Withings WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer, Black

The smart body analyzer reads your body’s stats and also finds out how healthy your living environment is. The scale automatically syncs your weight, fat composition, heart rate and environment data to your personalized online dashboard accessible on the free health mate app. The wireless connectivity of the scale makes setting up an effortless process. The scale interface is designed to help users center on the product to obtain accurate readings. Users who attempt to avoid accurate readings by rocking on their heels or toes will see values fluctuate.

Withings Smart Body Analyzer

The one-stop health tracking scale.

The Smart Body Analyzer measures your body’s stats and lets you know how healthy your living environment is. The scale automatically syncs your weight, body fat composition, heart rate and environmental data to your personalized dashboard available on the free Withings Health Mate app. Wireless connectivity of the scale makes set-up an effortless process.

Main features

• High-accuracy weight and body fat measurements with Position Control.
• Heart rate measurement by stepping on the scale.
• Continuous indoor air quality monitoring.
• Automatic upload of your measurements in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
• Free Health Mate app to visualize trends and set goals (iOS and Android).

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Reviews of Withings WS-50 Smart Body Analyzer

Review 1: Great geeky scale.

I bought this one directly from Amazon and so far I am pretty impressed.

Setup is easy, used my smartphone with bluetooth and Withings app to configure Wifi, did not have any problem with the setup, pretty user friendly. You need to create a Withings account directly in app or on their website.
User profiles allows the scale to automatically detect who is using the scale and if users are about the same weight you can easily select the profile during the weigh-in.

Weight capture and BMI is pretty quick (1-2 secs), body fat is about 2 seconds longer and heart rate is another 5 seconds so you need to stay about 10 seconds on the scale to measure everything, not bad.

The scale also measures CO2 levels and temperature every time you weigh-in and every 30 min.
It will only upload data when you weigh-in or once a day so don’t expect to monitor your bedroom temperature/CO2 levels live when you our outside your home, it will only update once a day.

I successfully connected my account with runkeeper so I can track my running, you can connect to other dozens of web-services like MyfitnessPal, I would love to connect to Garmin Connect but this might be an issue on Garmin’s side more than on Withings’.

What needs more testing: battery life, software update/upgrades, third-party compatibilities.

Overall, it satisfies my geeky person, I’ll post an update if some issues come up.

UPDATE 04/24/2014: After about a year of usage the scale is still going strong, changed the batteries twice so that’s about 5-6 months per set as I said in my last update. Withings also finally enabled the button on the top of the scale. With a simple touch you can get the CO2 level and temperature without having to weight yourself. This feature, although not absolutely necessary was advertised in the presentation video before the product came out.It was about time. Overall still happy!

UPDATE 09/06/2013: Just a quick update to say that my batteries have run out this week. So it lasted about 5 months of daily use. Note that the scale still had enough juice to capture weight and body fat but not enough to upload the result and CO2 levels.

UPDATE 08/07/2013: Withings has updated their site. It’s much nicer now and you can finally view all the data the scale captures (including temperature and C02 levels)

UPDATE 04/26/2013 : Small edit concerning customer service, I asked a couple question via the Withings website and got answered very quickly, quite pleased. They are apparently going to update their web site “in a few weeks” so that we can see the CO2, temperature and heart rate data.Looking forward to that.

UPDATE 2 : Since this is a pretty pricy scale don’t hesitate to ask questions and I’ll see if I can manage to answer :p
UPDATE 1: Right now it does not seem possible to access C02 and temperature reading from the web site, only from the app, don’t know if this will change.

Review 2: Expensive, Modern Looking and Synchs With Apple Health

A very sharp looking and seemingly accurate scale that does a lot more than just give you your weight. It will also give you your body fat, your heart rate, and the air quality of your bathroom. I got this scale specifically to synch with my Apple Watch, and Apple Health which it does flawlessly. I stand on the scale in the morning and it displays the data, and then automatically synchs that data with my watch, iPhone, and Apple Health. Simple, easy, and I don’t have to think about it. I like that.

Besides the price, which seems a bit high, the only real complaint I have involves setting it up initially. You need a smart phone to easily set it up. You download the free app, in my case from the Apple App Store, and use it to do the initial setup. Not really a problem, but the directions that come with the scale are not very good and English seems to be an after-thought. To actually change the default language to English, I had to go to the Withings website and log into the account I had to create. There may be another way to change it from French, but I didn’t see it. I also had to look up the settings for the iPhone and watch in order to get it to synch automatically with Apple Health. These are things that should have been it those Spartan directions somewhere.

Even with these issues, I really like the scale. Anyone with a modicum of Internet savy should be able to figure it out in spite of the directions you get with the scale. Don’t let that put you off from buying the scale.

Review 3: Data addict loves it.

I seriously debated this device for a long time. It agrees well with my doctor’s scale and my weight doesn’t fluctuate if I slide it around my floor (so no cheat spots). I really appreciate that I get daily tracking and numbers and that I don’t have to do anything with that data manually.

That said, I’ve had a few minor problems:

1. When the batteries get low, your weight may not be as accurate. Mine gave me the battery warning one day and died the next; my weight immediately jumped by 2 lbs (and so did my roommate’s).
2. Sometimes it seems to forget settings. Mine has randomly switched to kg, forgotten my WiFi information, and a few other glitches. Just re-run setup and updates from your phone to fix. Annoying, but I haven’t had to do a full factory reset.
3. The instructions on setting up multiple users were horrible. I finally figured it out through trial-and-error.

The body fat % seems to be relatively accurate. I’m basing this off of my own personal experience and not medical data, so here’s why I say that. I used to be stick-thin (BMI of 18.4). I gained 60 lbs over the years, and I’m pretty sure that wasn’t muscle because I wasn’t working out.

That pretty well corresponds to the numbers I’m seeing if you assume I still had some body fat to start with. These measurements do fluctuate on a daily basis and that is going to be due to hydration levels, which will normally fluctuate some. I don’t expect perfect consistency, but I do want to see overall a trending decrease in body fat.

The air quality measurements correspond to temp/humidity levels: the CO2 levels increase after someone showers. I’m not sure how accurate this is and it’s not an important measurement to me. The thing can never get a heart rate reading off me. Even my doctor can’t find a foot pulse. I don’t care about this.

The daily weather report, though, is amusing and actually pretty accurate! It makes me grin when my scale tells me it’s going to rain. Again, not a feature that mattered to me, but it seems to function properly.

Battery life: I got 2 months on the first set of included batteries, and that’s with 2 or more adults weighing in per day. Sometimes I get on it more than once. Sometimes my cat steps on it (it does not register her weight, but she can and does trip the air quality measurement button, so I assume this decreases battery life some).