Personally, I prefer the dial over the digital ones (I have both) because you can see at a glance how far you are from your target measurement. For instance, if you are length trimming a 223 to 1.760 you are already going to have the jaws open to that neighborhood and you're only looking at the dial to see how close to the 60 you are. At a glace you will be able to tell if you are a within a couple thousandths of it so you become careful with your next cut.
I gotta agree.IMHO, if you lack the intelligence to properly use a dial caliper, you have no business reloading.
I have no idea how old my Brown & Sharp dial caliper is, and it too has never needed a battery, but these old eyes sure appreciate the nice big numbers on the digital.Reading an analog caliper is far from rocket science. Mine is over forty years old and has never needed a battery.
While I own all 4 types of calipers, and fully understand what you are talking about, I believe you are missing a trick here. What you can VERY easily do with a digital caliper that you can't with a dial type is to open the caliper to your 223 case length of 1.7600 inches and push the "Zero" button. At that point, 1.7600 becomes the reading "0.000" and with any case you measure, the difference in measurement is shown to you immediately.
IMHO, if you lack the intelligence to properly use a dial caliper, you have no business reloading.