Hands-on review: Meazor 6-in-1 laser measurer

For most people, measuring things comes down to one of two tools: a ruler they've probably owned since their schooldays or one of those snappy retractable measuring tapes that threatens to do you a serious whiplash injury as it reels itself in at lightning speed.

Naturally, there are more technologically advanced ways to measure things now. It's 2021, dagnammit. In this spirit, Hozo Design has launched the Meazor, which Hozo claims to be the world’s most compact 6-in-1 multifunctional laser measurer. This seems like a reasonable enough claim, Meazor not being much bigger than a chonky car key fob (100mm x 54mm x 21.3mm). It also has a "cutting-edge" (Hozo says) 2D floorplan scanning function, as well as unit conversion, a laser distance measure, a built-in bubble level, and curve scanning. Have Meazor, will measure stuff.

It's a very neat little device, powered by a decent microprocessor and a 650mAh lithium-polymer rechargeable battery (30 days of wireless use, charged via USB-C). There's a 1.3in circular, 240x240 resolution (184PPI), tempered glass, IPS-backlit touchscreen for easy finger-friendly access to its functions. It also has a 120Mb flash drive inside to capture and store the data, and it connects to your smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth.

The industrial design is sleek and modern and the stainless-steel frame does feel nice in the hand. The rotary sensor – the wheel you roll to capture the size of something – is a robust 4096-grade magnetic encoder that builds on Hozo's previous product, the sweetly named Rollova (a simpler digital measuring device).

Meazor's laser measure ranges from 0.3ft-82ft (0.1m-25m), with a stated accuracy of 0.08in. The rolling ruler has a measurement accuracy of 0.2 per cent on rough surfaces, although Hozo does advise that the accuracy will be marginally decreased on smooth or soft curved surfaces. The point scanner will measure up to 12,900ft (3,932m). The scales measure has 25 built-in US standard scales, 20 built-in metric scales, and supports customised scales created in the accompanying Meazor app (because everything these days has an accompanying app). Units of measurement available are all the classics: inch, foot, yard, miles, millimetre, centimetre, metre, kilometre.

Using the Meazor is about as simple as it gets: point and shoot, or roll. This is, when all is said and done, simply a fancy-pants measuring tape; rocket science, it is not. That's not to denigrate Meazor: far from it. We love this little guy! We measured all manner of objects and rooms, of all shapes and sizes, including rooms with oddly shaped alcoves, non-parallel walls and sloping roofs, and it was very instructive to precisely understand how much space was available in specific situations. You can then use this information in many ways: planning DIY projects, buying furniture, estimating how much paint you'll need to cover the walls, and so forth. Genuinely useful stuff.

For building professionals, designers, architects, estate agents and the like, the 2D floor-scanning capability will prove a real boon, as it enables the user to capture precise measuring data in seconds to produce high-end floorplans. Meazor can be rotated 360°, so there's no barriers to capturing all the measurements you need.

The aforementioned app allows users to import designs, draw and edit plans, and share and export four different types of CAD files. There's also a neat space and dimension calculation feature.

Meazor offers a tremendous amount of eminently useful measuring functions. Any aspect of measuring you need to do in the course of your day, Meazor pretty much has everything covered. One tool to do it all. By comparison, our old analogue measuring tape now seems positively prehistoric. $200 might seem like a lot of money to pay for a digital measuring device – frankly, $200 is a lot to pay for anything, especially in these austere, pandemic-ravaged times – but if measurements are crucial to you, for whatever personal or professional reason, you will find a lot to love about Meazor.

Meazor laser measurer
$199