A smart scale is a digital device that can measure a person’s weight and body composition to give an insight into their health and fitness. The best smart scales use bioelectrical impedance analysis , a weak electric current, that sends a painless charge through the feet to estimate a range of body metrics, including body mass index , muscle mass, protein, body fat percentage and bone density.
We love how it syncs with all the main health apps so it’s really simple to access your data in one place. You can measure 13 different body metrics and the app gives further insight into how these relate to the average person, in terms of being healthy or unhealthy. Looking at the stats is easy on the app: Simply tap on the different sections to see your readings, with a definition of the metric. The trouble is, there is little insight into the data, so without doing some serious Googling it’s hard to know what your results mean and how they relate to your overall health and fitness.
It’s Bluetooth-enabled, which means you need to open the companion Zepp Life app to see your 13 body composition stats. You can only see your weight on the scale itself but the app offers more insight, although some of it felt slightly clunky. On the plus side, the Body scale is super simple to use, teams with the decent Health Mate app and works with a lot of the other main health and fitness apps too. It’s also bigger than a lot of smart scales, making it a good choice for anyone with big feet or who struggles with balance.
While it syncs well to the decent Garmin Connect app , is well designed, lightweight and easy to use, we found that for the price it was seriously lacking in some intel into the stats it records. Many smart scales have limited data on the scale but then offer a deeper dive into the meaning of metric readings in the companion app. This is not the case here. The scales and app offer the same data, with no context or explanation. The only extra you get on the app is health trend graphs.
How do smart scales work?Sports scientist Jamal Ramsay said that most smart scales measure body fat via bioelectrical impedance.