I bought this item locally, yesterday, took it home, set the clock, tried the measurer and the calculator. Everything worked fine for the first twenty to thirty minutes; then the device locked up. I tried pressing all the buttons, including the reset and nothing freed it. Then I tried uninstalling and reinstalling the batteries. Still nothing worked except a frozen time display. 1 star

I can never understand why electronics manufacturers have to put a bunch of unnecessary "features" into whatever they make. I wanted a simple digital scale to measure road maps, but after wading through the confusing instructions, punching button after button to set up time zones and such, I finally got to the map measurer part. It required so many mathematical calculations to make the conversion to the proper scale that my head was spinning - and then when I used it on a local map where I knew the actual distances, it was way off. On top of that, the last digit on the LED screen would only light up partway. Poor quality, very difficult to understand and operate - I sent it back for a refund. 1 star

I certainly wouldn't navigate around the world with it, but this measurer doesn't deserve the bad reviews it gets. It does its job well, which is to estimate distances on a map of ANY scale. It has a calculator built-in so your head needn't spin from the "complicated mathematics." How's it work? EZ. If a map shows that it is done in 1:200000 scale, you hit the "scale" button and punch in "200000". Many maps, though, just have that mileage bar, showing how many miles are equal to a certain number of inches. For example, say you have a map where 2 inches equals 60 miles. What do you do then? You're looking for the answer to the question, "How many real world inches are represented by one inch on the map?" Since 1 inch equals 30 miles here, turn on the calculator and enter 30 (miles) * 5280 (feet per mile) * 12 (inches per foot) = 1,900,800. Hit the "scale" button and enter "1900800" and you're ready to roll. What if you can't tell if that mileage bar is really 2 inches or 3 inches? Simply set your scale to 1 inch equals 1 mile (that's 1:63360, since 1 mile = 5280 * 12 = 63,360 inches) and measure it directly. 5 stars