Following is what an mechatronic engineer said about my "overpriced" Acaia pearl🤔
"as en megatronics engineer judging the electronics. it was af cheaper to produce then 20$. the body is also injection molded kosten maybe 2 cents a piece. you gat ripped of mate
the load cell used looks oversized to probably 5kg as it's a standard size. they are very cheap. the rest of the electronics. wheatstone bridge. opamps and a mcu probably 2$ Inc pcb and batt 10-12$ pp"
Yeah Acaias are expensive, but overpriced or "ripp off"? I mean it's not just about the eletronic components whatsoever.
What do you guys think of this?
by bobbybrown711
26 Comments
Even if they used alien technology to weight coffee, it’s still expensive… I really don’t get it why people pay such amount for a barely precise scale. Maybe I’m too poor to understand 😅
Seems accurate
Unless you want Bluetooth or need something that is very rugged for retail use, there is 0 need to spend over €70 on a scale, if that.
I’m a mechanical design engineer. I work with hardware, electronics, and software engineers to design stuff.
The sale price of something has absolutely nothing to do with how much it took to make.**
When you design a product, you ask yourself “How much will the target market pay for the thing we want to design?”.
You then design the product so that it can be made for as far below that amount as possible.
If you want to increase what people will pay for it or sell more of them, you change their minds through advertising/marketing.
As far as the Acaia goes:
If the alternatives are $50 but don’t tick all the boxes you want ticked, and you’re willing to pay $200 more in order to tick the unticked, and the thing you bought does that, then you didn’t get ripped off – you got exactly what you wanted for a price you were happy to pay.
If your mechantronics engineer reckons you’ve been ripped off, ask him to recommend something better. He’ll point you to an ugly lab scale that you wouldn’t want on your kitchen worktop if someone paid you $250, because what he hasn’t put a price on is how much you like it.
**Unless you’ve got a contract with your customer where you’ve tied cost and price together.
Overpriced
10€, the grey scale from Amazon. 2 Numbers behind the point. Max 3kg. It‘s weight really accurate.
Big Feature: You don‘t have Bluetooth.
I’m just happy I’m not paying that huge amount.
I’m amazed that the product looks so solid. It was probably made by children in sweatshop.
Of course I’m joking. Don’t get all outraged. They probably worked in an air conditioning building.
Now someone do a tear down of the $500 one that talks to the La Marzocco brew by weight function 😂
But seriously, you nailed it. What you’re paying for is brand and probably software costs related to the app ecosystem.
This is the difference between cost and value. Engineers worry about cost. Sales worry about value. Depending on the market, the consumer may worry about one or both.
Is it valuable to you for the price you paid? If ‘yes’ then everybody wins.
If you’re buying a £200 scale you either have more money than brain cells or too much money to know what to do with.
The Acaia scales are not just about the components. The design means the load cell isn’t exposed to the environment because the plate is under the scale rather than on top, like a normal scale. So it’s a lot less prone to failure due to contamination of the load cell.
I still think it’s overpriced, but it’s not as simple as OP suggests. I consider the Decent Scale to be better value. It’s also Bluetooth (and monitoring flow rate does support consistency, particularly with a lever like mine), and it also protects the load cell (in this case, with a wrap around top plate). Decent is actually bringing manufacturing in house for their next scale, which they’re aiming to be a similar price but much thinner.
Now do the Lunar.
FTR – and I realize this is different city to city – having Acaia customer support, from like-minded people, who will come to your cafe to pick up a broken scale (under warranty of course), give you a loaner and drop off the repaired one when it’s done is worth at least 25% of that sale price to me.
I think the world needs to go back to cost-plus pricing.
I think post is childish. Seriously, OP go an ahead and do all the R&D and get back to us! A little reminder, there were no scales on the market at the time of release that had the same connected features.
As someone who REFUSED to buy the Acaia Lunar out of principle that just received one as a birthday gift, both of these things can be true at once:
1. It’s absolutely not worth $250.
2. It’s absolutely the best coffee scale money can buy.
I’m glad I have it. It is a huge improvement to my workflow with my Decent XXL. I use it every day and appreciate it. It’s also not worth $250.
This is what gifts are for.
Nice things you won’t buy yourself. 🤷♂️
I have the acaia pearl s. I bought it because my timemore black mirror cracked in the middle. I enjoy the way the acai looks on my kitchen counter but the timemore was nicer to use and easier to turn on and off. I find myself constantly missing the touch buttons on the acaia. Turning it on for some reason is like 70% accuracy for me and turning it off is like 50% and when I go to turn it on it takes quite a while. It’s not the premium product in terms of UX that I was hoping for. And the timemore feels a lot more responsive.
electronic: $20. what is the BLE chip in it? thx
I think he shook you, you’re looking for us to help back you up, and it’s generally going your way. Lol.
It’s mostly about the electronics.
the secret for this kind of scale is work some months in a coffee shop and make desappear one of the many that have the battery busted because people keep them plugged to the charger
inelastic demand babyyy
The original Acacia Luna was much better engineered.
Probably overkill and not cost optimised. But it has four load cells not just one like every shitty little kitchen scale.
Yes of course it’s overpriced, any scale claim to be designed specifically for espresso or anything is always overpriced. But judge a price of anything just by the material cost is a naive act…
PS When I was young I had several years experience on scale firmware development…
yeah, i ain’t reading all that
Too bad to see such shotty quality in a high end product like this. Acaia should be ashamed for ripping off their customer base like this. The market seems ripe to have another company come and make Acaia clones for pennies. Put these fuckers out of business.
If acaia was going out of business, I would pick up another lunar before it was too late.