With so many diet and weight-loss tools available online, it seems to make sense that wireless scales would come to market. These online scales advertise benefits of improved or even faster weight loss, and while I don’t think a scale will ever have the power to remove those unwanted pounds, there are several benefits specific to the Withings scale that are definitely worth highlighting.
Charting your weight online is a great resource, as it provides you a reference from week to week and month to month. I especially like this, as it may help bring light to time periods where you may have gained weight. What happened during that time period? Was it the holidays? Were you on vacation? Were you going through a tough time? This reflection will help you understand your eating and activity habits to enact changes if need be.
Unlike most wireless scales, the Withings scale allows you and your family and friends to use the scale. It can automatically recognize different users, which in most wireless scales we have reviewed is not the case. I’m not sure how it would distinguish users who are very similar in weight, so that would be an interesting test to see.
While Withings does not provide any guidance regarding health and physical activity, they do have several partners listed that provide these types of services and can be linked to your Withings account. These services range from tracking your daily calories through Calories 2 to a social fitness tracking network called Daily Burn. Many of these services have costs associated, while Withings tracking is free with the purchase of your scale.
I found the information from Withings very limiting, as it solely provides you a weight tracker, where as many other interfaces with wireless scales provide you with recommended daily intake goals based on the weight loss or maintenance one would like to achieve. Body Trace also includes a food tracker where you can input your daily meals and monitor if you are staying within the daily allotments.
If you are looking for a simple way to track your weight interactively and share these results online, with health care professionals, or simply keep for yourself, then the Withings scale may be a good option.