The lightweight gadget has a month-long standby battery life and recharges via its USB-C connector in two or three hours. The clever design hides the USB-C port at one end, revealed when you firmly yank off the silver plastic retaining clip.
The NeoRulerGO (£55 [£47 now] / $59 [was $69 at launch]) has three modes: Ruler, Scale Ruler, and Customized Scale Ruler, plus a Settings menu. Cycle through metres, inches, feet, centimetres and millimetres, or select ‘fit in’ using the NeoRulerGO’s hard plastic buttons. Two red laser beams emitted at right angles are used to locate the start point. Roll along, keeping the device perpendicular for the most accurate reading, and lift the NeoRulerGO off the surface to lock in the reading.
There is a Corner to Corner option to measure internal corners for which the NeoRulerGO needs to begin and finish at 45 degrees, swinging along the length. The 93 different scales translate to and from 1:100,000 with an accuracy of 1 mm based on the markings on the original drawing, impressing an architect friend who uses a £500 Leica DISTO professional laser measure.
Petite but precise
Hozo packs plenty of features into the NeoRulerGO, but the trade-off for its teeniness is that it’s fiddly to use. Deviations and bumps in the course of rolling can also cause measuring to stop and start again, so make sure you sense-check the reading. These can be exported to the Meazor Android or iOS app for inclusion in a project or simply saved as a list. Hozo helpfully includes configuration options on the NeoRulerGO and within the app to change the screen orientation and left- or right-handed use, so it’s a matter of working out which settings work best for you.
We used NeoRulerGO to take accurate measurements for bathroom spaces and fittings, including the trim needed for the circumference of a partially curved mirror. Its precise measurements were also helpful when stretching and blocking hand-knitted pieces that needed to be a fixed size and accurately sewn together, and when trying to design an enclosure for a Raspberry Pi to be fashioned from assorted materials of varying thicknesses and flex. It was really handy being able to simply cycle through measurements to see how a reading translated metric and imperial measurements down to the nearest ±1 mm, reassuring us when sourcing components.
Verdict
9/10
Despite a few handling issues, we found NeoRulerGO ideal for measuring awkward spaces and shapes, including curved surfaces, with none of the jeopardy of using a retractable metal ruler that might spring back painfully at any moment.
Specs
Weight: 45 g | Dimensions: 31×18×146 mm | Screen: 1.14 in | Wheel: 30 mm | Battery: 300 mAh | Resolution: ±0.02 in (0.5 mm) | Accuracy: ±0.04 inch (1 mm) + (Dx0.5%) in ideal circumstances | Features: Inches, feet, metres, centimetres, millimetres; 93 built-in scales, customisable scales (100K:1 to 1:100K)
