Ok, Here I go. LOL... 6 years ago, I and my Father in law each bought a Gem Pro 250 We were the lucky ones because both of ours are still preforming great. Mine has not giving me any problems, no drift or floating. Also in 6 years, I have never turned it off, It's been off for a day and a half when the hurricane came through 2 years ago. Pa turns his off every day and once in a blue moon his will drift. There's no evidence leaving it on or turning it off has any variance in its performance. Just the nature of the beast. Over the last year or so I have been worried about what we were going todo If the gem pro quit working
When you get that kind of performance out of a $160.00 scale what do you do when it quits working. Well, A charge master or anything in that line of scales is only accurate out to a 1000yds. There just to much Variances in the charges in them units out past 1000yds. I'm not saying it can't be done with a charge master. I'm saying,,, spend that $300.00 or $400.00 wiser. If you are in the market for a new scale, I say save your money and buy an
A&D FX120i scale. For $425.00, Data weighing Systems (DWS) has a scale for you. That is the next step up from the Gem Pro 250. If you had a good one that worked. I'm poor and I don't like to waste my money on tools that just leave me hanging when I need them to preform on a precision level. So I research and research and save my pennies and one day I get what I really want. Friday I was really blessed when FedUp arrived, a day late also on the delivery, But it has been a month and a half wait, so what did one more day make, right. I would like to give a shout out to Todd Efster over on Elfster's Rifles and Reloading YouTube channel, and Justin an LLyand over at Data Weighing Systems for making this all possible. Thanks guys, with out you, this would not of been possible. It was a great buying Esperance.
With out making yawl wait any longer, here is my next step up from the Gem Pro 250. It Is A Sartorius Entris II BCE223i-01, with the V3 Auto Throw and Trickler.. Yes I am feeling very BLESSED. The info I got on these scales show they have only been on the market for 3 or so months, "Don't quote me on that." As I said I just got this Friday, so I was scrambling to load some cases and the only cases that I had prepped that wasn't already loaded were from a project from January 2020 "6.5CM" comparing Lapua and Hornady Cases and some 223 cases that I prepped in July 2017. I'm a firm believer that if you prep the brass,,, load it with in a day or two of prepping it. "Just my OCD at play."
I was lucky enough to get to shoot those loads today. I was surprised by the numbers being as tight as they were, being that the brass was prepped so long ago. I will upload my Target with my chrono numbers,,, Don't laugh at the groups. The top 2 targets is the lapua cases and RL26. The bottom Left was a Latter Test with Hornady brass and Reloader 26. The bottom right is IMR 4208 XBR with Lake City brass in my AR15.
Also the top 2 targets were weighed with the Gem Pro 250 and the bottom 2 were weighed with the Sartorius BCE223i with the V3 Auto drop and Trickler. Although the cases were not my 1st choice to use for a serious load development shoot, and the groups suck " more likely my fault than the cases". I'm still impressed with the numbers on the paper.. Tomorrow I will Prep new brass and do it again and see if the groups tighten up. So my 2 Cents say this. If you need a good reloading scale that will preform on a precision level. Buy the A&D FX120i, it can't be beat in that price range and a charge master or any scale in that price range can't touch its performance.