iGagingDigital Protractor with 7" and 4" Stainless Steel Bladed

Used it to create difficult angles on woodworking projects. It does its job

As a machinist turned woodworker I was impressed by this angle gauge. Easy to use and accurate, according to my more expensive machinist squares and angle plate.

I have purchased two of these protractors about four months apart from Amazon. I keep one in my shop and the second one in my tool box. The vendor has changed packaging between my purchases. The new protractor came with a spare battery and a protective film on the arms. Maybe the first purchase was a return, but it works fine and the arms were scratch free. I'd like to think that the vendor improved their packaging. The installed battery on my second purchase was dead. The spare battery saved me a trip to the store. At least the protractor uses a CR2032 which is widely available. The battery is a pain to replace. The battery compartment has two thin plastic tabs that are difficult to grab without fingernails or a thin screwdriver. I hope that I don't have to replace the battery often. The protractor is large enough that it can't be used in a tight spot, but this limitation is obvious from the description. Some angle guides measure to hundredths of a degree; this one measures tenths of a degree. The instrument resolution is good enough for me. The only complaint I have is there is no button for a complementary angle. Measuring for a miter I sometimes move the wrong leg and have to do the math myself - not a big deal.

This is a great tool at a great value price. It's the best protractor I've ever used. Easy and useful. I checked the accuracy of this device and find that it is ALMOST, but not quite, up to the guaranteed 0.3 degree accuracy. After carefully zeroing the parallels against a good flat, and checking it against a machinist precision 45-degree angle, this device reads 44.8 degrees, which meets the specifications. But checking it against two different machinist precision 90-degree angles, against both it reads 89.6 degrees, which exceeds the specified accuracy slightly. This doesn't trouble me very much, however, because I intend only to use it for woodworking. And if I have to check an angle with better accuracy, i can apply a correction factor after calibrating the deice against a machinist precision angle. I don't know any kind of protractor that can be read more accurately than this one. It also does shut off automatically after about 3 minutes of sitting idle, which is handy to conserve the battery. It came with one battery installed, plus a spare battery. Highly recommended.

I find that this gauge is pretty accurate. At least accurate enough for woodworking projects. The problem I have is that from time to time the display will suddenly change by about 25 degrees for no apparent reason. When this happens, I'll take the gauge back to zero and the display reads about 24.5 degrees. This happens when moving the arms and I'm not sure why that is happening. I can zero the gauge and bring it back to the correct angle and then continue on with my work, but this problem is a bit annoying.

Bought the 4inch version for general hobby level metal work activities.Digital readout is smooth and monotonic as the blades are rotated, and don't jump around, which was pleasantly surprising for a low-cost instrument. The range is a full 360 degrees.The blades are stainless steel and clearly graduated up to 64ths, and the assembly is reasonably well made, edges deburred and clean etc.Repeatability rather than absolute accuracy is the strength of this instrument for this price point, so when measuring an angle and reproducing it at some other time, it's pretty good at around 3 arc mins. For setting an angle, it claims +\- 0.2 deg absolute, so better than a cheap hardware store mechanical protractor where you might be lucky to get around 0.5 deg (depending on eyesight! ), but definitely worth thinking about what you want this for up front.Only issue found is that the pinch screw does not lock the blades very tightly.

The 7" digital protractor makes it easy to measure angles and has excellent features. It seems to be a well thought out design.- good size for fitting in a tool box- LCD screen is large and easy to read- easy to reset the measure to zero at any point- can be set to hold a measurement on the screen with the press of a single button- the display turns off automatically after a while to save the batteryThe knob at the pivot point can be tightened and loosened, but it would not actually lock the angle in place. It does get pretty snug and holds the angle well if you need to physically transfer that to something rather than using the digital measurement.I've only used this for one small project so far. That was for measuring the angles where the joists for a ramp into a shed (for my mower) meet the floor joist. I was rebuilding an old ramp and could see the old cuts I made the last time I did this, years ago (I was able to re-use much of the lumber). Using this protractor made that process much easier and more accurate than it was before I had this tool.

This thing eats batteries when it is turned off. You need to remove the battery between uses or it will (fairly quickly) drain the battery.But that's not the worst part. The worst part is that this thing is not accurate. It is variably off by 1 - 2 degrees. Going from zero to 90 to zero to 90 will give you readings of 0, 88, 2, 91, etc. Total garbage for its intended purpose.