You can buy these with a calibration certificate for like $70, but I skipped the cert. Should be the same quality, cost me $16. I chose the version with the superior units of measurement.
That's a possibility but assuming they all come off the same assembly line then I feel like they should be relatively consistent. My colleague has a tape measure that is "class 1", which means it has at most 1.1mm deviation over 10m. I'm hoping to compare the two, we'll see.
Edit: that actually seems less likely now that I think about it. The tape measures that are certified are certified by NIST, which is not cheap. If Starrett knew that many of them would not meet the spec then I don't think they would attempt to certify all of them. If a business wants to pay the money to have certified tape measures than I think they probably want some traceability for the precision of their measurements.