I too started on a lee loader for economy sake. A scale is a must in my opinion, however. As others have said, the lee safety scale is fine and also economical.
+1 on the lee autoprime, too.
I now have a press and dies but I took my lee loader to the range the other day to work up a load for some x-bullets. Better to load one at a time for load development rather than loading a bunch and pulling a bunch that don't work out.
That said, I only reload 7mm and 30 caliber and so I only shoot about 12-15 rounds a session. If I were shooting 223, I would likely shoot many more rounds and the lee loader procedure would get old real fast, IMHO.
Aleth