A Smart Guide to Smart Scale - Best Value for Money

As you might remember a little less than a year ago I fell in love with this scale, which was and still apparently is one of the most popular most pushed wireless / bluetooth scales to connect with a plethora of health apps, including Google Fit, My Fitness Pal and Trend Weight. You create your user (up to 8 per scale) input your info and every time you step on the scale it should tell you your weight, along with Body Fat %, HeartRate, Co2 Levels and Weather Forecast (why the last two were connected to a scale I never quite understood, but ok, fancy, the more info the better)

Alas, a few days ago, out of the blue, my Withings Smart Body Analyser clearly had a nervous breakdown, going crazy over Fat %, jumping from 3% to 30% from a weight-in to the other.

After contact customer support and a bit of research I discovered it’s a rather common issue for Withings: there is a thin layer to “enhance” I suppose the electrons to analyse you body mass for fat % and heart rate, and that can and will get damaged at some point according to many users from Amazon and Reddit, and if you’re lucky and it happens while still on warranty, they might eventually cave in, admit it (not before asking to reset the scale, change the batteries and even WET your feet before you weight) and send you a replacement.

While the back and forth with the customer service was going on I realised, even if I am sent a new scale, I don’t want to find myself in the same problem in a year’s time again, especially not for a scale that costs, when you’re lucky, no less than 99£. 

Yet all health blogs and articles, I don’t know why but, keep on pushing the Withings and FitBit Aria as the best smart scales, when really, they are just the most expensive ones. So I went and did a bit of research (you might remember I have a passion for searching and collecting information, sausages and peanut butter anyone?) with the people who actually know about how a smart scale performs and turns useful over time: buyers.

Amazon and eBay mainly returned to me with the untold answer, which basically says that you can get a better scale, that will give you so much more information and will sync with its app for 50£ tops, namely the Salter and the 1byone. Both have a low and a high range scale, the low range still give you more information that the Withings ever could for around 20£, just that the low range don’t have Bluetooth.

The upper range has Bluetooth though and sync with their own app, just like the Withings does with Health Mate, and still for 45-50£ tops. That’s HALF the cost of the Withing Smart Body Analyser.

So let’s make a simple list of what we are paying for here, shall we?

Withings Smart Body Analyser - retails for $99.99

• Up to 8 users
• Weight in lbs, St + lbs, Kg
• Body Fat %
• Heart Rate
• Normal + Athlete mode
• Weather Forecast
• Co2 levels
• Bluetooth + Wi-Fi connection to app, available only to Android / iOS devices.

It does connect to your phone to use the app via Bluetooth and also to the Wireless, which allows it to sync not only with the Withings Health Mate App, but also connected apps such as Google Fit and MyFitnessPal. Focus on the connection because it is literally all you’re paying for here: the fact it automatically syncs with these popular health apps. Body Fat % as I highlighted before, is the first thing to go, and the warranty only covers the first year.

Salter MiBody Bluetooth Digital Body Analyser Bathroom Scale - retails for £49.99

• Up to 4 users
• Weight in lbs, St + lbs, Kg
• Body Fat %
• Water %
• Muscle Mass %
• Normal + Athlete mode
• Bluetooth connection but also info on display.
• 15 year warranty

The lower range version, the Salter 9141 WH3R Ultra Slim Glass Analyser Scaleis the best seller on Amazon at only 19.99£, the only difference with the Salter MiBody is the lack of Bluetooth connection, again, everything is shown on display though. The warranty alone basically tells you Salter know what they are doing and are confident they can support you for 15 years, not just one like Withings.

1byone Digital Smart Wireless Body Fat Scale - retails for £32.99

• Up to 10 users
• Weight in lbs, St + lbs, Kg
• Body fat %
• water %
• Muscle mass %
• Bone mass %
• Visceral fat %
• Ordinary, Amateur, Professional mode
• Bluetooth connection to app for Android + iOS
• 1 year warranty

The lower range model for 1byone is the 1byone Body Fat Scale with Tempered Glass which retails for £19.99 as well as the Salter, without bluetooth connection but with a display big enough to show you all the information listed above for the high level range, making the 1byone the scale with the most in depth information about body composition there is around at the moment.

Hope this was useful to you as it was for me, sitting down researching for information with all the breath of the internet to give us answers reveals sometimes we might still be victims of brand advertisement (and Withings and FitBit have been massive in that sense) however, we don’t have to. Here’s the facts, you decide what’s best for your needs and your wallet :)