Switched On: Where the Withings are
By Ross Rubin 
posted November 17th 2009 5:30PM
posted November 17th 2009 5:30PM
There is a sleek new Wi-Fi tablet on the market that is only 0.9 inches thick, gets months of battery life from four AAA batteries and is so durable that its manufacturer encourages users to regularly step on it. After all, it's a scale -- the Withings WiFi Body Scale.
The market for Internet-connected fitness gadgets has come a long way since 2000, when SportBrain introduced a pedometer that used a modem-equipped docking base to upload physical activity records. The past few years have seen products for fitness enthusiasts such as the Garmin's ForeRunner watches and the Nike+ system for iPod, but they are now migrating to more casual personal data nerds. Recent tech products like the Fitbit (a modern-day reworking of the SportBrain) can measure your activity throughout the day and night and the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach can provide detailed reports on your sleep patterns. But all these products digitally measure efforts at healthier living -- few have digitally measured results.
While weight is far from an absolute indicator of health, it is certainly one that many consumers monitor closely. A modern dark glass and metal affair with a backlit display, the WiFi Body Scale can track the weight of up to eight people. It also calculates an estimated BMI based on a height measurement given during setup and lean body mass by measuring your body's capacitance. As with other scales that estimate body fat and lean body mass, one must weigh oneself in bare feet to obtain this measurement.
As there's no way to enter any data on the scale, it must be set up from the PC using a supplied USB cable or by using the WiScale app for the iPhone/iPod touch. After that, using the scale can be the standard exhilarating or deflating experience
depending on the change you see. Those used to the chatty banter of the balance board in Wii Fit will find the Wifi Body Scale is a silent, non-judgmental servant that provides no positive reinforcement other than a trend line.
The iPhone app and Withings' website provide a colorful user interface that allow you to graph changes over time. The iPhone app takes advantage push notification to remind you of new measurements. While you can export data from the Web site, the service would benefit greatly breaking out of its data silo and playing along with the Web sites of other fitness gadgets to facilitate seeing the impact of activity.
Withings also recently added Twitter support so you can tweet your weight, although it's questionable whether weight is something that changes often enough to merit frequent updates. The WiFi Body Scale could be a useful motivator and useful tracking tool for someone looking to improve their overall fitness level, but at this point it is more of a novel harbinger of the networked appliance and the era of comprehensive personal health data and self-monitoring. If Withings can build out its service to include things such as fitness tips, integration with nutritionists or personal trainers, sites such as eDiets or weightwatchers.com, motivational messages and the like, then the WiFi Body Scale will have much greater weight in the marketplace.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
5108640353
The market for Internet-connected fitness gadgets has come a long way since 2000, when SportBrain introduced a pedometer that used a modem-equipped docking base to upload physical activity records. The past few years have seen products for fitness enthusiasts such as the Garmin's ForeRunner watches and the Nike+ system for iPod, but they are now migrating to more casual personal data nerds. Recent tech products like the Fitbit (a modern-day reworking of the SportBrain) can measure your activity throughout the day and night and the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach can provide detailed reports on your sleep patterns. But all these products digitally measure efforts at healthier living -- few have digitally measured results.
While weight is far from an absolute indicator of health, it is certainly one that many consumers monitor closely. A modern dark glass and metal affair with a backlit display, the WiFi Body Scale can track the weight of up to eight people. It also calculates an estimated BMI based on a height measurement given during setup and lean body mass by measuring your body's capacitance. As with other scales that estimate body fat and lean body mass, one must weigh oneself in bare feet to obtain this measurement.
As there's no way to enter any data on the scale, it must be set up from the PC using a supplied USB cable or by using the WiScale app for the iPhone/iPod touch. After that, using the scale can be the standard exhilarating or deflating experience
The Withings Wifi Body Scale is a silent, non-judgmental servant that provides no positive reinforcement other than a trend line. |
The iPhone app and Withings' website provide a colorful user interface that allow you to graph changes over time. The iPhone app takes advantage push notification to remind you of new measurements. While you can export data from the Web site, the service would benefit greatly breaking out of its data silo and playing along with the Web sites of other fitness gadgets to facilitate seeing the impact of activity.
Withings also recently added Twitter support so you can tweet your weight, although it's questionable whether weight is something that changes often enough to merit frequent updates. The WiFi Body Scale could be a useful motivator and useful tracking tool for someone looking to improve their overall fitness level, but at this point it is more of a novel harbinger of the networked appliance and the era of comprehensive personal health data and self-monitoring. If Withings can build out its service to include things such as fitness tips, integration with nutritionists or personal trainers, sites such as eDiets or weightwatchers.com, motivational messages and the like, then the WiFi Body Scale will have much greater weight in the marketplace.
Ross Rubin is director of industry analysis for consumer technology at market research and analysis firm The NPD Group. Views expressed in Switched On are his own.
5108640353
do we really need wifi on EVERYTHING?
What? Speak up!
which also begs to ask the question, do we really need a mediocre camera on EVERYTHING?
If you have a better idea for how I can instantly tweet my weight every time I step on the scale I'd like to hear it!! :P
Personally I've been considering hacking my scale with wireless so I can keep a record on my PC.
I'm trying to lose weight and a nice graph that shows my (lack of) progress would be good for me.
I'll have to check the price, but I might buy one of these.
So yes, maybe not *everything*, but on this, yeah. It's not like you don't have other options for a scale if you *don't* want wifi.
-Taylor
@"monica" you are a dude. Get off these male-orientated sites with your blonde pic and your links to dating sites.
Everyone can see through your crap. Obviously you like and know allot about videogames, but know nothing about cars and just go to those sites to chime in. What chick on earth talks about wireless video game adapters? none, thats who.
Dude, how much do you get paid when people click through to that dating site?
the correct answer to your question is Yes. Yes we do.
I want WiFi on every device that uses or gathers information.
BTW why is it limited to three people? I would think five is a far more thoughtful choice.
do we really need wifi on EVERYTHING?
maybe to stop these double posts....
that's better
No he was just saying it again for Daniel
WiFi toilets please. I want to track my crap output.
I'm still waiting on the judgemental talking scale that further lowers ones self-esteem by utilizing taunting and fat riddles in a robot voice. I mean, it's amazing how emotionally-piercing a digital monotone voice can be to the hardest of hearts. That can make a grown man cry....
Marvin the depressed scale-bot?
Ive had one of these for the past couple of months and I think its brilliant. Because u can see your weight loss (or gain) over time it really helps to be dedicated to a diet or training program because you can see the results.
I can't wait to pick up a wifi equipped Ped-O-Meter so I can alert authorities over the internet when it senses one.
Seriously, have you ever heard of Android?
Add dailyburn.com integration and i'm in.
I tweet every day how my weight changes! Follow me on twitter and give support: poundperweek
We really need a self esteem crushing gadget like this! How obsessed with your weight do you have to be before you regularly tweet about it?
Where's the dialing wand?
I have one of these. With the first set of firmware, it wouldn't reliably connect to my home network, but after a firmware update, it's working. I find it useful to keep track of my weight. As a scale, the scale is easier to use than previous fitness scales because it doesn't require a separate calibration cycle each time (other fitness scales require you to tap, wait, and then step on; this one allows you to just step on). With very dry feet, it has trouble measuring body fat. Like other fitness scales, body fat measurements are somewhat inconsistent, but the long term average is a pretty good indicator.
However, what I don't like about it is the closed nature of the service and the device. You can look at your graph on-line or you can twitter it. There's no way to have the scale connect to a local application (if you just want the data on your PC), and the data isn't available as an RSS feed. I don't think you can even export it.
To be honest, what I'd really like is a scale with Bluetooth built in that my phone and my PC can connect to. That would be easier to set up, would get even better battery life, and wouldn't become obsolete when the manufacturer moves on to bigger and better things.
I should say that the user interface on the scale is OK when it works (nice and simple), but when it fails, it provides virtually no useful information, making debugging connection problems extremely frustrating. Some output during initial connection attempts like "found wireless network", "connecting", "getting address", "connecting to server" would be useful. Instead, you just get a blinking dot that provides no information, and an error code that basically says "something didn't work".
It turned out that the fault was a firmware problem, but the lack of information meant a lot of needless fiddling with the scale and the router.
There is a webservice API if you want to knock some data mashing app up.
I make my girlfriend get on a scale every morning, and it helps me determine how much or little she'll be allowed to eat that day.
im sorry engadget, i normally love switched on an etellegence, it really is some food for though NORMALLY. I cant believe that you wasted an entire switched on for some stupid weight scale that not a whole lot of people care about. I don't really think that i need a weight scale with wifi, nor do i think that anybody else does, yet there is a whole switched on about it.
There is a MISSPELLING here... It should be "Where the Wild Things Are." Silly Engadget.
I would not mind if they somehow, with photoshop or text, incorporated the movie. But only the title.
And this is simply an advert, btw.
I own this scale and it works as advertised. It's clear that they have the capability to integrate the data and I'm sure they will be extending the service. I get the sense from the company that it's a small group of enthusiasts that developed a very slick, very functional product. It's sort of like the Sonos of Scales. Personally, I love the thing, but I'm finding that the short range measurements are not that interesting. But the thought of having this scale and the data for many years is where the trending will be very interesting. I had my last scale for 7 years. I'd love to have all that data. I think it would be great to synch this up with other devices like the fitbit, or a heart rate monitor for exercising. No reason to not have all this information connected. FWIW, I think this device is sort of ground-breaking and agree with the dedicated post.
I own this scale and it works as advertised. It's clear that they have the capability to integrate the data and I'm sure they will be extending the service. I get the sense from the company that it's a small group of enthusiasts that developed a very slick, very functional product. It's sort of like the Sonos of Scales. Personally, I love the thing, but I'm finding that the short range measurements are not that interesting. But the thought of having this scale and the data for many years is where the trending will be very interesting. I had my last scale for 7 years. I'd love to have all that data. I think it would be great to synch this up with other devices like the fitbit, or a heart rate monitor for exercising. No reason to not have all this information connected. FWIW, I think this device is sort of ground-breaking and agree with the dedicated post.
The API is detailed here: http://www.withings.com/en/api/bodyscale
Am I the only one concerned with the 1 year warranty? Shouldn't household appliances like these have a somewhat longer warranty period?
Neo Personal Sleep coach is actually "Zeo" Personal sleep coach. -5 points for poor citing of a product you reported on.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/06/11/zeos-personal-sleep-coach-makes-money-from-your-insomnia/