You can still take everything to a cashier, or scan it at the self-check.

But yeah. You pick up your bags, if you need them, at the Scan It kiosk. Then you walk around the store, scanning each item before placing it in a bag. At the end of your trip you scan the scanner (it generates a bar code when you're done) at the register, and that's it.

It's totally offloading the checkout work to you, and I'm sure it adds time overall to your trip. It makes the checkout process itself quite fast however, and that's the part that normally FEELS like it's taking too long.

There's an added bonus, in that it gives kids of an appropriate age something useful to do while you're pushing them around. My daughter loves being the one to use the "gun".