Table 3 of the data sheet confirms the width of the measuring value with 12bit = 0...2047.
For example, with FS1,FS0=0b01 in CTRL-REG4 the measuring range FS is set to 200g, the sensitivity So is 98mg/digit, resulting in a necessary number of values of 200'000/98 = 2040.8. For this 12bit are exactly sufficient, ditto for the other measuring ranges.
As @Community member mentioned, the 16bit data results from the necessity that the higher-level controller typically wants to have multiples of bytes. Nevertheless, only 12 bits of significant data are contained in this 16-bit data packet for the measured value.
Is that a little clearer now?
Regards
/Peter
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