Comprehensive Withings Body Scan Analysis: The Ultimate Health Tracking Device for Serious Athletes

Key Takeaways

• Withings Body Scan is a connected health station that offers a wide range of health measurements, including body composition and ECG.
• The scale has a rechargeable battery with a 12-month life and provides fast measurements.
• The Body Scan’s price may be too high for most people, and some of the collected data may not be useful to the general public.

Smart, Wi-Fi-connected scales are great for seeing trends in your weight, but that’s only a tiny fraction of what the Withings Body Scan can do. The company aims for the Body Scan to be a complete health station primarily driven by ultra-precise results, a six-lead ECG, and body segmentation. The tech doesn’t come cheap, but it can offer valuable insights.

Withings Body Scan

7/ 10

Body Scan connected health station helps users get a handle on health with the ability to measure health vitals including Segmental Body Composition, Electrodermal Activity alongside a 6-lead medically cleared ECG via Withings Scan Monitor 2.0.

Weight range

9-440lbs

Users

Up to 8 users

Connectivity

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Power

Rechargeable battery (12-month life))

Dimensions

12.8 x 12.8 x 1.1in (325 x 325 x 25.6mm)

Pros

• Measures lots of health data
• Rechargeable battery with 12-month life
• Fast measurements

Cons

• Some data seemed unnecessary to general public
• A lot more money than the next closest Withings scale

$399.95 at Withings $399.95 at Best Buy

An All-In-One Health Station

If you simply want to weigh yourself and keep track of that number over time, Withings has more economical scales to consider. The Body Scan is the advanced version of a scale and is prepared to take measurements from the sweat in your feet up throughout the rest of your body.

It can measure sweat gland activity that Withings delivers as an Electrodermal Activity Score. It can detect changes in your heart pumping speed to measure your cardiovascular health and display a Vascular Age. It can also detect fat and muscle mass in segmented areas like your legs, torso, and arms.

The things that set it apart from the Withings Comp, the next closest scale in price, are its six-lead ECG for atrial fibrillation detection and fat and muscle body segmentation. It also has a larger color display and a USB-C rechargeable battery instead of three AAA batteries. However, the price jump between the two is significant at just over $200 at retail prices.

Body Segmentation Could Have Been the Star

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

I’ve tested several Withings scales over the years, including the newer Body Smart . That lower-end model has worked well for me, but I was really curious about how the Body Scan’s body segmentation feature could help me isolate the areas I need to address.

For example, Body Smart tells me my fat and muscle percentages, but it doesn’t tell me where that fat resides on any given day.

Using the Body Scan, I could see some of the fat and muscle segmentations displayed in the app. It was fascinating to see the different percentages assigned to areas of my body. Unfortunately, I found it less actionable than I thought I would. Nine percent fat in my legs? So what? The app did give each segment a comparison to other Withings users like me, maybe in an attempt to provide some context. But again, it was much less incentivizing than I would have guessed beforehand.

I also felt that way about the Electrodermal Activity Score (EDA), which provides an overview of your nervous system’s sweat glands. This metric can be a flag for the effects of emotions on your body and, looked at over the long term, stress. In the short term, my results fell squarely in the middle of the normal range, providing little incentive to care about it. I’ll have to wait to see how I feel about this metric over time.

Having an ECG on a Scale Makes Sense

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

Having an ECG on your smart health product is all the rage now. The most common or popular place people have used one is probably on an Apple Watch or other smart fitness monitor. That’s a single lead ECG, however, as in a single point of contact. For comparison, you might have a 12-lead ECG test in a doctor’s office. To its credit, the Body Scan will provide more insight than an Apple Watch.

The ECG is where the pull-up handle comes into play. To take a reading, you wrap your hands around it in a certain way, with your thumbs on top and your fingers below. Maybe it’s because I’m in California, or maybe not, but the first ECG I did had to be sent off to Withings to be analyzed by a health partner before I was cleared to get any results. (Similarly, you also need to do five weigh-ins before you can get your Vascular Age—but this is more about personal calibration.)

Although it’s great to be able to do an ECG from the health station, it’s probably not something that needs to be done every day for the general public.

For example, it only took about seven days before I was tired of using the ECG feature. While stepping on a scale and gathering some of these advanced metrics takes longer than simply weighing yourself, it still goes fast. That is unless you add 30 seconds to each weigh-in to do an ECG.

You can take this measurement out of the rotation, but I couldn’t find a way to take an ECG without adding it back into rotation. That means it’s kind of an all-or-nothing thing. And based on the amount paid, most people will want to do it every time.

I did find it nice that within the Heath Mate app, I could tap a single button to generate a PDF report of an ECG test.

Mobile App and Battery Life

Close

Battery life is a bit hard to track since three of the four current Withings scales advertise 15 months of use. I can confirm that my seven-month Body Smart is still going strong.

The Body Scan is the one model that gets less battery life at 12 months, but it’s the only one that can be plugged in and recharged versus needing to pop in AAA batteries. The unit comes with a USB-C to USB-A cable, which is a bummer. I wished it was a USB-C to USB-C cable.

The Withings Health Mate app is available on iPhone and Android and houses all your scale data. It can sync with Apple Health or Google Fit, so if you use either of those health hubs, the Body Scan info will also populate there.

At first, I did all the measurements the scale offered, but after some time, I used the app to customize which ones it measured. For example, I didn’t need to see the weather or air quality on my scale, even though those could be a nice touch for the right person.

There’s plenty of customization available through the app. I rather enjoy the Withings Health Mate app for its well-tuned interface, but I have come to despise its annoying gimmicky notifications.

Not all of its notifications are bad; sometimes it will alert you to unassigned measurements. I got a notification when the ECG became active. But it also wants to give out stupid badges related to distance run or the number of times I’ve weighed myself.

I haven’t found a way to turn those off either, so, while I can shut off iOS notifications for the app as a whole, there’s always a red dot and a giant banner waiting for me inside the app. Beyond that, I’ve set up multiple users, and that worked well. I’ve had no trouble navigating the sections and checking the data provided.

Price and Availability

The Body Scan retails for $399.95 and comes in black or white.

Should You Buy the Withings Body Scan?

Tyler Hayes / How-To Geek

The Withings Body Scan is a terrific connected scale that goes far beyond just weight. In going far past just weight, the scale also rings up a hefty cost that probably won’t be suitable for most people and is still hard to justify for those it is suitable for.

Even as someone who runs daily and has a keen motivation to watch my body’s stats closely, I had a hard time caring about all the collected data. If you fall into a narrow category of people who need everything the Body Scan can do and want it in the form factor of a scale, then it’s a great device. Unfortunately, I suspect that most people just don’t reside in that group.

Withings Body Scan

7/ 10

Body Scan connected health station helps users get a handle on health with the ability to measure health vitals including Segmental Body Composition, Electrodermal Activity alongside a 6-lead medically cleared ECG via Withings Scan Monitor 2.0.

Weight range

9-440lbs

Users

Up to 8 users

Connectivity

Wi-Fi and Bluetooth

Power

Rechargeable battery (12-month life))

Dimensions

12.8 x 12.8 x 1.1in (325 x 325 x 25.6mm)

$399.95 at Withings $399.95 at Best Buy

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