• Best Budget Scale

  

  Photograph: Wyze

  Wyze

  Scale X

  Wyze has built its entire business by offering smart home technology at a fraction of the price of other brands, and its products always manage to be capable and well-made. Its latest scale is the Wyze Scale X, an update of its old, no-frills Wyze Scale. The Bluetooth-only device displays your weight on its LED screen; you’ll need to turn to the Wyze app to get additional metrics—13 in total, including muscle mass, visceral fat, and BMR measurements.

  You can share the scale with up to eight users, and there are even modes for babies, pets, and luggage, so you don’t screw up your stats before you go on a trip. Save the scary weigh-ins for when you get back. As with most Wyze products, it’s an amazing value, as sale events have brought the price as low as $20.

• Best Full-Body-Scan Scale

  Photograph: Chris Null

  Runstar

  Smart Body Fat Scale (FG2015)

  In recent months, a new style of smart scale has hit the market in earnest. So-called full-body scanners or body composition scales are designed with a retractable handle that adds two or four extra hand-situated electrodes to the four positioned under your feet. Ostensibly, this gives you a more in-depth look at body metrics than you can get from foot-based scanning alone, which can’t really “see” above the waist.

  In practice, these scales provide the same type of information as simpler scales—Runstar's FG2015 tracks 20 metrics and supports 24 users—but they also break down data by body part. Want a fat analysis for your left arm or the muscle content in your right leg? Runstar’s app, Starfit, will give you the breakdown. How useful is that information? If you’re training to be a pro arm wrestler—or better yet, if you’re trying to shed some weight from your gut—maybe you need that kind of detail. For the average slob tech journalist who’s just trying to make sure he can keep fitting into his pants, perhaps overkill.

  Even if you don’t need all the extra limb-based information, there’s something to be said for the design, which affixes the data screen to the handles, so you can see it from a few feet away instead of squinting at the ground, where, for me, it is very hard to see. The unit is also rechargeable via a standard USB-C cable, which frees you from the tyranny of batteries. A full charge lasts about three months. The only real downside is that the unit is Bluetooth only.

  The scale can be garish to look at, though mercifully, the unit has silver pads, not gold as they appear in photos, which is at least a bit classier. The price is also right: At $135, it’s cheaper than Withings and less expensive than other full-body scanners.

Other Smart Scales

Renpho MorphoScan

Photograph: Chris Null

Renpho MorphoScan for $150: The Renpho MorphoScan full-body scanner looks surprisingly similar to the Runstar FG2015, including a near-identical display attached to the handlebars. Well, spoiler alert, they are basically the same scale. They even use the same app to collect data (and you can even use both scales simultaneously with it). The only reason this scale isn’t our top pick for the category is that it’s $15 more expensive. You can rest assured that a price war is looming.

Arboleaf Body Fat Scale CS20W

Photograph: Chris Null

Arboleaf Body Fat Scale CS20W for $40: This affordable Bluetooth scale isn’t the most eye-catching I’ve tested, owing to its big, silver electrodes and an oversized display that comes across as a bit garish. While weight is easy to make out, the six additional statistics showcased are difficult to read, all displayed simultaneously. I like the Arboleaf app better than the scale, where five more metrics can be found in addition to the seven above, each featuring a helpful explanation when tapping on it. It’s a solid deal at this price, but the upsell to get an “intelligent interpretation report” for an extra $40 per year is probably safe to skip.

Hume Health Body Pod

Photograph: Chris Null

Hume Health Body Pod for $183: Hume Health’s Body Pod, another full-body scanner with handles, is heavily advertised—at least to the apps on my phone—and touted (by Hume) as the Next Big Thing in the world of body management. While the app is indeed glossy and inviting, I was shocked to discover how flimsy the hardware felt, that it lacked Wi-Fi, and that some features are locked behind a $100-a-year Hume Plus subscription plan. It works fine enough, but you can get results that are just as good with a cheaper device.

Garmin Index S2 for $191: Five years after its release, the Index S2 is still Garmin’s current model, a surprise for a company otherwise obsessed with fitness. It’s still noteworthy for its lovely color display, which walks you through its six body metrics (for up to 16 users) with each weigh-in. The display also provides your weight trend over time in graphical form and can even display the weather. The scale connects directly to Wi-Fi and Garmin’s cloud-based storage system, so you don’t need a phone nearby to track your progress, as with Bluetooth-only scales. A phone running the Garmin Connect app (Android, iOS) is handy, so you can keep track of everything over time. Unfortunately, as health apps go, Connect is a bit of a bear, so expect a learning curve—especially if you want to make changes to the way the scale works. You can turn its various LCD-screen widgets on or off in the app, but finding everything can be difficult due to the daunting scope of the Garmin ecosystem. The color screen is nice at first, but ultimately adds little to the package.

Omron BCM-500 for $92: With its large LCD panel, quartet of onboard buttons, and oversize silver electrodes, the Omron BCM-500 is an eye-catching masterwork of brutalist design. If your bathroom is decked out in concrete and wrought iron, this scale will fit right in. The Bluetooth unit syncs with Omron’s HeartAdvisor app (Android, iOS), but it provides all six of its body metrics directly on the scale, cycling through them with each weigh-in (for up to four users). It can be difficult to read the label for each of the data points, in part because the LCD isn’t backlit, but the app is somewhat easier to follow, offering front-page graphs of weight, skeletal muscle, and body fat. On the other hand, the presentation is rather clinical, and the app is surprisingly slow to sync. For a scale without a Wi-Fi connection, it’s rather expensive too.

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