Hi all, new to the forum. I registered because I figured the QS crowd might be best equipped to assist in my search.
I’m after a good body composition scale. I currently have an old Homedics that gives me weight, body fat %, water %, muscle % and bone %. I don’t want to start down the path of how accurate these measurements are, as I know opinions vary widely.
I recently purchased a Withings WS-50, and it works as advertised, but I bought it partially for it’s ability to sync with other services (most important to me is Trainingpeaks.com), which it does just fine, however it doesn’t measure as many things as the Homedics device I have. Yes, it does some others (pulse, CO2) but those are less important to me if I’m honest.
I purchased the Withings Smart Blood Pressure Monitor as well on the information that this too would sync with Trainingpeaks, however it seems that recently stopped working.
Long story short, if they don’t both meet my needs, I wonder if I should go in a different direction entirely or just stick with the Homedics I already have.
Pulse and CO2 levels are valuable data points, but seem odd as part of a weight scale: I want to get the resting heart rate before I get up, and don’t have the scale in the bedroom.
You should have an idea if the additional body composition data points that the Homedics scale reports are useful: Does the bone mass stay constant, and does the water % vary as expected when dehydrated? If all these data points are just inferred from a single (inaccurate) measurement, they might not add much value…
Before knowing that, I was relatively satisfied with the Omron body composition scale, which I’ve reviewed on Amazon. It doesn’t sync with anything, but I’m fine with opening up a spreadsheet once a week and logging one row of weight, body fat, muscle percentage, and visceral fat. On the plus side, it has a handle, which gets the current to pass through more of your body than scales without one.
Healthline has a review of body composition scales but their analyses are pretty superficial, naive, and almost identical in substance.
I gave up on using body composition scales and got into excellent shape in 2021 by eating up to 1700 calories a day and lifting weight 3x a week for 3-4 months. I used a regular scale.
Then in 2022 I got rid of the scale, because it kept showing the same weight, as I was undergoing body recomposition, eating up to 1800 calories a day.