Ah, the humble bathroom scale – an enemy to many. No one really enjoys stepping on the scale, waiting for the numbers to flash up but for those looking to gain, lose or maintain their weight, bathroom scales are a necessary evil, and now they’re smarter than ever.
The best bathroom scales don’t just measure your body weight, they also detect a range of metrics, from your BMI, body fat percentage and muscle mass to your nerve health and heart rate. The good news is, these days, entry-level smart bathroom scales cost roughly the same as traditional analogue or digital scales.
Smart scales use something called bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to send a safe (and pain-free) electrical current from your bare feet through your body, encountering different levels of resistance when it travels through your muscle, fat and bone. This electrical current provides you with a huge amount of valuable data about your body. Although, manufacturers advise that people who are pregnant or have a pacemaker shouldn’t use these types of scales.
Although scales that use BIA won’t give you precise measurements, they will still give you a good trend-line indication of whether your body fat and muscle mass is going up or down. “Should I expect BIA to give me an accurate value on day one? No,” says Jonathan Wells, professor of anthropology and paediatric nutrition at University College London. “But would I expect it to give me a good indication of whether I am gaining or losing muscle and fat? Yes,” he adds.
We’ve been testing a bunch of smart (and digital) scales over the past year, and have rounded up our favourites below.
We’ve been testing bathroom scales for several months, looking at how they track data, what smart features they have, how they look in our bathroom and how easy they are to use.
We’ve considered their design, cost and usability. Can you add profiles to each scale? Can you weigh objects and pets? Is the app informative and easy to navigate? Keep reading to find out which ones are worth their weight in gold.
