Those who know me or follow my coverage know that I tend to take an interest in fitness-related gadgets and software. If it provides me data about myself and my activities, I'm on board. The BodyMedia FIT that I reviewed last year and RunKeeper on the iPhone are two of my favorites for this reason, but there's always more to be learned—if I can do that without having to do any of the dirty work, even better.
That's where the Withings body scale comes in. It's not a brand new gadget, but it recently came into my life as a result of a disturbing increase in chatter among my peers. You could say that the peer pressure got to me, and now I'm a Withings convert.
What's so special about a scale that comes equipped with WiFi? It's not just so you can tweet your body weight every day (though you could if you really wanted to). The scale allows you to track trends in your weight as well as body composition changes over time—graphs and all—and you don't even have to lift a finger to enter that data into WeightBot or PhysicsDiet to get them. Not only that, but the free service that comes with your physical scale integrates with a plethora of other services (including WeightBot, in fact) so that your data is everywhere you want it to be. And all you have to do to get it is step on the scale.
It's pretty and expensive
At $159, the Withings scale isn't exactly something you'll find in the bargain basement bin at Walmart. It's not a cheap scale, and if all you want is a device to spit a number back at you before your morning coffee, then there are thousands of other options that are more affordable. It's even a bit expensive if you compare it against some of the basic body-fat-analyzing scales out there (the old one that I retired after getting the Withings scale probably cost me about $90 back in 2004).
But for a WiFi-equipped gadget that comes with free support, a free Web service, and free mobile apps, the price of the Withings scale is not all that terrible. It gets a bonus, too, because it looks nice; the scale has a smooth glass surface and there are white and black options—very Apple-like.
The scale requires four AA batteries to operate, and it reports its own battery life back to you via the Web (which we'll get to in a second). Based on our own experience, a set of batteries will certainly last more than a month for two people weighing in every day, and sometimes twice a day (hey, we like data points, okay?). According to the battery indicator, it took four weeks for our scale to go down from 100 to 94 percent battery.
Others have reported anywhere from 3 weeks to several months when it comes to battery life, which is still shorter than what you'll get with a less feature-rich scale (I don't think I have ever changed the batteries in my old scale in seven years). But if you rotate out a set of rechargeable batteries, you'll at least be able to live with yourself a little better than if you're constantly tossing four AAs at a time.
In order to set up the scale, you must first connect it to a computer via USB and download an application from Withings' website.
Once downloaded, the program will connect to your scale and allow you to set up things like your WiFi network and input the users who will be weighing themselves, as well as an account that you'll use online to track your data. If there are any firmware updates available for your scale, the application will make sure your scale has the most recent version.
The reason you should input the users before starting is because the scale can automatically tell different people apart based on weight and body composition, but it needs something to go off of for the first weighing (plus you can give yourselves names so you know who's who when you weigh in). It's pretty good at detecting which user is which, even if the weight you enter yourself doesn't quite match up with what the scale sees for you—as long as you're different enough, it'll figure out that the male who weighs 210 pounds is a different person than the female who weighs... less than that.
Once you have the device set up, you can configure how you want it to work via the account preferences on the Withings website. This is where you'll be able to see your scale's battery life, serial number, and software version, and you'll be able to change things like the language, whether you want it to send anonymous debug data, and whether you want it to ask you to force zero at weigh-in.
You can change these things at any time without throwing off what's already been recorded for you, but the changes won't go into effect until your next weigh-in since the device is essentially sleeping between uses.