These Are the Best Smart (and Dumb) Bathroom Scales
Keeping track of your weight is important (though there are good arguments against overdoing it). I’m a big fan of tracking all my health data and organizing it on my phone to track trends and changes, so regularly weighing myself is just one part of that larger goal. For me, that means using a smart scale that syncs with all my other health apps to give me a complete picture of my fitness progress. But if you don’t want to complicate your life with tech, you have other options. Here are the best smart and easy scales.
The best floor scales with interesting features
They have additional or interesting features, such as measuring your body fat levels (though you should probably take this data with a grain of salt ), that go beyond simply displaying your weight.
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I have an iHealth Nexus Smart Scale ($35) and love it so much I bought another one for my boyfriend. We’ve had it for about two years now with no issues. I weigh myself about every other morning, and the batteries lasted about 18 months before I had to replace them. The price is affordable, but they still have a ton of features. They connect to your phone via Bluetooth, then estimate your weight, BMI, and even do some estimates for things like muscle mass and bone mass, importing all of that information to your device, making it available for download, and creating graphs of changes over time. Because they sync so seamlessly with your phone’s native health app, they also technically sync with any other apps that are also linked to it. For example, I use the Lifesum nutrient tracking app . My weight is automatically updated and entered into it when I weigh myself on iHealth Nexus, and Lifesum adjusts my daily calorie and nutrient recommendations to keep me on track with my goals.
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I’m an Apple Watch girl, so I’m a fan of my scale for its easy integration with Apple Health. In general, if you use a particular product or set of products, I think you should stick with it as much as possible. The easier it is to track, the more likely you are to do it and stick with it. If you’re a Fitbit user, get the Fitbit Aria Air ($50), which syncs directly with your Fitbit dashboard rather than Apple Health. It’s relatively simple, only showing your weight and BMI, but that may be all you need. It’s lightweight, “sleek,” and “minimalist,” according to reviewers , so it’s not a bulky addition to your bathroom.
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The Shapa Scale ($120) is an innovative smart scale that displays colors instead of numbers, so you don’t have to worry too much about tracking your exact weight. I have a friend who is a big fan of this approach and this device. The colors relate to your average weight over time, and if you see blue in your app, you’re losing weight. Turquoise means you’re starting to lose weight, green means you’re maintaining it, light gray means you’re starting to gain weight, and dark gray means you’re gaining weight. That’s it. They’re also popular on Reddit , where users praise them for helping them overcome scale anxiety. There’s no point in using a device if it’s going to stress you out or, worse, demoralize you to the point that you stop using it. This simple, color-based approach helps you ignore the numbers (which fluctuate throughout the course of a typical day) and think more long-term.
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This Renpho Smart Scale ($43) is cool because it lights up to remind you to weigh yourself periodically or to serve as a nightlight, depending on your preferences and needs. It’s a versatile option that’s great for smaller bathrooms. Despite its low price, it packs a punch: It syncs with Google Fit, Samsung Health, Fitbit, and MyFitnessPal, measures metrics like body fat and muscle mass, and even has modes for weighing kids, pets, and athletes.
Best Cheap Scales
Don’t need all the bells and whistles? Great. You can buy a cheap scale that just tells you your weight, easy as pie. You’ll probably still want to track it somewhere, like an Excel spreadsheet, so you can do half the work a smart scale does yourself. But if you’re a heavy weight- or math-savvy person, you can use it on its own for occasional checks.
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The simple scale I use when I’m not using the iNexus is no longer available on Amazon, but these HomeBuds digital scales ($13) are very similar: they have a bright, easy-to-read LED display, and the scale automatically turns on when you step on it. Not much else to say — and for many, that’s all that matters!
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This digital GE scale ($30) displays your weight and BMI. I’ll be honest: It’s gotten more expensive in the last year (while other scales have gotten cheaper), so now that it’s approaching $30, it might be worth spending another $10 on a smart scale, or at least in the future. You can use it as a bridge between the classic and more modern approaches, since it’s from a trusted brand and displays more data than a regular scale without having to be connected to your phone.