FitTrack smart scale? yay or nay?

amandaeve
amandaeve Posts: 723 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
OK, so this ad appeared on my phone and I'm falling for it. I already have a bioelectrical impedance scale from 2005 but it's not working atm (the battery terminals rusted and I'm procrastinating on cleaning them). That one never really seemed useful for anything but weight. And I'm not really too into weighing myself...but data. I get a kick out of collecting data (I have a Garmin fenix watch and am so motivated by all the data!). But what do you all think? Is any of this data any good?

Replies

  • awknits
    awknits Posts: 3 Member
    I have a FitIndex scale which appears similar (less data). Personally I say anything that motivates you is good, so why not? How about you get it and let us know how it works. I assume you've read the reviews. One thing I do like about my scale is that I don't have to think about it, just step on it and it syncs to my phone and the number just appears.
  • sijomial
    sijomial Posts: 19,809 Member
    Often it's very poor quality data though, does that tick your data collecting box?
    Data quality is even ore suspect if it only measures the electrical resistance in half of your body.

    The difficulty is that BIA devices vary from rubbish all of the time to reasonable some of the time and rubbish occasionally. All BIA devices are susceptible to variations in hydration levels. Even a commercial quality 4 sensor model at my gym had me gaining 6lb of muscle mass in a week - I wish!!
    (In fairness mostly the readings are more reasonable if I use them same time of day, not fed, not recovering from heavy exercise, not had a Chinese meal the evening before.....)

    If used under very consistent conditions or trended over dozens of readings, preferably discarding obviously bad readings, then you might get a trend. I had a domestic 4 sensor set that produced a more believable trend and at lower cost than periodically repeated BodPod readings. But TBH when they broke I couldn't be bothered to replace them. Mirror and tape measure were superior when I got to goal weight.




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