Smart Scales?

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chunky_pinup
chunky_pinup Posts: 758 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm looking into purchasing a "smart" scale, like the one offered by Fitbit. Because they are quite pricey, I'm wondering if anyone has any experience with them - pros/cons regarding certain brands, etc. Sometimes the weight on the scale can be disappointing, even when seeing visual results, so it would be nice to have something that tracks your body fat percentage, lean mass, bmi, etc. I've been incorporating much more weight and strength training into my fitness routine and am wondering if this will help with motivation when I don't see the scale moving all that much.

Any insight?

Replies

  • chunky_pinup
    chunky_pinup Posts: 758 Member
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    bump.
  • srecupid
    srecupid Posts: 660 Member
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    Unfortunately I'm not sure how accurate they can be with anything but, weight. They are also pretty expensive. I say get a dumb scale + calipers + excel or other spreadsheet app. You could also probbably put the bmi formula into excel to track that.
  • CalorieCountChocula
    CalorieCountChocula Posts: 239 Member
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    I have the Aria. Function wise I'm guessing it performs similarly to most other brands. That is, the main perk is being able to sync your weight and other stats automatically. I wouldn't trust the body fat % to be accurate but over the long term maybe it's useful to see as a trend. I mostly ignore it. Is it worth the money? Who's to say. If you weigh daily and have a little disposable income (like me) then sure. If you weigh weekly and are price sensitive then maybe skip it. I will say this, I've spent $99 on dumber things.
  • Sharan10
    Sharan10 Posts: 1 Member
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    I have just purchased the Withings WS-50 smart scale. I find it very useful because it automatically records and sends data directly to your phone. I have also been able to link the measurements to my Fitbit and myfitnesspal apps with means I have all my fitness data in one place and can track my progress. Although I know you could do this manually it's so much easier to be able to jump on the scales and jump off knowing that everything will be on my phone whenever I want to check it. I'm not sure how accurate the bmi and fat% readings are but they are handy to have.
  • mike_acton
    mike_acton Posts: 6 Member
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    For me, my Aria scale is about 3% off (lower) body fat compared to a DXA scan and fluctuates wildly. For my daughter, the measurement is pretty close to the DXA scan. The weight measure has been good and the automatic syncing has made the data super simple to track. So by itself that made it worth it for me. YMMV.
  • eugeneranada
    eugeneranada Posts: 5 Member
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    I got myself a Xiaomi Mi Scale (China brand), for about US$35, it tracks weight and computes BMI via the app, connects to your phone via Bluetooth, for the price and the basic feature set, I think it's a good deal. Have been using the product since July 2015. It helped me a lot in tracking my progress. Although, It does not sync directly to MFP, the scale can sync via Apple Health (Mi Scale > Apple Health > MFP).

    For body fat measurements, I still rely on the good old caliper.
  • kathy_from_nj
    kathy_from_nj Posts: 13 Member
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    I'm thinking about the Aria...
  • DaddieCat
    DaddieCat Posts: 3,643 Member
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    mike_acton wrote: »
    For me, my Aria scale is about 3% off (lower) body fat compared to a DXA scan and fluctuates wildly. For my daughter, the measurement is pretty close to the DXA scan. The weight measure has been good and the automatic syncing has made the data super simple to track. So by itself that made it worth it for me. YMMV.

    I've had similar results. I find it better to not worry about the exact number of the body fat composition and worry more about the trends over time, whether they go up or down. It's been very effective for me.
  • WalkingAlong
    WalkingAlong Posts: 4,926 Member
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    I like my Withings because I can step on the scale and not even look at it, and it gets logged to Trendweight, where I can check my weight trend (a weighted average value) later on, when I feel like it. So the day to day fluctuations I can ignore, while focusing on the actual trend over time.

    I didn't bother with the one that estimates body fat. I think it's too inaccurate to matter much to me. You can pretty much monitor body fat changes via waist circumference, if that's your main focus.
  • chunky_pinup
    chunky_pinup Posts: 758 Member
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    Thanks for all of the info everyone!

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