Fellow Tally Pro review: This expensive coffee scale is missing one premium feature

A great basic coffee scale — with a premium price tag

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background
(Image: © Future)

Tom's Guide Verdict

Although a beautiful, well-crafted, and efficient scale, it’s difficult to give a high rating to the Tally Pro. Not because it’s bad, but because it’s really overpriced for what it is. There’s no live flow rate monitor — I’ve used scales half the Tally Pro’s price with that.

Pros

  • +

    Gorgeous OLED display

  • +

    Easy to use

  • +

    Usable as a kitchen scale

  • +

    BrewAssist mode does the math for you

  • +

    Not restricted to pour-over

Cons

  • -

    Expensive

  • -

    No companion app, unlike similarly-priced competitors

  • -

    No flow rate monitor

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The Fellow Tally Pro coffee scale is one of the prettiest scales I’ve ever used. If my list of the best coffee scales had a category for most attractive scale, the Tally Pro would be a serious contender. However, sorry to break it to you, but I evaluate coffee scales on much more than their looks.

Fellow is renowned for beautiful coffee tech, namely the fantastic Stagg gooseneck kettle I loved when I reviewed recently. The Tally Pro goes hand-in-hand with the Stagg kettle, as they’re both coffee tech products designed for pour-over routines. Sure, the Tally Pro was compatible with my espresso machine, but if yours has a particularly small drip tray, it likely won’t fit. I would only recommend using this for pour-overs; for espresso machines, you’ll need a smaller scale.

I really did like the Tally Pro, but its price is remarkably high for what you get. I’ve reviewed other coffee scales with similar specs that cost $120 less. There’s no companion app and no flow rate monitor — a major con, in my eyes. However, if you’re a Fellow fanatic, this is a great scale, so the $185 price tag could be worth it for the cohesive Fellow aesthetic. Get the full story in this Fellow Tally Pro coffee scale review.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Cheat sheet

  • Who is it for? Pour-over lovers who want to bring some sophistication to their routine
  • What does it cost? An eye-watering $185
  • What does it do well? It looks gorgeous, is more versatile than most other scales, and has a nice BrewAssist mode for pour-overs
  • What do we wish it did better? Other scales at this price point have more features

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Specs

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Price $185
Weight 1.2 pounds
Dimensions 6.9 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
Max weight2500g
Min weight0.1g
Accuracy 0.1g
Materials Silicone, glass, metal, anodized aluminum, plastic
Color Black
BatteryUSB-C rechargeable, 13 hours use
BluetoothNo
Standby time10 minutes
Waterproof Water-resistant, not waterproof
Timer Yes
Accessories Protective shims for travel

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Price & availability

The Fellow Tally Pro is $185 from Amazon U.S. and £185 from Amazon U.K.. The Tally Pro is one of the priciest coffee scales I’ve tested — bested only by Acaia’s range of eye-wateringly expensive digital scales. While Acaia’s scales combine brains and beauty, and a range of fantastic companion apps, I was pretty disappointed to see the Fellow Tally Pro lacking some of this pizzazz.

I’ve also tested the $110 Felicita Arc, which is, surprisingly, now one of the cheaper premium scales I’ve reviewed. The Arc has a companion app, which isn’t as user-friendly as the Acaia apps, but at least it’s there. Fellow has two apps: Fellow Aiden and EKG Updater, so clearly it has the means to develop apps. I’d like to see Fellow upgrade the Tally Pro scale with an app to justify its high price, a la Acaia Brewguide or Acaia Brewmaster.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Design & functions

Spoiler alert: the Tally Pro is beautiful. I wouldn’t expect anything else from Fellow at this point; I recently tested the Corvo and Stagg kettles and was enamored by their beauty.

There aren’t as many features to justify the price as I’d hoped. However, there are a couple.

First off, the Tally Pro is described as “water-resistant” by Fellow, but not waterproof. This is better than the Acaia Pearl S ($220), which Acaia actively warned me against getting wet. There’s no IP rating, unlike the Subminimal Subscale or the Felicita Arc, which would be your best bets if you seriously wanted a waterproof scale.

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

Given its 7-inch length, it comes as no surprise that the Tally Pro is predominantly designed for pour-over brewing methods. Another feature I enjoyed during testing was the ‘BrewAssist’ mode. You enter this mode by pressing on the triple-dot button above the dial. I’ll discuss this more in performance, but the long and short of it is this: BrewAssist works out your coffee and water weights based on your ideal ratio. It basically does the math so you don’t have to. While using with my V60, I wasn’t as impressed with BrewAssist as I thought I would be. Don’t get me wrong, BrewAssist is a great feature, but I expected it to be a little more intuitive.

the fellow tally pro scale photographed with a chemex and fellow corvo ekg kettle

(Image credit: Tom's Guide / Nikita Achanta)

Now for the downsides: there’s no flow rate timer or auto-tare-auto-time mode. This means that every time you want to start the timer, you have to manually click the left button. Other premium scales have flow recognition that starts the timer as soon as it registers water flow. There’s also no flow rate monitor, so you’ll have to do some math at the end of brewing to calculate your average flow rate. The Acaia Lunar and Acaia Pearl S ($270 and $220 respectively) both have live flow-rate monitors — the Pearl S even has a flow rate practice mode that teaches you how to control your pour.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Performance

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

As I touched on in the ‘Design & functions’ section, I’ll discuss performance with my V60 dripper in depth here. I set up BrewAssist, placed my mug, V60, and filter on top and tared. Then I set the ratio to 1:16 (standard for pour-overs) and weighed out my coffee. I weighed 14g of medium-fine coffee: the Tally Pro recommended I add 224g of water. So I poured in a little water to bloom the coffee, but the weight of the coffee kept going up. I assumed the scale would sense when I had finished putting in coffee and would automatically start counting water weight, but I was wrong.

Regardless, I’d remembered the 224g water measurement so I added that much water and tried again. It turns out you need to press the ‘timer’ button for the scale to remember your coffee weight, start measuring your water weight, and start the timer. So that was definitely a user error — don’t be like me!

This time, I wanted just a little coffee so I set my ideal water amount to 100g. The scale told me I needed 6.2g coffee, so I meticulously poured in that exact amount before pressing the timer button.

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

The Tally Pro really excels with Chemex usage. I put 31.25g of ground coffee into my Chemex and set the radio as 1:16. The Tally Pro told me to pour 500g of water, so I pressed the timer button twice to start the timer and finished the coffee. The size of the pad makes use with Chemex super easy and I would wholeheartedly recommend this for Chemex aficionados.

It’s actually quite shocking to me that there’s no flow rate monitor on the Tally Pro. One of the most important parts of the pour-over process is knowing your flow rate. Obviously you can calculate flow rate with the total brewing time and water amount, but I would like to see this feature on a scale priced this highly.

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

Even though I know it’s not designed for espresso machines, I had to test it out, just in case. I used the Fellow Tally Pro with my De’Longhi La Specialista Opera.

I weighed 12g of finely ground espresso in my portafilter. To do this, I weighed the empty portafilter, then tared, and dosed ground coffee until the Tally Pro read 12g. It’s nice that I was able to do this on the Tally Pro, as I’ve been unable to weigh portafilters on scales explicitly designed for espresso.

While the weighing pad is quite large, at 7 inches, it still fit into the drip tray of my espresso machine. I was able to weigh and time my espresso shot with no problems, which was a welcome surprise.

I also put the Tally Pro through its paces with similarly priced scales. Here are the results of my tests.

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Acaia Lunar187.429.04.719.2108.578.1
Fellow Tally Pro18829.14.919.210978.3
Acaia Pearl S187.729.14.719.2108.778.1

As you can see, the Tally Pro was mostly accurate with other scales, and had great repeatability. Repeatability essentially means that weighing the same thing over and over gives a consistent result.

When I weighed my 100g calibration weight ten times, it read ‘100.3g’ every single time. I wanted to re-calibrate the scale so it would read 100g precisely, but the Tally Pro can only be calibrated with a 50g weight, which I don’t have. I’d like to have a 50g weight provided to ensure accurate calibration: the Acaia Lunar and Felicita Arc scales came with a calibration weight.

Don’t fret if you only work in ounces — you can change the unit from the default grams to pounds, ounces, or milliliters by rotating the dial. As coffee is weighed in grams mostly everywhere in the world, though, I stuck to grams.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Storage & maintenance

Taking care of the Tally Pro is much easier than you might think. As this scale is water resistant, you can comfortably wipe it down after use, and you can afford to spill a little water on it should you wake up particularly clumsy one morning. You can even remove the weighing pad to clean underneath, which is a really nice feature.

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

The battery lasts 13 hours, which is about 260 days if you use the scale for 3 minutes every day. The Tally Pro will remind you when it needs to be recharged, so don’t worry about forgetting. It comes with a USB-C cable and Fellow recommends against charging the scale with anything other than the provided USB-C cable.

In between uses, the Tally Pro will look great displayed in your coffee bar, or can easily slot into a drawer. You get a 3 year warranty when you register the scale online too.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: How does it compare?

fellow tally pro coffee scale with a large circular weighing pad and coffee beans and an LED display with a dial and timer photographed against a blue tom's guide background

(Image credit: Future)

Going off inherent usability, the Tally Pro is up there as one of the top contenders for most user-friendly. There’s no confusing mode-switching and you don’t have to study the user manual, unlike Acaia products that’ll have you taking a final exam just to brew a coffee. The Tally Pro is as instantly usable as the Timemore Black Mirror Basic 2, the Hario V60 Drip Scale, and much easier than the Acaia Lunar.

However, that’s as much of a con as it is a pro. The Tally Pro is so easy to use because, well, there isn’t that much to do. It’s missing the app compatibility you get with the $110 Felicita Arc and the $220-$250 Acaia scales. There are only three modes, a pale comparison to Acaia Pearl S’s seven, and there’s no live flow rate monitor — something the $56 Timemore Black Mirror Basic 2 has.

Fellow Tally Pro Coffee Scale review: Verdict

the fellow tally pro scale photographed with a chemex and fellow corvo ekg kettle

(Image credit: Tom's Guide / Nikita Achanta)

As beautiful and user-friendly as the Tally Pro may be, it simply does not do enough to justify its price tag. Don’t get me wrong, I really like this scale, and I thoroughly enjoyed using it. However, in my opinion, it should cost around $60-100, maximum.

Some scales work hard to justify their high prices: the $110 Felicita Arc has a companion app, IPX5 rating, and a live flow rate monitor. The $220 Acaia Pearl S has a live educational app that teaches you how to brew coffee step-by-step, and a range of other apps for baristas to track their brews.

The $185 Tally Pro has none of that. It doesn’t even have a flow rate monitor, which the $56 Timemore Black Mirror Basic 2 has.

I do not think the Tally Pro is a bad scale, merely an overpriced one. It works a treat and looks great. Whether you want to pay $185 for a scale that doesn’t have the features of an $110 option is up to you. Personally, I would either spend a little more for the Acaia Pearl S or just buy a cheaper scale.

Erin Bashford
Staff Writer, Reviews

Erin Bashford is a staff writer at Tom’s Guide, covering reviews. She has a Masters in Broadcast and Digital Journalism from the University of East Anglia and 7 years of experience writing music, events, and food reviews. Now she’s turned her attention to tech for Tom’s Guide, reviewing everything from earbuds to garlic crushers. In her spare time you can find her reading, practising yoga, writing, or stressing over today’s NYT Games.