Re: best scale within reason
A man with a watch knows what time it is. A man with two watches thinks he knows what it maybe. A man with three watches has little idea of what time it is. Ditto reloaders with multipule scales.
Actually, precise accuracy of an indicated reading is only casually helpful to a reloader. What reloaders need is precise repeatability and beam scales are best for that. We do need to know that if we develope a load with any given scale we will be able to duplicate that load <span style="font-style: italic">with that scale</span> at any point in the future. Anything electronic less than a lab type digital selling for several hundreds of dollars and professionally maintained isn't likely to do that for long, if at all. And, at best, a digital read-out instrument is typically only accurate to what the display shows +/- one count. That's just another limitation of electronic instruments and many hobbiest grade digital scales aren't very close to being that accurate!
Only a beam will follow a trickler in real time. Digitals always have a bit of time lag and some have too much hysterisis - reluctance to change - to follow small changes very accurately.
So, you want good accuracy, precise repeatablilty and long term dependability? Get a beam! All of them are more than sufficently accurate and sensitive for reloading needs.
My 46 year old Lyman M-5 (made by Ohaus, as RCBS beam scales are today) has a 260.9 gr. weight to extend its range above 500 gr. I can zero the scale, set the poises to 260.9, place the weight on the pan and it will rise to zero and stop there in no more than 2 seconds. I don't need anything more dependable, accurate or faster than that and I doubt my beam is any better than any other scale of its type. And it doesn't drift in calibration or zero due to temp or line voltage changes, etc., either.
Seems most of the people who think beams are "slow and hard to read" set their's on the bench top; the only worse place would be <span style="text-decoration: underline">under</span> the top! Set a beam on a shelf or sturdy box up near chin-nose level and it will be very easy to read accurately to less than a half tenth grain.