Fellow Tally Pro Review: A Scale That Helps You Make Better Pour-Over Coffee

With 13 years of barista experience under my belt, I learned that there are several things you need to make an excellent cup of joe: good coffee beans, a quality grinder, filtered water and a decent coffee scale. I have two scales at home — a basic kitchen scale and a coffee scale. Both can weigh coffee beans, but the coffee scale is smaller and shows changes in weight much faster, which is ideal for making consistently yummy cups of pour-over coffee and shots of espresso.

For the past month, I’ve had a third scale in my kitchen: the Fellow Tally Pro Precision Scale. It’s a coffee scale that is built to withstand the rigors of a coffee shop while also having one of the best guided modes I’ve seen.

Fellow is known for making premium coffee gear that is well-designed with a minimalist sensibility. And the Tally Pro is no different, taking its sleek utilitarian design cues from other Fellow products, like a satisfying-to-use big dial on the bottom right that mimics the control dial on the Fellow Stagg electric kettle.

The Tally Pro has a black base covered in glass giving it a shiny, glossy look. There’s a circular weighing aluminum tray with a contrasting black matte finish. Across the front edge of the base are a trio of buttons and a bright OLED that shows the weight, timer and more. The Tally Pro has a 2.5kg weight limit, which is about 5.5 pounds. The scale is extremely sensitive; it can detect changes in weight as small as 0.1 grams.

Powering the Tally Pro is a lithium-ion battery that charges via USB-C. I charged it the first day I got it and haven’t plugged it in in over a month, despite using the Tally Pro multiple times every day for coffee and as a food scale. Fellow claims the Tally Pro will last an average user two months on a single charge.

While the scale looks incredible on my kitchen counter, its attractive lines lead to one of its weaknesses: It’s fussy to clean coffee grounds that fall into the crack. There is a gap between the circular weighing tray and the base where grinds and dust can accumulate. It’s not impossible to clean. But on my cheaper Timemore coffee scale, I can clean it with a simple wipe since it lacks a gap. Is this a dealbreaker? Absolutely not. In fact, you can easily twist off the weighing tray to give the Tally Pro a proper clean.

The Tally Pro is a medium sized scale. It’s able to handle a Chemex full of coffee or a French press. But it is bigger than an espresso scale and likely won’t fit under the portafilter on most espresso machines.

At the heart of the scale are three modes that are accessed by a tiny button behind the main dial. You press the button to toggle between a mode for weight, brew assist and timer. The weight mode displays the weight in grams, ounces, milliliters or pounds.

The dial does a lot of heavy lifting. You power the scale on and off by long-pressing the dial like a button. In different modes, you can rotate the dial to select options. For example, in weight mode, you can rotate the dial to switch between different measurement units. It’s a clever interface that, even when I was barely awake, had no issue using.

The timer mode shows a split screen with the weight in grams on the right and a timer on the left. You start and stop the timer using the button on the left side. There’s even a nifty analog stopwatch icon on the button in case you forget.

But it’s the brew assist mode where the Tally Pro truly shines. Brew assist basically turns the Tally Pro into a combination barista-mathematician. It shows the weight of your coffee in grams on the left side, your brew ratio in the middle and calculates the amount of water you need, which is shown on the right side.

A brew ratio is essentially a recipe and shows the relation between the amount of coffee and water you use to brew. So if I have 30 grams of coffee and want to brew using a 1:15 ratio I’d use 450 grams of water. And this is the crux of the Tally Pro, what really makes it earn its $185 price. You don’t have to do math to brew coffee, Fellow’s scale does it for you and figures out the target weight for the water.

You can change the brew ratio in half-step increments between 1:1 and 1:20 by rotating the dial. So if you want a 1:17.5 brew ratio you can literally dial that in and let the Tally Pro do the rest.

To start brewing, you press the timer button to enter a standby mode and start to pour water into your grounds. The scale starts a timer as soon as it detects the water. For those of you who like to be more hands-on, you can press the timer button twice to get an animated three-second countdown.

As you pour water, the display shows the weight of the water increasing. And when you hit the ideal amount of water, the center of the screen flashes from black to white. That tiny animation has saved me more than once on a groggy morning.

I’m genuinely enamored with the Fellow Tally Pro’s smart brew assist mode. It’s easy to use, straightforward and I don’t need to use a phone to access it. And as a phone reviewer, I thank you, Fellow! I wished I had a scale like this when I was starting my home barista journey.

In my month of testing, the Tally Pro earned a coveted spot out on my countertop. I often use it as a general food scale and especially love being able to jump between ounces and grams easily.

But after complimenting several premium features, it bears repeating that the Fellow Tally Pro costs $185 — almost the price of a budget phone. (Did I mention I review phones?) There are many other coffee scales available for a fraction of the price that will suit most people’s needs. But I truly believe that the Tally Pro is worth every penny. In the last cafe I worked at, we destroyed so many plastic coffee scales. This one is better made and should last you a long time. My only concern would be the lifespan of the battery. Most lithium-ion batteries start to degrade after three or four years.

The Fellow Tally Pro is currently on sale in the US through Fellow’s website.