Bathroom scales are one of the more unlikely beneficiaries of the technology revolution and you’ll now find all manner of weird and wacky additions to standard weight readouts – check out Omron’s space-aged number that houses a built-in pedometer for example. Withings has now stepped things up a notch by producing the world’s first WiFi enabled body scale, capable of uploading your vital statistics to a secure webpage or iPhone.
This system obviously offers the advantage of being able to track your measurements without going to the rigmarole of writing them down and entering them into a spreadsheet, but Withings’ innovations don’t end there.
The scales are capable of uploading to a Twitter account to share progress, get advice on how to improve things further and presumably motivate you to keep at it and avoid the embarrassment of piling on the pounds after a particularly heavy weekend.
“This social media feature was the next logical step in the evolution of the WiFi scale for our customers,” said Cedric Hutchings, Withings General Manager. “Here at Withings we are committed to roll out new features and services on the field thanks to automatic updates. Adding this social functionality makes the WiFi scale by Withings the first true flagship of the Internet of Objects.”
We’re not sure about "next logical step" but luckily there are other strings to Withings’ bow that might appeal if you’re loathe to share your body constituency with the world.
The scales can record BMI, lean and fat mass and unlike other body fat scales such as the Tanita Ironman they use bioelectric impedance analysis to calculate the actual weight rather than percentage of fat, offering more accurate tracking by avoiding daily fluctuations due to water gain or loss.
The device can also track up to eight users per scale (presumably not at the same time) and as you can see from the images, it’s pretty stylish to boot.
The Withings WiFi body scale is available now for US$159.