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The humble bathroom scale could certainly bear to learn new tricks. After all, who needs to spend a lot of valuable real estate on a device whose purpose is just to tell you you’re fat? The good news is that the smart scale industry is booming, with many devices on the market that can measure many additional health metrics, track stats for multiple users over time, and sync with your computer. phone, so you can track your expanding girth 24/7.
Smart scales are available in two basic versions: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The former connects directly to your phone to synchronize its readings. The latter uses your home’s wireless network to sync readings directly to the cloud, which your phone’s app can then access. Wi-Fi scales are more expensive but more versatile. Just be aware that their wireless connections can be primitive (2.4 GHz only, across the board) and erratic.
Virtually all smart scales use the same type of system to measure your additional vital signs: bioelectric impedance analysis, which involves sending a tiny electric current down a leg and measuring what happens as it descends from it. other side. Some mathematical magic converts all of this into a number of derived metrics on things like your body’s fat, water, and bone percentage, body mass index, and sometimes arcane things like your metabolic rate. baseline, a measure of your body’s energy consumption. at rest. All the scales I have tested are capable of syncing data with Apple Health and Google Fit, either directly or by passing data through the app.
So how smart can a scale really be? And what should you buy? If accurate weight is most important to you, don’t sweat too much. All of these scales were pretty accurate in my testing. My highest and lowest weight never varied more than 0.6 pounds during testing on the sextet and generally landed under 0.3 pounds, so if tracking your weight is what matters , get one of the cheapest options.
However, if you’re serious about weight loss or fitness training, you’ll probably want to go deeper into the weeds and consider additional body measurement accuracy, wireless format, as well as usability. and the overall robustness of the hardware and software. . This is where I spent most of my time testing, rather than breaking my apothecary weights to quibble over a few ounces of precision. And, with all of that in mind, I have a few thoughts.
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