Felicita Arc review | Do you really need an expensive coffee scale?
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- Опубликовано: 6 июл 2022
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Acaia Lunar
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Timemore scale
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Timemore Nano
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Cheap scale
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Another cheap scale
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Even cheaper scale
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This video was exactly what i was after as i have just ordered a Decent myself! I got the last v1.43! Thank you for helping me decide
Thank you for watching and congratulations on your new Decent. Please let me know how you like it.
Thanks for a thorough and engaging review, Jack. I've been using Timemore Black Mirror 2022 and find them frustrating for Espresso. The ARC will fit my Rocket machine beautifully, without fouling the group outlet (exhaust) at end of shot, and the ARC is way slimmer (shorter) than my Black Mirror - 37mm incl the rubber mat. I've decided to buy the Felicita ARC after watching your video #8 ) Bravo!
Thank you and congratulations! Let me know how you like it please.
Great review, thank you! ☺️
Thank you for watching!
I use the Brewista scale, it was around $90, and it's on the higher end but not as ridiculously expensive as the Bluetooth ones like the Acacia and so on. It works okay. It seems to work on the drip tray in my Breville Barista Touch but I think once I get a Decent machine down the line I'll get myself a better one.
Thank you for sharing. You are right, until you really need that Bluetooth there is no point paying extra.
I started with a Jewelry scale I got through a local coffee roasters shop, and it is actually pretty good and responsive, no timer though, the only issue is, it was old school and sometimes had interference if my cell phone was close to it, I thought it was broken for a bit, but turned out it's fine just needed to keep the phone away from it.
Older Lunar models didn't have USB C now (2021+) model does. Lunar comes with a 100g calibration weight as well.
I heard the only problem with this scale is there's not really any support or warranty if you happen to get a bad one or have issues. Acaia has good support.
How's the auto start/stop timing feature on this one (Did you use that before the Decent)
Does the Bluetooth connectivity work with other apps, there's one I discovered that worked with the Lunar recently (but not the Jimmy scale) called BeanConquerer (try that one if you haven't)
That's great The Decent supports that scale, I think they also support the Jimmy which isn't so popular (at least not compared to Acaia scales).
I still really like my Felicita and I only paid £130 for it vs £240 I would have to pay for Acaia. Bluetooth works fine. It stops shots on Decent perfectly. Although it is water resistant, sometimes when there is too much water on it it temporarily stops responding but all you need to do is to pat it with kitchen towel. I tried to connect it with se profiler but without success. It could be my fault though, I am not very technical.
What a wonderful presentation style - it was not only informative but also a pleasure to watch.
For years I have used the Salter Heston Blumenthal Prescison dual scales for my espressso brewing but every now and again it gives an error reading during the pull which is frustrating to say the least. When I asked Salter for advice they pointed out that I was overloading the small scale which is only rated up to 200g, my glass weighs 216g and I stop the shot at 27/30g so a total weight of 245g or so. What puzzled me is why it worked perfectly well for years but now and then it doesn't. So I bought a Timemore Black Mirror and initially it was good but less than a month in use (3 weighs per day) it became unreliable and laggy so it went back. The Salter is back in use until I find a BlackFriday deal on the Felicita Arc.
What's the big deal about USBC over MicroUSB for charging?
I have had my Arc for about 2 years now and it still works well. Not really important which usb it has. Maybe one is charging a bit faster but you only need to do it maybe once a month. I have seen it on Amazon for around £135 recently. Good luck with bargain hunting!
I have a timemore black mirror scale.
I like and don't see my self replacing it with anything more expensive. Maybe just couple it with the nano because it has espresso mode, that would be an addition to my workflow. I only have three problems if you can consider them as such.
1. It takes about a second to register your turning, you might think it didn't even register. Before I knew about this lag, I used to turn it off it off by mistake. You need 1 touch to tare, 3 sec hold to turn off.
2. Being made of plastic although that is to be expected ay this price point. But it doesn't squeak or rattle. Just not enjoyable to touch.
3. No physical controls for taring and timing.I like a good tactical feedback as I don't need to look to make it happen and I can be certain I actually did the action intended. And you can turn it on by mistake just by hovering over those touch controls .The only physical one is the permanent power button on the side. At first I thought it was misplaced and could come off easily but now I can simply reach for it without even looking and sliding it with one finger.
Thank you for sharing. Timemore scales look very good and are reasonably priced. As long as they are doing it’s job there is no point to replace them.
Thank you for this video.
There are barely any on RUclips about this scale.
I currently use the ubiquitous little silver scale on Amazon that fits perfectly on the drip tray of my Barista Express. That said, I am very tempted by this scale.
Thank you for watching. Think about it as a one-off investment that should stay with for long. Good scale can really improve your work flow. You can read other comments- plenty more recommendations for any budget.
@@mycoffeeshow111
I agree with you. I’ve been happy enough so far.
How do you find the integration with your Decent? Any issues or connection problems?
The Decent is my eventual end game machine.
@@adamg.manning6088 no problem at all connecting with Decent. You use the tablet to establish the connection for the first time and then the machine remembers your device. After that All you need to do is to click on the tablet the flashlight weigh ( as seen on the video) and is ready.
@@mycoffeeshow111
That’s great to hear. Seems like a genuine £100 saving over the Lunar, then.
The only let down is that many people have designed drip trays to fit the Lunar and not this. If you’re happy with that, it seems like a great deal.
@@adamg.manning6088 Acaia is definitely more popular. I have never had it, nor seen any videos comparing those 2 but as I said in the video, I am really happy with Felicita
Cheap pocket scales can be a great stopgap, quite responsive and accurate and if you put them in a ziplock bag, water resistant too. But damn having to charge batteries every week was also a problem. Essentially a small step up is the wacaco exagram that adds a bit of water resistance but keeps the battery problem.
I went with the timemore black mirror nano. I can use it for pourover too. While I like the auto mode for pourover, the manual mode seems to make more sense to me for general use and on the espresso mode sometimes it decides that it has stopped when I'm still pulling a shot so that got old fast but is likely due to the platform of my cafelat robot as it doesn't fit perfectly and has to be at an angle so the balance of the scale is messed up sometimes (sometimes I get it right lol), this does cause me some irritation. I also think the scale could be a little bit more responsive for the price but the build quality, look and feel of the product is amazing.
The feature to show g/s is great for working on pour over but not so useful for espresso, I tend to find I prefer having a timer on (to try and be consistent). I feel like Felicita did make a better scale in terms of accuracy at least, and including a calibration weight is really a huge win. My cheap pocket scale needed a reset and I had to work out items that were relatively close to the required weights to calibrate. Compared to the nano, it's now about 0.1g off depending.
I think the next gen of coffee scales will likely all have bluetooth which could hit acaia. I see the exagram and nano as companies testing the waters. I must admit I was very close to picking up an Acaia Pyxis, if it were £100 I probably would have.
I still couldn't justify the Acaia scales at their price. I'm happy to be 90% of the way there.
Thank you for sharing. Timemore Nano looks great but I heard mixed reviews. Apart from Decent, are there any other coffee machines that would benefit from Bluetooth scale? I thought about getting pixar for travel but tbh I don’t travel so much to justify it.
@@mycoffeeshow111 The point for bluetooth for me would be to have a way of keeping a log of coffee brew times and if it's a live data kind of thing maybe also some nice graphs but maybe there are other things that are nice like possibly voice control via phone?
There's a lot to like about the Nano but I feel the price could be halved and I'd be really happy about it. Where as I'm sort of left with a 'I should be getting more for my money' feeling. Also just a lot of design decisions that could make it so much more user friendly I feel.
@@stingrae789 I can’t really think about any reason to have a voice control for my scale. But as you know, I am not the sharpest person, especially in the morning b4 coffee kicks in properly 😛
Hi Jack,
Have not seen the review yet, will watch it soon when time allows but I have a quick question. Is your Felicita rocking on a flat surface? My is - the base is not level. Luckily I managed to find a spot on my countertop where the small unevenness of the countertop matches the Felicita :) so it all stays firm, but it is not ideal. A small gripe, which in fairness I have only noticed after a few months brewing with it! :D. I guess it shows how unimportant it is.
Thank you. Tbh I haven’t noticed it but will have to investigate when I make my afternoon coffee.
Have a great day!
I have checked and it doesn’t wobble at all
@@mycoffeeshow111 good to hear. Seems that I have a dud. Bah. Could be worse. Still I like it very much. Although I think the wobbliness might be interfering with my favourite weighting mode - which is auto start timer at auto tare.
I, too, bought a Timemore-esque scales on Amazon and thought I struck gold. It even had a USB type-C port. Sadly, the first time I charged it was the last. Never held a charge after that. I've had a Timemore Black Mirror 2 for about 3 months. There are a few quirks, but the quality and reliability are legit. Still haven't charged it, though.
Thank you for sharing!
@@mycoffeeshow111 On an unrelated note: Had you not had bag luck with damage in transport, would you still recommend the Crem One? There aren't enough reviews out there to get a good feel for what a working One is like...
@@letsfoolgravity well, I only had it for few months so difficult to say but I really enjoyed playing with it. It was a little bit like Decent for those who like classic E61 design. I have no idea about longevity of Crem One though and I am not sure how easy it is to find spare parts. If you think about getting it, make sure there is solid warranty included just in case.
Still going strong? Acaia lunar is $370 AUD here, but can get Felicita for around $246 AUD.. Maybe $220 from aliexpress
Extra width is nice, but i saw some reports of inconsistency depending where you place items. And the Felicita availability doesn't seem the greatest, and I'm not sure why.
Apart from price, the extra size is a nice bonus.. but I'm looking at a naked portafilter so not really sure I'll be placing two cups on top.
I'm currently using a GDEALER type scale from Amazon i got as a stop gap- my first espresso machine and i needed something. The slow response time is a nightmare and it's really hard anticipating the shot and trying to stop early to reach target dose
Hi, still use it every day with no issues. I never had Acaia but Felicita works much better than my previous scales. No issues with inaccuracy and you get weight to recalibrate it if you need to.
@@mycoffeeshow111 cheers!
I bought mine 2 months ago. They upgraded to usb-c now for charging
Thank you for letting me know! I bought mine on special offer. Now I know why it was discounted 😛
Do you like the scale?
Where did u buy it from?
I bought the scale shown in this video for 13$ and even with shipping to Europe it was worth it. But I don't need a timer or anything, because the rest is done by my machine upgrades ;)
You are right, sometimes the cheapest solution is the best. Thank you for sharing!
@@mycoffeeshow111 maybe not the best, but was really glad that i didn't habe to spend so mich money for a scale. Better to put that in grinder if on a budget. But if I didn't have the timer on my machine and the budget, I would probably buy the one you showed. I wouldn't like to add an additional timer.
thanks for your review, you convinced me and I bought a Felicita scale, but I have a problem with it - I can't connect it to my phone
the Felicita application does not detect it, and when they try to connect it to the phone by detecting new devices via Bluetooth, it wants the code from me
and I didn't find any such code anywhere, how did you manage to pair this scale with your phone? That's why I bought it, and I can't get my head around it
Sorry to hear that. Are you positive the bluetooth is on on both devices? There should be that white dot on the left side, below on off button. I don’t think it ever asked me for any code. I just downloaded the felicita arc app. Just checked it now and it still works perfectly. I had it for years without any issues.
@@mycoffeeshow111 Uff... it worked, I had to charge it to 100% and it finally connected - thanks for the answer :)
I have a Timemore Black Mirror Plus for pourovers. Size/quality/functions are great but I hate the capacitive buttons. They can be weirdly unresponsive e.g. they will beep to acknowledge being pressed but not perform their function. What really grinds my gears is that they can be triggered by a splash of water which is infuriating to have the weight reset during a pour. A typical reason is that I make coffee with wet hands while doing the washing up and one errant drip falls off my hand... beep! Those tiny usability issues really matter for something you use multiple times a day and the sort of thing I'd love to see addressed in reviews.
Thank you for sharing. Some other viewers also mentioned those issues and I can see them being very annoying. Are you planning to get something better soon?
@@mycoffeeshow111 I'm too cheap to buy new ones, I'll have to wait until they die :) After a few 100 pours, it's basically muscle memory now and I could live without any scale to be honest. If I accidentally turn them off then I don't get a worse cup so maybe I should remove them from my pouring workflow and enjoy a little less faff.
@@daw1692 agree- as long as the coffee is good, the rest is not that important.
Hey hi so it's been 1 month so can you please share a review kinda thing about this Felicita arc like pros, cons is it worth buying or not etc..
Hi, I got it last year so plenty of time to get to know it. In one sentence- yes definitely worth buying if you are a coffee hobbyists, especially if you own Decent and can fully appreciate the Bluetooth connection. The only 2 things I don’t like about it:
1 I struggle to fit it in under Flair Pro 2
2 I can’t find a case for it for when I travel.
@@mycoffeeshow111 Thank you 😊👍.
That DF caught a bit of fines 😂
Yeah, a bit messy setup behind me 😛. I have DF64 gen2 now, much less static.
Did you get asked for a bluetooth code when you tried to pair your arc?
I don’t think so. The process was very easy.
Weightman or Maxus (same scale/different name) $16 on Amazon. The best scale for the money. Timer/1000 gr/well built/small. Fits everywhere, including Flair 58.
Thank you for recommendations!
How are the apps? They got poor ratings lol can you connect them to the Acaia apps? Lol
I don’t use the app often, only when brewing large batch with something that covers the screen on the scale and have no complaints . I guess if you want Acaia app better get Acaia scale. Having said that, I am really happy with mine.
Can this scale connect to Smart espresso profiler app? thanks
Hi, I tried and couldn’t connect it but it might be my fault as I am not very technically gifted 😛
@@mycoffeeshow111 thanks for trying!
The short answer is: No.
The longer answer is: But I 'really' need it!
That is exactly my approach to most of my recent buys 😛
I understand the science behind timing, weighing, dosing, retention, etc. But to be honest when you go to the cafe they do none of this and it still taste amazing. So in the end it all this maybe overkill.
Yes and no. I don’t want to be too cocky but most of the time I can make better espresso than an average coffee shop.
I also saw some places using scale for their single origin beans.
Another thing is that most shops use the same beans so theycan calibrate their grinders and espresso machines in the morning.
@@mycoffeeshow111 I agree and often make better tasting coffee at home. I still go to cafes as the wife still says something about getting coffee outside of the home that makes it better 😂
@@daniellanzotti2391 If I drink at coffee shop I usually go for filter or pour over. They often use fancy grinders like EK43, something I can’t afford, and it tastes very good indeed.