Komelon PG85 8m by 25mm Metric Gripper Tape, Black

I'm going to go ahead and give this 5 stars partly because it is a good value. This is a metric only tape measure (metric on both sides, no inches to be found). If you are a pro and use your tape every day this might not be durable enough for you. But I am more of a home-owner handy-man guy and my use is light duty. I have two of these and they are both still working fine after several years. I use them for wood working, making sheds and whatnot. I bought a second one so I can keep one in the house and one in the workshop.

I grew up on the metric system, and living in the US, I do not know why we will use the imperial system. These help me so much!

Nothing really innovative about this tape but the more I use it the more I like it. The rubber armor is thick and grippy; the belt clip clings like sin; the retract spring hauls the tape back with alacrity but no snapping at the end; the lock works perfectly with moderate pressure. The underside is blank, but the concave-side markings are bold and high-contrast, each 10 cm red, so it's easy to read even in dim light. No dopey inch marks allows the scale to use the full width of the blade, enhancing legibility. I can't point to any individual feature as being outstanding, but it's a a solid, capable tool that does its job well. Aside from the absence of underside printing (which is really handy), I can't complain.

Bulky, only centimeter markings, no meter markings but thats fine. Again, bulky.

Chances are that you're looking for a quality metric-only tape, which isn't that easy to find in the states. Here's a quick comparison between a few readily available metric tapes from the perspective of a woodworker and DYIer.In the comparison:- The Starrett KTS12-3.5M-N- The Komelon PG85 (this one)- The FastCap PMMR-TRUE32Starrett KTS12-3.5M-NThis is a "regular cheap" 3.5 m tape, the kind you get for free when buying some other tool. It has a cheap hard plastic case, feels cheap and is just not well made. I didn't beat it and haven't used it too much, but the tape is already kinked near the hook. This is clearly just a cheap tape with a Starrett sticker on it.It had a standard metal clip that I removed because I don't like them - they're hard to clip to anything, and tend to scratch the work.Sadly, I cannot recommend this tape.Komelon PG85This is a well built, but otherwise pretty standard 8 m tape. It consists of a hard plastic case that's been embedded in a rubber sleeve. It is not overmolded - you can remove the rubber cover if you want to. It's well made and the brake has a good positive action.The layout of the number on the tape is standard left-to-right.The downside of this tape is its bulkiness. Since it is a hard plastic case embedded in a rubber sock it is much bigger than most tapes of similar length (which are generally overmolded).It has the standard metal clip which I dislike because it's hard to clip to things, and tends to scratch stuff, so I removed it.It's ok but I don't think that I'd buy it again.FastCap PMMR-TRUE32Like most FastCap products, this tape tries to set itself apart through innovation. It has several features that you won't find on any other brand, some of which are good and some of which aren't.Overall, it is well made, and has an ideal size for most woodworking and DYI projects. The brake clicks in place with a positive action, and the tape has a decent amount of stiffness and standout.The differences between this and your "typical" tape are as follows:- The numbers are printed twice on the tape, left-to-right and right-to-left, so that you always have an "upright" number to look at. I never really had a problem with the regular layout, but I think that it is a small plus.- On a normal metric tape, each centimeter is marked with its number (1, 2, 3, ..., 21, 22, 23), and the millimeters are marked by lines. This one is different. The numbers are millimeters, and only every 100th millimeter is marked in its entirety (100, 200, 300). Inbetween you find every centimeter marked with in millimeters, but only the last 2 digits.In other words, the first 23 cm on a regular tape look like this:1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 ...The first 23 cm on the Fastcap look like this:10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 200 10 20 30 ...I'll be honest, I don't like this. First off, why use mm when only every cm is marked? This just adds a bunch of useless zeroes. And the "clever" omission of the leading digit makes it much more likely to be off by 10 cm. Instead of just looking at the number that you want to mark, you have to glance left or right to ensure that you're in the right decimeter.- It has extra markings every 32 mm (hence "TRUE32"). I think this has to do with cabinet construction, I'm not sure and I don't use this. It's subdued enough so that you can easily ignore it and it doesn't get in the way.- It has two brakes - the regular "slide switch" brake in front, and an additional brake button at the bottom. This is kind of neat, but I haven't used it very much.- The clip is superior to every other clip that I have ever seen - it's rubberized so it doesn't scratch stuff, and since it has a lever to open and close it (a bit like an alligator clip) it's much easier to clip to your pocket or belt.- It has an integrated pencil sharpener (I haven't tried that yet). It doesn't add to the bulk of the tape so why not.- I think you're supposed to be able to write on the side of the tape and wipe it off. Not a feature that I need.

Well I remember back in school (50 years ago ) being told we needed to learn the metric system... Well never happened until I got into 3D printing.... So I was looking for a full metric ruler which was not easy .. then I came across this one... A little more than I wanted to spend but it is so worth it.. This is a great unit, I recommend it 110 %

I purchased this tape measure because I wanted one that only shows the metric scale. Most tape measures that have a metric scale available show both metric and SAE, with one being along each edge. So, you can run into occasions where the edge next to the object you’re measuring is not against the metric scale, or vice versa, so you need to flip the tape measure around. And that’s not always easy, or possible.Overall, using metric is more accurate, and easier to use, because the 8 meter tape measure is divided into centimeters, with each TEN centimeters shown in red. Then, each centimeter is divided into ten millimeters. So it’s very easy to get accurate and repeatable measurements. But the best part is not needing to deal with fractional measurements. No longer do I need to deal with the granularity of measurement in fractions of inches: 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32. Or, needing to divide a fractional measurement to find the midpoint, or a different point on the measured length. Now, it’s just Meters, Centimeters (100 CM in a Meter) and Millimeters (10 MM in a CM, and 1000 MM in a Meter). Much easier to deal with.Americans learned to hate the metric system because we spent time converting Metric to Imperial measurements, and had trouble remembering conversions. But if you just work in one system (Metric or Imperial), it is easy. And metric measurements are much easier to work with, and are more accurate.Also, for inside measurements, where you need to include the tape measure case in the measurement, the additional length is exactly 8 cm, although this is not listed anywhere on the case. The tape and case is fairly wide, so if you have small hands, it may be a bit of a challenge to handle. But it is very well made, and seems to be sturdy enough to hold up to heavy use.