around 50kg is more than enough for normal airline luggage.
Most checked bags will have limits well below that, so there's little benefit in chasing unusually high maximum capacities.
The reading needs to be easy to see while you're holding a heavy bag in the air.
A backlit screen is useful, but we'd prioritise clear numbers over unnecessary extra features.
Many digital scales briefly lock the final reading after you lower the bag.
That's useful because it means you don't have to twist around and read the display while lifting a suitcase.
This matters more than it sounds.
Travel + Leisure's testing specifically looked at grip shape and comfort when lifting different weights, because a scale can be accurate but still unpleasant to use with a heavy suitcase.
A webbing strap with a buckle is usually more versatile than a small rigid hook, particularly with thick or oddly shaped luggage handles.
Most digital models use a small replaceable battery.
We'd check the battery before travelling rather than discover on the return journey that the scale has gone flat.
Etekcity Digital Luggage Scale
This is the kind of product we'd investigate first because Etekcity has been selling simple weighing products for years and the design follows the standard lightweight strap-and-display format.
For most holidaymakers, we wouldn't look for anything much more complicated than this: compact, easy to attach, clear display and enough capacity for ordinary checked luggage.
Go Travel Digital Luggage Scale
Go Travel is a recognisable travel-accessory brand, which makes this a sensible alternative to the many anonymous marketplace listings.
Again, the appeal isn't advanced features. It's having a compact scale from an established travel brand that you can leave in your suitcase between trips.
We'd compare the current Amazon listings, user feedback and price before deciding which one to feature as the main recommendation.
Probably not.
Travel + Leisure's 2026 testing found that some inexpensive scales performed similarly to more expensive models, while at least one pricier scale wasn't judged worthwhile for most travellers.
This is a category where we'd favour simple and reliable over premium.
You're not buying something you need to interact with for hours. You need it to give you a trustworthy reading a few times per trip.
We think they make the most sense for:
Checked-baggage holidays: particularly when your allowance is 15kg, 20kg or 23kg and you're likely to get close to it.
Family travel: if you're distributing clothing across several suitcases and want to balance the weight.
Shopping-heavy trips: where the return suitcase is noticeably heavier than the outbound one.
Multi-stop holidays: if you're taking several flights with different baggage allowances.
Budget airlines: where exceeding an allowance can become expensive very quickly.
If you travel exclusively with a small cabin bag, a luggage scale may never leave the drawer.
Some airlines focus more on cabin-bag dimensions than weight, although rules vary considerably, so you should always check the airline you're actually flying with rather than assume one airline's policy applies to another. Which?
We also wouldn't buy a scale as a substitute for checking your booking.
Knowing that your suitcase weighs 21kg doesn't help if your ticket only includes 15kg.
Take it.
If you're going to buy one at all, we think leaving it at home defeats much of the point.
Your luggage is often heaviest on the return journey, not the outbound one. That's when you've added souvenirs, shopping, gifts and anything else you've picked up during the holiday.
A small digital scale takes very little room, so we'd leave it in the suitcase throughout the trip.
For anyone who regularly checks a suitcase, yes.
They solve a very specific problem, cost relatively little and take up almost no luggage space.
We wouldn't overthink the purchase. Look for a simple model with a good grip, clear display, secure strap and a reputation for accurate readings.
If you mostly travel carry-on only, you can probably skip them.
But if checked baggage is a normal part of your holidays, this is one of the easier Travel Essentials to justify.
Etekcity Digital Luggage Scale
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