When the website has been set up, you can switch to consistent units, and then each time you stand on the scales, data is transmitted to the website. Signing in allows you to see your progress on a chart – and how it compares with your goals – and you can request a weekly e-mail summary of your progress.
You can plot two graphs, and set objectives on the website too
Click for a larger image
There are online tips to help you keep track of your weight, and you can share your data with other people too. It’s also fairly flexible, allowing you to tweak the settings to take account of people with better trained bodies, where the usual BMI figures tend to be less useful.
There’s also the WiScale iPhone application to show off at the gym, and the ability to add or export data, so you can enter all the weights from your diary, if you wish. For the very connected and those to whom ‘too much information’ is an impossibility, the Withings site can even tweet your weight for you, as well as sharing it with Google Health, MS Health Vault, or Training Peaks.
The self-obsessed can view their results on their iPhone
Verdict
Overall, it works pretty well, and – initial setup niggles aside – it’s fairly slick. But it’s also £120, and you can buy scales that will measure just about everything you want for a quarter of that, and then type the numbers into Excel. It’s certainly a hefty premium to pay for automation. However, these are rather stylish bathroom scales, and the on-line aspect may help some, such as amateur boxers, keep their weight in check if the gloves get in the way of recording it manually. ®
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Withings Wi-Fi bathroom scales
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COMMENTS
Seriously...
...are their that many people with to much money.
Heres an idea. look down, does your belly stick out and wobble when you move? yes then your out of shape.
Now give that £120 to charity, eat less, excersice more and everyone benefits.
What a shallow fucking world we live in.
help
Isn't it obvious?
These scales do so much to help you keep that spare tyre off by also reducing the amount of 'pie money' you have.
But...
...how does it look covered in mildew and suspicious black hairs???
One for the MMS[*] crowd.
Personally, I use a set of digital scales which cost me all of a tenner from Asda and an OpenOffice spreadsheet. No doubt someone skilled in the black art of circuit bending could perform some suitable hardware hacks on the scales if they so desired.
Simple, effective and cheap, although it is reliant on the user a) remembering to weigh themselves and b) put said value into a spreadsheet.
[*] - More Money than Sense.
(19st 6lbs, for anyone who gives a damn)
