Simple and consistent digital bathroom scale without memory

[Dan_Dascalescu]

I’m looking for a simple, no-frills, fast and accurate digital scale to weigh myself every morning. Not interested in body composition analysis attempts - we know they’re bogus.

The most reviewed scales on Amazon are Chinese copycats with crappy English, and often ridiculously invasive personal information demands, or subscription requirements.

I could use the WiThings and only care about the weight, but apparently it’s slow to finish measuring, and inconsistent, as reported by several users.

To me, precision (consistency) matters more than accuracy. Any scale recommendations that fit these criteria (and are still available for purchase)?

What I’ve researched so far:

• Taylor Precision 7506 Digital Scale - recommended by Consumer Reports in 2016. Amazon reviews says that the current version is far less consistent, and the product is not returnable (possibly due to the lithium battery)
• Etekcity EB9380H, recommended by Wirecutter in 2020 - users report the resolution is actually 1lb, not the claimed 0.1lb
• Tanita HD, recommended in the same Wirecutter article. Allegedly more precise, but can’t disable the beeps and is slow to use.
• EatSmart Precision Plus, from the same article - shatters/disintegrates, is imprecise, and seems to suffer from the memory effect (despite the claims in Wirecutter that it does not)

[ekerstein (Edward Kerstein)]

I’ve used a Withings scale for 10 years and love it. The hardware has held up nicely over that time and the web interface / software makes steady improvements. I agree that the body composition has to be taken with a grain of salt though.

As part of your research you may want to factor in whether the company has a good developer API. In my opinion, that narrows it down to only three: Fitbit, Garmin, or Withings.

All three of those require creating an Oauth2 app if I’m not mistaken. However, Garmin’s API also requires webhooks, which is a little more advanced.

Shameless plug - I’m the founder of Habit Dash which allows you to create a unified dashboard of wearable devices. We have a simple API key which can also be used to access your data.

[ejain (Eric Jain)]

You can disable body composition measurements for Withings scales, and simple weight measurements are fast.

I was going to suggest looking at body weight scales sold to physicians, but https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1497726/

[Dan_Dascalescu]

@ejain

Overall, scales demonstrated decreased precision with increased weight. At higher weights, more than 15% of scales were off by more than 6 lbs. (2.3 kg), approximately 1 Body Mass Index (BMI) unit. […] This study demonstrates that many scales used to measure body weight are imprecise and that scales in health care settings are no more precise than those in other facilities.

Most of these QS gadgets are bunk

New Oura vs Emfit QS?

Curious if the QS Emsfit has improved since then. Oura’s sleep stage detection seems to be mostly off: Sleep tracking accuracy of 58.9% vs. EEG tests (pretty close to a coin toss) Pretty wild discrepancies between two rings worn by the same person in detecting light sleep

[ejain (Eric Jain)]

@Dan_Dascalescu

Most of these QS gadgets are bunk

Every device has limits, so you need to know how much accuracy/precision you need–and what your budget is

[Dan_Dascalescu]

@ejain

Every device has limits, so you need to know how much accuracy/precision you need

I bought the Etekcity EB9380H, and its resolution is indeed somewhere between 0.5lbs and 1lb.

I’m fine with that, but less fine with Wirecutter making bogus claims about 0.1lbs accuracy and boosting that ordinary scale’s ranking on Amazon.

2022 update

The scale was useful to check that I was maintaining my weight while eating around 1700 calories per day and lifting 3x/week. Helped get in excellent (shredded) shape in spring 2021.

In 2022, I didn’t have a scale, but repeated the protocol of eating 1800 cal/day and lifting 3x a week. Since I knew my daily calorie needs, and that my body would undergo recomposition, a scale wasn’t necessary - as long as I did stick with calorie counting.