Withings WiFi Body Scale with SportTracks Sync

You probably already track detailed stats about your workouts – calories burned, miles and hours spent on the road or in the gym, or crazy stats like total feet you climbed this year while running – but what about measuring the results of all this effort? If you are anything like me, you weigh yourself occasionally and only record the actual info when you happen to remember.

An innovative product on the market may change that – the Withings WiFi Body Scale. I had a chance to try out the product recently and I am very impressed.

The basic idea of the scale is that after you step off your weight, body fat percent, lean and fat mass measurements are automatically sent via your WiFi router to the web. From there the info can be accessed by a variety of means – web browser, a growing number of mobile phone apps, and now: SportTracks. Remembering to write down your daily weight is a thing of the past.

If part of your fitness goals is to lose weight or maintain your current weight (and whose isn’t?), if you are a gadget geek and like tech that simplifies your life, keep reading for a detailed review.

Packaging

One of my pet peeves of products is excess packaging that harms the environment, needless parts that you aren’t sure what to do with, and a box that is impossible to open! It is refreshing to see none of these problems with the Withings scale. As you can see below, the box contains only the essentials, in an eco-friendly cardboard pack box:

The scale itself
Start-up Guide (in English, German, French and Spanish)
4 Feet (for carpet)
4 AAA batteries
USB Cable
Measurement tape

Setup

Setting up the scale is as simple as it looks.

1. Insert the batteries into the scale
While the back is open, notice you can pick 3 display units: kilograms, stones, and pounds. This switch is under the battery panel so I’d change it now as it shipped in kilograms mode.

A clever observer might also notice the MAC address next to the batteries. Sure enough, this is a WiFi device.

2. Plug the USB cable into the port next to the batteries.

In the next step when the firmware is updated you’ll be instructed to do this, but you might as well do it now while you have the back open.

3. Open up your browser and navigate to http://start.withings.com

At this point you’ll be prompted to create an account on the Withings web site. Once registered some components will be installed to first update the scale to the latest firmware, and then launch the configuration wizard. Basically you’ll click “OK” and/or “Next” a several times and wait for progress meters to turn 100% green.

Hurrah, the PairingWizard connected ok!

4. Configure the scale network settings
On the next few screens you will be prompted to connect to a WiFi network and enter a WEP code if needed. Here I ran into a small problem.

In the first step, the software found the networks in the local area, mine was listed, and I was prompted for a network password – so far so good. But clicking on “Next >” the scale failed to connect. After five minutes of poking around my router settings, I discovered it was only giving out IP addresses from 1 to 100, whereas the scale defaulted to 250.

Fortunately when an error occurs, the next page in the wizard allows you to setup the network configuration manually. I entered a lower address which solved the problem and the scale successfully connects.

You may also notice the option to configure proxy settings which would be useful in a corporate environment. For example if you are weighing yourself at the office.
And that’s it for setup!

Using the Scale

It works like any normal scale – hopefully you don’t need help in this area, but here is a picture in case:

Like other digital scales to measure body fat you’ll need to stand on the scale for about 20 seconds. A progress bar will appear and your body fat and BMI will be displayed when done. You might be wondering – How can the scale show BMI when it doesn’t know my height? More on that later.

After you step off, the measurements are uploaded and you can access them from the my.withings.com website. If a connection cannot be made the scale will store up to 16 readings and transmit them when it can.

The my.withings.com website

You may be asking, where does this data go? The scale measurements are uploaded where you can access them from a secure website at my.withings.com. The website offers basic user/account maintenance options and a nice interactive flash-based page to view your measurements over time – allowing you to zoom in to specific dates or inspect single measurements. From here you can enter your height which is used to calculate BMI (displayed on the scale). You can also enter information such as age, sex, a preferred body composition model (for % fat calculations), and configure options for sharing your information to web services, Google Health and Twitter.

Beyond the tracking of measurements there are pages to set options on your scale such as language and to see the software version and battery level of the scale. You’ll also find links to help and online forums, and daily weight loss and fitness tips.

Supporting more than one person

A nice feature of the scale and website is the ability to track more than one person and again, Withings has made this extremely easy. From the my.withings.com website, click the “Add a user” button and enter the new users profile information. The new profile info is sent to the scale and when a second person weighs themselves the scale will automatically assign a profile based on (presumably) the weight range of the users.

In a scenario when more than one person weighs a similar amount, the scale will prompt you to pick a user, showing both profile nicknames and asking you to shift your weight to the left or right side of the scale. I didn’t have a chance to check out this feature.

The website will also allow you to assign these ambiguous measures, listed under the “Unknown” user, to a specific profile. From the website you can also split the user profiles into separate accounts – for issues of privacy or convenience. So you can manage all your family’s weight measurements in a single account, or each person can have a separate account. Very nice.

Partners and collaborations

On the Withings website you can see a growing list of software apps which pull data from the scale. Want to track your app on your iPhone? Check. Want to upload your data to Google Health? Check.
And my favorite – you can now see your weight and body fat percentage measurements in the SportTracks Athlete view. Simply install the Withings WiFi Body Scale Sync plugin, configure your account settings, ad data will be automatically imported each time you start SportTracks – no clicking or entry of data is needed.

This is where the product truly stands out. Instead of locking up your data behind a wall, Withings has chosen from the beginning to support open access APIs. This will enable a ton of applications, widgets, and websites to integrate (such as SportTracks).

Product summary

If you are serious about tracking your weight and want the convenience of automatically logging your data you should take a look at this product. And for SportTracks users Withings is offering free shipping by clicking on the coupon below.

Strengths

Sleek styling and eco-friendly packaging.
Large, easy to read at night readout.
Convenient, no-hassle data logging.
Open access to data from a growing number of apps.
The first of the next generation of network aware cloud appliances. Which is just cool to tell your friends.

Weaknesses

Assigning measurements to multiple users could be better, sometimes it guesses wrong.
The scale occasionally misses the fat measurement.
As a new product, durability over years is still untested.
If you are not serious about monitoring your weight, rice could be a concern.