***Update Feb 2016! I’ve now published my full in-depth review on the Garmin Index Scale – so swing on over to that page for all my thoughts!***
Wrapping up what ought to be classified as a massive year of new product announcements (21 sport products*), Garmin added two more products to the pile today: A weight scale and a revamped optical-sensor enabled Vivosmart HR. I cover the Vivosmart HR in a separate post, so go swing over to that if you want the deets. However, for the skinny on the weight scale, this is where you’ll want to be.
This scale probably won’t come as a surprise to many. While Garmin has tapered support for ANT+ weight scales within their running watches over the last few years, they actually haven’t lessened the visibility of the weight functionality within Garmin Connect. In fact, last week’s Garmin Connect overhaul brought it much more front and center.
Thus we find ourselves here with the new weight scale. Let’s dive feet-first into it.
*2015 Fitness Products: Fenix3, Epix, Vivoactive, Vivofit2, VIRB X, VIRB XE, Forerunner 25, Forerunner 225, Forerunner 230, Forerunner 235, Forerunner 630, Edge 20, Edge 25, Edge 520, Edge 1000 Explore, Vector2, Vector2s, Varia Radar, Varia Front/Tail Lights, Index Scale, Vivosmart HR
How it works:
First up is the obvious: It’s a WiFi enabled scale. While Garmin (and only Garmin) used to enable some of their older running/triathlon watches (and actually all current Edge devices) to connect to 3rd party scales via ANT+, that’s not the case here. Instead, this is all about WiFi…with one minor exception that I’ll cover in a moment.
This switch makes complete sense. The ease and ubiquity of WiFi makes it far easier to transmit weight data within your house than ensuring you have an ANT+ enabled watch near you (or even a phone). We’ve seen massive success of this method with both Withings and Fitbit and their WiFi weight scales. While the others that have tried to go with Bluetooth or ANT+ only solutions have largely fluttered.
So, to begin you’ll connect the scale either using the Garmin Connect Mobile phone app, or by just using WPS to connect to your local WiFi access point. WPS is where you press the fancy little WPS button on your WiFi access point, which saves you from having to enter the password. By default out of the box the scale will be in a pairing mode, and will seek out a WPS beacon signal like me to cupcakes.
I’d note that the WPS procedure is a complete and total PITA (pain in the ass) if you mounted your WiFi access point up on the ceiling – as is the case in the DCR/Bertie’s Studio. Of course, that’s why the Garmin Connect Mobile app is handy for also pairing via Bluetooth or also via ANT+ on the desktop side (however that’s for configuration only, not daily usage).
While using the phone app you’ll be able to configure the scale to use your Garmin Connect account, or rather, link it to it. I don’t have a specific screenshot of this, as it was done for me ahead of time. Instead, I actually was ‘invited’ to use the scale as a secondary user. This is interesting, and somewhat different than how it works for other companies.
In the case of Garmin’s scales, the ‘owner’ of the scale goes into their mobile phone app and selects a Garmin Connect contact to invite (so basically through your ‘Connections’ page). From there they select you and send an invitation, which looks like this:
Once I accept the invite, I can go ahead and update my personal details. In my case my age, weight, gender and other goodness is already entered in there from existing data on Garmin Connect. You’ll notice though that I need to provide a four character display name. This is what’s shown on the scale for multi-user configurations.
Once that’s done, I’m basically good to go and ready to use the scale. Note that on the back there’s a button to switch between the three display modes: Pounds, Kilograms, Stones.
Now I’ll flip it over and stand atop it, just like every other scale on this this little mostly-green planet.
Within a few seconds it’ll give you your weight in whichever metric you’ve chosen (pounds/kilogram/stones):
Next, it’ll confirm your identity. It does this in order to validate aspects such as gender and height, which will impact body fat and other related metrics.
You can simply tap your foot to the left or right to scroll through the identities. The unit can support up to 16 people, so either you’ve got the Playboy Mansion, or perhaps run a small business. The idea with the multiple people is to be able to also tie-in with some of Garmin’s health initiatives such as the Vivohub, and corporate wellness programs. Or again, the Playboy Mansion.
Once you’ve selected your name it’ll then give you extended information, including BMI, Body Fat %, Water %, Muscle Mass & Bone Mass. You can see the little icons along the bottom of the screen for each of these.
(I don’t have an image of it up on Garmin Connect yet, as I’m not yet able to pair the scale to the production app since it was just announced today, so my chain of evidence isn’t quite yet complete.)
All of this is then pretty much instantly transmitted to Garmin Connect, where it’ll also be fed downstream to certain partners such as MyFitnessPal (note: not all partners can store all metrics, such as bone mass).
In addition, it’ll show up in your Garmin Connect Mobile app as well within the Health section. As noted, the sync isn’t quite linked to my account right yet, so here’s a screenshot I was sent over to show what the data looks like for someone a might lighter than I:
The accuracy of the various scale metrics isn’t something I’m able to test at this point in time, though perhaps down the road. However, in general for consumer scales I’d point you at this past post series I did on accuracy of consumer scales, which basically showed that the actual weight piece is highly accurate – but that body fat and related metrics are far more variable.
Finally – on the weight and size, it’s a bit beefier and dimensionally wider than either the Withings WS-50 Scale or Fitbit Aria Scale. Not that it really matters, for most people it just sits there on the bathroom floor.
The material is a similar glass to the tops of both of the competitor units, which means just like those you’ll need to wipe it down often to keep it from looking all covered in prints. Note that Garmin is releasing both a white and black version of the scale.
Initial Thoughts:
Now technically it’s got more functionality within the device than either the Withings or Fitbit scales, by incorporating some of the muscle and bone mass metrics in it. Further, it can be configured by both ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart, all of which lead to usage on WiFi. I’m not really sure there’s any consumer advantage in using ANT+ over Bluetooth Smart on the desktop for scale configuration alone, it’s probably a wash since they’d still have to ship a USB adapter to ensure broad compatibility. Had they enabled the ability to connect to older Garmin watches via ANT+, that might have been a selling point (albeit a slim one).
As for the additional tech metrics, they will no doubt appeal to some. Though, I’m going to guess the accuracy of those will be similar to other scales I’ve tested in that while weight is great, things like Body Fat should be used more for trending. And metrics like bone and muscle mass just aren’t terribly useful metrics by themselves. There may be some medical uses for tracking that data, but this isn’t a medical grade scale.
Of course, the main selling point of the Index Scale is to connect to the Garmin platform, notably Garmin Connect. If you’re a Garmin user you’ve got semi-limited means of connecting non-Garmin scales, and we don’t know if those tricks will continue to work after the scale launches (one hopes so, since really those already-Garmin customers are buying far more expensive Garmin devices than scales). But the inverse is actually a bigger question: How will Garmin work with 3rd parties to get your weight data to other platforms. That’s a massive selling point of the other two main WiFi scales on the market.
Right now Garmin says it’s only working with MyFitnessPal, and other partnerships remain to be seen in terms of integration. Whereas Withings has over 100 partners for their platform, and Fitbit has 32. Garmin? Roughly 10, of which only one accepts weight data from Garmin Connect. I suspect more will illuminate quickly, since it’s likely nothing more than a case of those 3rd parties picking up the weight .FIT file that’s sent to Garmin Connect. But still, that integration will take some amount of time. And will consumers wait to pay more for ostensibly less functionality?
For that, I’ll circle back in about two weeks with a scale show-down post. Hopefully by then Garmin will have details on their partnership roll-out plans, since I see that as the major deciding point between the different scales. Speaking of timelines, the Garmin Index scale is set to ship in the November timeframe for a price of $149USD.
Thanks for reading!
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Heads up! You can now pre-order the scale from Clever Training. Doing so supports the site, and makes you awesome. Also, you can use your DCR-Clever Training VIP benefits, as described here. Here’s the link:
Pre-order estimated dates are based on the estimations that Garmin has provided to Clever Training (CT), plus a ‘reality check’ factor that CT typically applies to all manufacturer’s claims. This means that they typically provide a more realistic estimated delivery date than others.
Thanks for the support, it helps the blog here!
Well thats interesting!
I’m a bit fed up of standing on digital scales and finding that the weight changes according to where I placed my feet or even how I climbed onto the scales in the first place.
Any chance that you might be able to experiment with this kind of thing when you test it?
My Withings scale (ws-30) doesn’t do this at all. I’ve only ever used it on hard flooring (Lino or tiles) but it’s surprisingly immune to different numbers, and I’ve experimented loads by leaning forward and back, side to side, one footed etc. My weight definitely fluctuates day to day but the trend line is always good and consistent over the last couple of years. The daily fluctuation seems mainly down to salt intake from my experiments, which leads to water retention changing. Drinking more than two bottles of wine, or 10 pints of strong cider/ale in an evening can lead to alarming weight losses too, I think nearly 4KG was my record!
*I don’t recommend drinking as a weight loss regime, even as part of a balanced diet…
10 pints of ale you say… I’m sold.
My weight always goes up after a night of drinking/eating
I at times have had up to a 7lbs loss after a night of drinking, but it always ends up being a pound or two gain the day after.
There is +/-0.3kg fluctuation if my WS-30 scales are moved around on the hard floor
I’d have massively preferred to see them accepting weight from Withings or Fitbit directly without messing on third party web tools. Let’s hope they don’t try to use their control of Connect to try and get this market – that would be more likely to push me away from Garmin than towards them. We’ve seen it time and again in this industry where playing well with others almost always ends in good things while closed gardens end in bad things.
The point on connectivity is definitely key to me.
It’s great being able to track these things on Garmin Connect, but being able to push that data to platforms such as Training Peaks and TrainerRoad, where the weight data has more of an application than just the raw numbers, would be really handy.
Thanks for the post as always!
And what with old tanita BC1000 support? it will be still supported? I know i will I will never see tanita support in my epix, but i use it via smartphone. I bought it with old garmin watch and i would use it further.
Still supported on existing watches that support it (and on Garmin Connect of course). But otherwise no real changes there (except that in some ways the graphics become prettier for you now on GC).
Excited to see your “scale showdown.” The BC1000 always seemed like a lot of money for a few convenience “perks,” and the support has dwindled to nothing. This would be a great replacement, at a much more reasonable price point, although I’d love to see what the competitors offer as well.
I’m finding myself more and more inclined to track my weight daily but tend to forget from to time to log my weight so this is something I would definitely be interested in. How much do the other offerings run? Is the price comparable to those?
The Withings scale run as cheap as $99, but you’ll miss some metrics – has been on the market for about 5 years, well tested, well supported, great website, wonderful and simple partner API. “Just Works”. We got one of the early models for testing integration, and it just quietly sits and does it’s thing without any fuss, like a Dumb Scale would. I’m still on the original firmware from 2010-ish. The only thing I’ve done in the last years is have to pair it to my new WiFi network. No joke.
Basically there is no reason to buy this scale, unless you’re a 100% Garmin customer, and plan to be for the life of the scale. Even so, I would wait for version 1.1 at least.
Weight tracking has REALLY broad appeal – I would expect Apple has something forthcoming too, right?
The Withings Smart Body Analyzer (WS-50) repeatedly starts losing data / measurements if you disable “diagnostics mode” from the web UI. Once this totally silent data loss starts happening, the only recourse is to “reboot” the scale. Hardly consumer friendly. After a year of fruitless back and forth with Withings’ tech support, it’s time to upgrade to the Garmin scale. At least Garmin knows how to fix issues with their firmware updates.
The Withings scale is more like “barely works”, as tech support cannot figure out basic issues with their firmware.
Like Aaron, I just haven’t seen that either (I’ve got Withings Scales from about 5 years ago too), as well as the WS-50.
And honestly, I really haven’t heard others complaining about it either.
Well. Our scale repeatedly lost the synchronization to the server. Co2 and temperature values were lost and even worse the current weight. Even though the name showed up on the screen the data wasn’t transferred until one reconnected the scale. I’m owning the scale for quiet some time(I got it while they still announced the instant co2 measurement with pressing the middle button). During my ownership I probably had to reconnect it 5-10 times. Lately they don’t seem to do too much firmware updates anymore so it got better.
Withings web UI for the scale gives you the option to not upload diags data along with the measurements. If you opt out of the diags data collection, your scale will stop uploading data within a month. Go ahead, try it yourself 😉
My interest is piqued about this Garmin scale. I have the Withings Smart Body Analyzer and I do have complaints about it, notably: 1) replacing the batteries causes the scale to have to be reprogrammed, and 2) it doesn’t support hidden SSID networks, which I run at home. The oversight of a piece of NVRAM is a killer IMO on the BodyAnalyzer, an otherwise spectacular scale. Having to reprogram the thing every 6-12 months just infuriates me. Then the lack of the ability to connect to hidden networks is an annoyance resolved by using BT connection with the phone as information conduit.
Are these two things resolved with this Garmin scale?
1) On Withings, it shouldn’t work that way. I just replaced the batteries in two scales this past week, and it didn’t forget the network on either.
2) Not sure here, insofar as the Garmin side – will try and find out.
Thanks for the reply! I should clarify that I have no experience with whether or not my Withings scale saves the setup, since every time I replace the batteries, I have to go through re-pairing the Bluetooth. I have a hidden network SSID (reason for Q#2) and didn’t bother changing the setup just for the scale, so it became limited to just using BT for connection and updates. PITA if you ask me that the Withings didn’t support the hidden SSID. I also sent a Q to Garmin about this yesterday after posting here, since I’m happy with Gamin Connect and this scale seems to be a +1 for me.
Are the bottom of the scales entirely flat, so it can cope with tiled/uneven floors? When I user my current scales I actually have to stack them on top of another set of scales to make it be flat, and consistent.
They have little feet on them, so it’s got four little feet and also four little pads that you can put under that. The little pads have a tiny bit of give, so it shouldn’t be an issue on tiled floors.
I heard that Garmin charges a small fortune for their API, and that’s why you’re not seeing Garmin everywhere. If it’s true, they’re shooting themselves in the foot. Fitbit integration is everywhere and it’s an inferior product.
Anyone else hear this?
It’s true. It’s $5,000 to get data pushed. Details here: link to dcrainmaker.com
(Interesting tidbit, they actually offered a coupon code of sorts to companies that came to the Connect IQ lab session at the ANT+ Symposium, that would wave the $5K fee).
But yes, I agree with you – the whole concept of the fee is just a self-inflicted wound. The scale is a great example of why.
I’d forgotten about that, but even if I hadn’t I would have assumed they’d made it more reasonable by now.
There’s probably some poor chap at Garmin who was wondering why none of the scales companies were syncing so took the difficult road and designed an in house set, completely oblivious to the reasons why Fitbit and Withings don’t play with Garmin…
One of my former favorite sites, Dailymile doesn’t have Garmin connectivity. You have to upload to garmin then export as a tcx then upload the tcx to dailymile. Phooey.
Garmin an innovation company is quashing innovation.
I hope TrainerRoad picked one up and finally integrates.
Do you know if the body composition metrics are just generated off underlying base data tables combined with age/gender weight etc – which really is pretty useless, or actually using any kind of bio-electrical measurement? I have learned to be very wary of this as the former definitely exists, and are marketed as body composition scales – but really aren’t doing much more than equating body fat % with BMI.
The only way to get a true representation of BF% is to have a comprehensive caliper test…
I know the Withings uses electrical measurements to ‘measure’ body fat. I’d guess the Garmin does the same thing. I’ve used my withings for almost what, 5 years now? I’ve stopped looking seriously at the body fat metric at all, because:
A. once you’ve got a long time trend of weight, the body fat becomes a secondary issue
B. If your body fat is relatively low (like, well below 10), I’ve found the fluctuations in the measurement to be almost comical; I KNOW my body fat doesn’t jump around by 3+% per day!
Jay is correct that skin fold measurements are a good way to get there, although a comprehensive skin fold test (with 17 measurements, for instance) does a much better job than a belly pinch measurement. That said, if you REALLY care, you’ll do one of those water immersion tests, or a DEXA scan. DEXA don’t lie.
I’d agree, DEXA is a better option. The problem with calipers is that many folks screw it up. Especially health clubs. 🙁
After I had a DEXA scan done a while back, it occurred to me that it’d be cool if you could use the results as a calibration factor for the Fitbit Aria. I posted that to their suggestions forum, but didn’t get any traction.
Maybe it’s something Garmin would do?
Garmin Index manual says the Index uses bioelectrical impedance to calculate your body composition.
This made me go back and read your Withings review. I might actually go with that instead since it already is integrated with TrainingPeaks and is a known quantity at this point.
Ray, what’s that other black gizmo sticking out of your ceiling?
It’s a Dropcam. We use them all over the place to monitor stuff, makes it a piece of cake (literally) to keep tabs on everything from sales to security. We’ve got a few at the CupCakery, a few at the Studio, and even one pointed out the window at the house (actually, it’s outside and surprisingly not dead after nearly a year). It was an older one that I didn’t have a use for.
In any case, these here: link to amzn.to
Your link only goes to a very general page on Amazon fr
It actually depends on the country. The system will auto-convert to your local Amazon.com site (based on geography reported by browser). So if in the US, it’ll be the Amazon US link, in the UK the Amazon UK link, and so on.
Where it somewhat falls apart though is that if a local Amazon sub doesn’t have the right SKU (matching), it just dumps one onto the local sub page with a generic search. :-/
I was somewhat excited until I saw that it doesn’t support the Garmin Edge 800. Given that ANT+ integration is rare and hard to find while WiFi integration is easy, I have no idea why Garmin made this.
I guess the question is why you’d want to take your Edge 800 into the bathroom to get your weight? Meaning, the scale displays the weight (many old Tanita scales didn’t actually have a display), and then it instantly transmits it to Garmin Connect.
Whereas with the Edge 800, you’d have to have that, get it to do the pairing dance (didn’t always work), then see it on the Edge 800 (but it’s already on the scale anyway). Then you’d have to plug in the Edge 800 (since it doesn’t have any wireless connectivity) to Garmin Connect to upload the data.
No?
Now – I can see a scenario where if you’re in a non-open-WiFi location (for example, soldiers deployed) where having direct connectivity to a secondary device to save the data would be useful. But I don’t think that’s what you’re describing here.
I mostly couldn’t care less about pushing data to Garmin Connect, but I do care about the calorie data output of the Edge 800. So I’d leave the scale in the bike shed, hop on it just before a ride, sync it to the Edge 800, and then go. (Though my bike shed does have Wifi connectivity, so it wouldn’t be a big deal at all to push to Garmin Connect)
I guess my use case is a really odd one, compared to what Garmin (and you) consider. Another good use would be on a supported tour, where calorie data is more important as it could tell me that I wasn’t eating enough! But that’s secondary compared to my primary use case listed above.
You’re joking, right? WiFi is everywhere. Using a WIFi scale (I have a Withings) takes no effort whatsoever; you step on it, and your weight and other info is automagically transmitted to wherever. I’d hate to have a scale where I had to carry my Edge 800 into range, turn it on (in the basement, where it won’t get GPS lock) and then step on the scale, each and every time I want to measure my weight. Garmin made this because it’s effortless and it ties directly into Garmin Connect. As Ray mentions above, the workarounds to get Withings weight onto Garmin Connect are often flakey, and I assume there’s a better chance now that they’ll simply stop working. I may get one of these even though my Withings (my second) is less than a year old, but I’ll probably wait to decide until I see Ray’s side by side comparison.
You do realize that the calorie burn that the Edge gives isn’t terribly reliable. It doesn’t measure calorie burn, it estimates (poorly). Given that, the change in your weight by a pound or two from ride to ride isn’t going to matter much. When you’re on a supported tour, you’re away from your scale anyway, right?
The supported tour is the only case where I’ll have the scale. 🙂 On an unsupported tour, there’s zero chance I’d pack the scale. I’ve found the Edge is fairly reliable if you wear a HRM.
Will this one get metrics automatically into TrainingPeaks — (Fitbit/Witherings?)
Ray- Could you get the makers of these various scales to comment about their use of your data and their privacy policies? I’m looking to buy into a system that allows me full control over my health data, including the ability to not use their own web service and to instead allow me to load that data into other platforms such as Apple Health or not use the web at all and only send data directly to my physician.
It may seem overly paranoid at first, but when you add in even more health data points such as blood pressure, detailed heart rate/rhythm, blood glucose, etc, you have medical information about a person that one should have valid privacy concerns about. I do not want Withings, Garmin, or anyone else to “own” my health information and be able to sell it in any way to 3rd parties. Can you imagine drug makers, insurance companies, and others trying to buy data from Garmin or Withings and attempting to identify individuals so as to target them for drug sales or “mitigate their risk” regarding issuing someone a life insurance policy?
Weight, at least for a healthy individual, might be considered as relatively unimportant information to be allowed in the public domain or to be given to a 3rd party. But if that person is overweight, or when you add in other data points, one can build a profile of that person’s overall health which is clearly sensitive medical information that one should protect. And why should these companies be able to profit by selling my data without asking my permission or giving me the ability to opt out?
I’ve looked at health sensors such as heart and blood pressure monitors from Withings and Qardio, Scanadu’s Scout, blood glucose monitors and others. I would need strong assurances from any company that my data belonged only to me and that I could do whatever I wanted with it, including keeping it off their web service and moving it out of their system, before I would consider buying their products. Personally, I am waiting for a company to state and place in their privacy policy that I can directly upload my data within my own home to my own data repository such as Apple Health without using their web service. If I chose to upload some of my data to their service, I’d need to know what they intended to do with it, how it would be anonymized, and how I could remove it at any time.
Data privacy is a double edged sword sadly. The abuse by insurance companies is a bad side (affecting places like the US, in the UK I’m far less worried by this for various reasons) but there are upsides.
Companies like Strava who offer a free service which is worth my while using and sell my data for useful things I am absolutely in favour of, I’d even encourage it. Don’t get greedy and charge me while selling my data, and don’t be evil, but other than that we’re good.
Apple have the right idea too with their opt in health kit apps, leaving us completely in charge while also helping us to share data. Whether this is comprehensive enough to be useful remains to be seen.
Modern data analysis methods (often known as “Big Data”) need very large data sets to make any sensible conclusions. We can only work out if eating bacon genuinely causes cancer with sufficient data – right now it’s more a statistical anomally where we’re not certain that those people included in the study even did any exercise in addition to bacon eating. If scientists had access to sufficiently wide and deep data sets, machine learning and big data analysis would very quickly find health benefits, cures and other health recommendations. This is going to be the primary pay off for all this data collection – anything you do on your own at home is too small a data set to be useful and doesn’t allow you to rule out anomalies. For instance we may find that rather than bacon, the cause of the cancers in previous studies was actually wearing leather shoes – we don’t have the data right now to know the answer but there is a correlation between leather shoes and vegetarians just as there is with bacon.
We can only hope that the standard US drug corporations/lawyers are not the ones to get this data since they generally patent everything they touch even if they didn’t invent it and lock the rest of humanity out of any kind of progress while charging insane prices to use the advantages found using your data. This is already very apparent in the drug industry and extremely harmful as profit is always put before progress and patient care.
I’m afraid hoping that the correlation is between cancer and leather shoes rather than bacon is wishful thinking ?, but I agree with your basic point. As more and more data is collected, the accuracy of even simple things like calorie intake can be correlated to other indicators of metabolism and provide much more accurate data to users. As full time (24/7) data is collected the implications are huge. This does however require good privacy policies and anonymizing techniques for aggregating data.
Probably a better example would be tobacco. All of the research dates from a time when people also had open fires in their homes and asbestos in their walls. I’m not saying smoking is good for you, but to say it definitely causes cancer is actually more of a stretch than you’d think given all the other variables at the time. Even things like food prep were different, people used to boil all the vitamins out of veg for instance.
Of course, my money is still on smoking being a bad thing, but when you look a little closer at medical science it’s really been more of an art than a science.
A good example of the art/science thing is a video on Ted Talks about heart surgery. The experts (doctors) wanted to cut out bits of the patient and put him on permanent drug regimes. The patient, an engineer, designed a tube to wrap the affected artery which took minutes to install and requires no drugs.
Probably a better example would be tobacco. All of the research dates from a time when people also had open fires in their homes and asbestos in their walls. I’m not saying smoking is good for you, but to say it definitely causes cancer is actually more of a stretch than you’d think given all the other variables at the time.
This is completely wrong.
Firstly, the research that established the tobacco-lung cancer link originally dates from those times, but since then many huge prospective surveys have been done, and are still continuing (the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Prevention Survey-II started in 1982 and is still collecting death data from a cohort of 1.2 million people, and they’re engaged in CPS 3 now).
Second, the effect is massive, and if anything the current data suggest it’s getting bigger. 85-90% of lung cancer is directly caused by smoking. The relative risk for a man who smokes currently versus a man who has never smoked is 25-fold, and that’s up to date data based on CPS-II. Interestingly, Richard Doll’s pioneering work on establishing the link started out looking for a link with tarmac, which was pretty new at the time and seemed to coincide with the rise in lung cancer, but his survey of lung cancer patients found smoking as a common factor, and he followed that up with a prospective study of 40,000 people. The epidemiological data are as statistically sound as anything ever published.
Thirdly, while those studies are epidemiological, and the work in the 50s at least had no mechanistic basis, the molecular basis of what is going on is progressively better understood; one example is benzo [a] pyrene, a component of cigarette smoke, which causes mutations in the P53 tumour suppressor gene, which means any other mutation in that cell leading to abnormal proliferation won’t be controlled by p53 as it would in a healthy cell.
I can speak for SportTracks. We currently pick up any health metric measurements (weight, body fat) when importing FIT files that come through the Garmin Connect partner sync process. This is the same code as a manual FIT file import, however, a big caveat: I’m not aware of this process being tested end-to-end, and certainly not with the new scales.
Unfortunately the push notification scheme Garmin has engineered for their partner API requires Garmin to send the scale files, which they may not be doing. MFP/Under Armour may have a special custom integration.
Basically, TBD. 🙂
Thanks for timely post Ray!
The one function that’s missing is the heart rate which I always like in my Withings scale. Gives me a view on how well rested I am on a given day and over the past two years how my enhanced fitness level has reduced my resting HR levels.
Do you know if this is something they might introduce later?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t expect them to add it. Likely, because I’ll make fun of them for it. 😉
The problem with using HR while standing is that it’s honestly the absolute worst possible way to measure resting HR (aside from trying to measure it during an activity). Sorry!
Hi Ray
Not directly related to this post but as someone who owns a Fitbit Scale and uses Fenix 3 is there an easy way to sync weight across.
Some of the services that worked in the past that you mentioned here
link to dcrainmaker.com
have stopped working.
Mike
The MyFitnessPal trick still works. 🙂
At least, it works on my Withings Scale still as of this weekend. I haven’t tried it recently on my Fitbit scale- but would be surprised if it broke.
The MyFitnessPal trick does not work for me and never has. I wonder if I t had to be set up at a certain time period in order to work.
I have to agree with Aaron’s points about the Withings scale. In an age where many products get things almost right, it stands out because it really just works.
I picked one up on a work trip to Paris in 2009. All it’s needed is new batteries every 18 months or so and an occasional wifi password change. We use it with Training Peaks, MFP and Lifesum.
Running short on AA batteries Ray? 😉
Thankfully on my most recent trip to the US I went to Costco. 🙂
Is there currently an easy way to get Withings data into Garmin Connect
Last time I looked there was no way to do it directly, but if you have a MyFitnessPal account you can set each of your accounts to push the data from Withings → MFP → Garmin Connect.
When I was thinking of getting a Withings scale, I set this up as a test and stuffed in some manual weight entries into the Withings site and it came up in GC no problem.
Yup, correct. And I believe the trick also works with Fitbit too.
Yes, though I’m using an alternative, FitDataSync to go FitBit -> Connect directly (only for weight)
Is it using the standard Bluetooth weight scale profile?
If yes then this scale will integrate with many applications.
No, only for the initial config via their app – not via 3rd party apps.
If they open up the platform to be compatible with more sites online, then it’ll be a wash. But today, the Withings/Fitbit offerings really nail what consumers want in terms of 3rd party compatibility.
I guess this explains why they botched up the manual weight entry in the new GCM app. Previously I would just open the app, and tap on my weight (on the main screen) and enter a new weight. And it defaulted to my previous weight which is handy because my scale has some sort of hysteresis on it so my weight is usually exactly the same.
Now it’s in More->Health Stats->Weight->Edit->Enter weight, delete goal->Done. Aslo, I can only enter weight to the nearest pound (no tenths).
And the new weight graph is not necessarily any prettier, but it is buried deeper.
To be honest I was expecting something more to ‘outcompete’ the competitors, like taking a step towards body fat monitoring like the skulpt. This obsession with weight scales really annoys me. If I want a connected weight scale everyone knows what is on the market and all a user wants is for it to just ‘work’. The only ONLY reason I would go for something that doesn’t play nice with all of my third party applications is if it substantially does something innovative that nothing on the market is currently doing (or doing well).
lol woops, thought the profile pic was the choose a pic thing, *sleep deprived*
For me a scale like this only succeeds if it delivers a fairly accurate fat and water%. If the only correct figure is the weight, it does not add anything to a basic scale – without connections. It is easy enough to manually enter your weight in your favorite fitness program – and for all purposes once in several days is enough tracking to do.
Only if you need to be at a certain limit (like weight classes in some sports – rowing in my case), more accuracy is needed – and then you need the fat and water % for longer term, and should have a specific program for short term weight control.
What does fat and water % get you thought? Meaning, how is that data used in training, racing, or even just in non-medical general health/fitness?
It is specific for sports that have weight classes. With rowing (which I am most familiar with) training starts in september, and about now the first selection process ends. Obviously people being larger and heavier have an advantage (otherwise there would be no weight classes), but at the same time both the individual sporters and the teams need to conform to a weight limit – for the races in spring (march) till summer (juli or later if going for international races).
So you need *now* to select the strongest and largest people, who can make that weight limit in a few months – and stay healthy and strong enough while doing that. It is a balancing act between choosing big strong men (or women) that can go faster, but have trouble weighing in, and choosing smaller people that are less fast, but have no problem making the weight limit.
This is even more complicated for freshmens crews, as lots of them havent trained that much, and are much heavier then later in the year. We use fat % measurements to predict what is possible. Problems are that the fat measurements are not very consistent – different people measuring the same athlete using the same method (usually by measuring the skin fold thickness) get different results.
A scale that gives a good measurement, and that is easy and fast to use, so you can plot the data over time, to increase the predictive value, would be very nice…. These scales though, are so all over the place that you cant use them to predict the minimum weight someone can can get to, and stay healthy. If you look at the results in your earlier test, some results from the scales indicated that the atlete could loose almost 10% of his weight, while others were already at the bare minimum – or even what we would consider dangerously low. While on the baseline test most were much more “normal”. ‘
So as they are, those scales are no help at all, and certainly not going to replace the simple “dumb” but reliant scale we have at the clubhouse.
Fat % is important to see how fat loss is going on. If you are losing fat and doing some weight training, a muscle mass can grow while fat mass is decreasing. That’s why this feature is recommended in different weight loss methods. By using it one can see more accurate data on progress.
So I’d say it’s more important to see trending rather than precise digits of fat percentage.
Sorry for photo, I thought it’s for userpic %)
My current scale, a cheap Weight Watchers branded one, from Target has a “feature” that causes it to show the same weight for a given period of time 10-15 minutes.
As an example, if I weight myself and then go to the bathroom or take my clothing off and re-weigh the weight displayed does not change. But, if I weigh myself and then go for an hour run and then re-weigh, it will show water weight loss.
It’s not really important and off topic, but none the less, aggravating to me. It causes me to question the accuracy. Shouldn’t I be able to verify and validate this data on the same machine?
One of the things most of the advanced weight scales have (Withings/Fitbit/Garmin) is a zeroing function that basically resets itself before or after you step on the scale. Some cheaper scales don’t that and lead to exactly what you noted.
The zeroing on mine didn’t work… “zero” was anywhere between 2 and 5kg on the readout. Went back to garmin, should have a new one this week.
One could spend the $150 for the nice and easy integration OR
buy the EatSmart Precision GetFit Digital Body Fat Scale from Amazon for $50 that provides mostly the same metrics.
only issue is the PIA of entering the info into MyFitnessPal before the data disapears off the scale’s screen!
Honestly this is neat. I would say there is a lot of variation from time of day to when you pooped or not etc.
I learned to just try my best to be consistent when stepping on the scale.
Indeed, it’s all about the automation. Which ultimately leads to accountability, and in most cases, leads to weight loss (or whatever ones goal is).
Someone should write a phone app so that you can take a pic of your scale display, it reads the numbers and uploads the data to whatever tracking systems you are using.
You’re welcome.
Well, that would be clever, but I don’t have my phone when I step out of the shower. WiFi still better. Now if my FR245 watch comes with a camera….
You have to be careful with “cheap” scales that report BF%. I bought a similar one from Amazon last year (the Smart Weigh), and after almost 1 year of daily weigh-ins, I discovered that the scale basically just takes your body weight and plugs it into a formula with Age/Gender/Height. For a given Body Weight, the reported BF% is always the same.
I tried to be frugal, and now I wish I had just bought the Withings.
This new product is a bummer, because it pretty much garantees that GC will never integrate Withings compatibility.
Note: The Withings scale already integrates to Garmin Connect. I use it daily that way.
But it’s a hack though right? (using myfitnesspal)
It’s a byproduct, one that Garmin is fully aware of (and has been for a year). I feel like they’ve probably lost their opportunity to close it out, without looking like dicks (which would be the case now if it ‘broke’).
Haha! Yeah, that makes sense to me. What I’d like (and presumably Paul as well) to see is native support for withings/fitbit/et al… but unfortunately that seems super unlikely going forward. Heck I’d even be okay with garmin making a “simple” wifi scale with no bells/whistles just simple weight measurement uploaded to GC… for a fair price ($50?).
One nagging question I’ve had is: does the weight measurement on garmin connect get downloaded to your devices (edge/forerunner/etc) and then used for calorie measurement (in conjunction with HR)? If not, that’s another feature request that would be near the top of the list for me. I have little use for body fat%, but I do have use of increased accuracy of calorie burn… lets me know if I can have that extra cupcake or not!
How do you do that? What kind of software you need therefore?
Is the body-fat based on user-profile e.g. height, age, etc.? Or is it measured? Would also like to know, if there is a body-fat graph within Garmin Connect. Thank you!
******************************************************* push *******************************************************
According to the manual for the Index: [http://static.garmin.com/pumac/Index_Scale_OM_EN.pdf]: “The Garmin Index smart scale uses bioelectrical impedance to calculate your body composition. The device sends a small amount of electrical current (which you will not feel) from one foot through your body to the other foot. The device measures the electrical signal after it passes through your body to estimate aspects of your body composition.
For best accuracy, ensure you use the device under the same circumstances and at approximately the same time of day each time you use the device. Activities that temporarily impact your body’s weight, hydration, and distribution of water can impact the accuracy of measurements.”
Please forgive any ignorance on calorie nutrition and weight gain/loss, but what about using a scale like this one along with a tracker like the Vivosmart HR to derive my calorie intake? Here is the equation:
weight change (Scale) + calories burned (Vivosmart) = Calorie intake
This way I could know what my overall daily calorie intake is without having to enter everything into MyFitnessPal.
Will this work? Does anything currently do this at present?
No, it wont work. Weight gain, or loss, on a daily basis is mostly about the amount of food in your stomach and the amount of water your body retains (and that is heavy influenced by things as salt intake, alcohol consumption, coffee consumption, and your usual pattern of using those).
Your calorie balance only influences your weight on a longer time scale.
So any weight differences that can be attributed to burning calories are lost in the noise of short term consumption.
You mean reverse calculating intake using weight change and calorie burn? From my own weight loss experience this is too unpredictable unless you figure out how to adjust the weight change for “poo factor”.
Ahh, yes, the missing “pooh factor” variable! 😉
However, if we
a) find a way to add excrement to the equation (either through estimation or…ahem…measurement), and
b) ignore the short-run due to misc. effects of salt, etc. pointed out by Bertram,
then there should be a way to derive longer-term calorie consumption from the following equation:
weight change (measured via scale) + calories burned (measured via Vivosmart) + excrement (estimated or measured via ?) = calorie intake (derived)
If nothing else it would be really interesting to run a study of sufficient length comparing the derived calorie intake figure with actual calorie intake, as measured through something like MyFitnessPal. Has anyone ever tried such a study?
Long term, yes. I was actually amazed by how predictable the weight loss is in mid-term. But you are missing the point that logging calories daily is to supposed to make you aware by how much you are overeating. In your scenario you’d know that (a) your weight is not going down, even though (b) you exercise enough — but you would not know by how much and when off balance you are in terms of calorie intake. So in all practical terms this is… not practical.
Hello Ray
I have a Withings which works great inset it up I think with my fitness to get my weight to Gc and it works great
The question is now that Garmin uses and other things that Withings as well have like water% fat% do you think there will be a way to get this into GC
Do you find these type of scales can work OK on carpet – even low pile or does it have to be a “hard” surface? It’s just that have 2 in the bedroom that pull out from under a set of drawers and back in again when done. So don’t need to look at them or trip over them at any other time etc etc. One is some old cheap “no brand” thing with a digital readout that works consistently. The other the vastly more expensive Tanita 1000 which, even when have found some device to get a reading of it, won’t give a stable reading unless I move the scale to a hard surface. So a PITA as you often describe. So the Tanita gathers dust and that’s about all it is good for. This sounds like something that could work somewhat better?
Most of them include little feet adapter thingies that basically act to expand the footprint of the scales feet, sorta like lily-pads. From there it’ll work on carpet. 🙂
I want Strava to track historical weight so that the weight related numbers reflect my actual weight. Would be great to step on the scale and have Strava update automatically. Probably on their list but a low priority.
Ordered through Clever Training! My old BC1000 crapped out and I was just about to pull the trigger on another (for much more $$$). This one looks good.
Nice write up Ray! I still can’t figure out why I would pay $149 for a scale. I have found my existing digital scale pretty much dead on, requires no batteries (must have some type of nuclear power source inside as I have had the scale for 14 years), and I can quickly enter my weight into MFP and it synchs with connect. Outside of the additional items it measures (no proven accuracy) and the Wi-Fi connectivity, what does it really give you?
Am I missing something here?
It all comes down to one thing: Accountability.
When you step on a WiFi scale, it instantly transmits that off to a cloud service – recording for good your weight. Whether or not you want to remember it.
Many times when folks are doing it the manual way they’ll ‘forget’ to enter in the days where the scale doesn’t go down or flat-lines. Sorta like “tomorrow it’ll be down, I’ll record that”. With the WiFi scale, there’s no take-backs. By time you get the number, it’s already recorded and transmitting.
I personally find it much better at forcing me onto a scale and losing weight.
I got it. I guess I am one of the few that are very regimented about my weight tracking, one of the few things that I am actually on top of!
Thanks for your response!
So will this be able to upload my weight to my 920xt and edge 520? If so, how does that process work?
Thanks for the article Ray, it’s interesting to see Garmin enter this arena. That said Garmin pricing on these items makes me shake my head. Paid ~80US for a Withings WS-30 and I can’t find a thing to complain about.
Right now I’m not sure I see integration to Garmin Connect (although I have it set up with my WS-30) as being much of an advantage as the GC app and site are so limited in terms of capability. I’m very near the point where garmin connect is purely a workflow step to take my .fit files from my Edge to the other services I use (Strava, MFP, TP etc)
Isn’t our planet mostly blue not “mostly green”….?
As ever, thank you for the excellent work
“I’d note that the WPS procedure is a complete and total PITA (pain in the ass) if you mounted your WiFi access point up on the ceiling”
Most routers will have the option to start the WPS process from within the setup-pages of the router.
Exacly what i wanted to write. Router from photo looks like asus or smth similar. 99% it has WPS procedure start from admin panel.
Good points. On the bright side, I got lots of exercise going up and down the ladder…
Ray, sorry to be jumping very late into a mid stream old dialogue but looking for some help. I have a Tanita Bc-1000 that I used with my forerunner 910xt. Upgraded to 920xt and scale not now supported. Any way to get Tanita data into Garmin connect without my 910xt? I have ant+ stick laptop and smartphones?
Unfortunately not today. 🙁
In theory of Tanita ever releases their Connect IQ app they’ve talked about, but at the same time, that’s also dependent on Garmin allow them to right data via Connect IQ.
🙁 🙁 Thanks for your quick response Ray
I use a 7 day rolling average of my weight to smooth out the ups and downs. Yes, I weigh myself every day ! Could Garmin add that function into their Garmin Connect ?
This will open new “doors” for tanita BC-1000 owners? Do you think yes ? I would like to sinc my tanita with garmin Connect
🙁
Will any of these scales try to automatically select the user? Sure you can click on the little button to switch through users, but if there are only two users that are typically 20 lbs apart, it should be able to guess the appropriate user and select that by default. I suspect I’d occasionally forget to change users and suddenly my wife is going to come screaming that her numbers are all out of whack.
Yep, the Withings can sense user, though I don’t know the weight difference that triggers the differentiation.
fitbit aria does as well. It even recognizes the cat on occasion.
Hi Ray:
I have the Tanita BC1000 but since I NOW have a 920xt instead of a 910 it doesn’t support Tanita. Also, I have a 1000 Edge, which does support the Tanita….but DOESN’T synch properly anymore.
So, yeah I bought an expensive Tanita that is now just a big pile of recycled-ness….
My question is if I buy this Garmin scale it will work with my 920xt and 1000….or one of them & actually synch without BS? I ask because I spent WAY too long trying to synch the stupid MF’er Tanita with my 1000. It used to work EVERYTIME, all the time, with my 910. Now I literally am in love with my 920 and wear it ALL DAY so I am not mad if I need to upgrade–just verifying this here Garmin scale will indeed work/synch/send readings to Garmin Connect without a bunch of extra wasted time in my life? If so, best $150 I can spend. I will give away or throw my Tanita scale into the trash. Thanks man!
About time Garmin makes the full move to Data Centric approach and gets away from Device Centric thinking. I am sick of trying to make sure the data on all my devices is the same (pushing HR Zones to my f3 and 810 separately for example) and moving to Wifi and central data instead of connecting to a device by Ant+ is the right approach to support this.
Hope you can test accuracy of calculation for body fat/water and so on. At least, compared to scales you test earlier in compare to lab measurements. I’m quite intrigued is it possible to get some close-to-real-life calculations based on measure only via separated feet contacts.
Hello Ray,
I am interested in whether the new Garmin Scale synchronized with the 920XT via ANT+. And without the data going to the cloud. Just as it managed my previous 910XT with the Tanita 1000.
And Garmin is to provide a corresponding Connect IQ app, which indeed Tanita will probably never make it?
Greeting Horst
A quick question.
On the Garmin Blog announcing the scale, they mention “To setup the scale directly with a WiFi router, the router must be WSP-Enabled”.
For various reasons (and I don’t want to start an argument about why I don’t use WSP) I don’t use WSP. So does that mean I cannot setup or use the scale on my WiFi?
…Brent…
I believe you can use the Garmin Connect app on a smartphone to configure it as well.
Hi Ray,
As a current FitBit Aria user, I’m intrigued with these Garmin Scales. The direct syncing to Garmin Connect means I can bypass MyFitnessPal and finally ditch the FitBit app – though nice looking, I now only use it for weight having migrated from a FitBit One to a Polar Loop and finally to a vivoactive (inspired by managing to finally get a refund on the Mio Cyclo 505 and buy an Edge 1000).
My question is, is the Garmin connect sync with myfitnesspal two-way? So weight data will go back to MFP from Garmin Connect?
and do you know if Garmin plan to finally start properly syncing with HealthKit for steps, sleep, HR, etc?
Thanks
And of course I ordered a Withings 50 just before this post was published…
Should I returne it and wait for Ray’s scale showdown?
Any feedback is appreciated 🙁
I don’t think you’ll really see any downside to the WS-50, aside from having less ideal Garmin integration (meaning you have to funnel through MyFitnessPal).
Thank you for replying me, Ray! Truly appreciated 🙂
Keep up the good work!
Hey Ray! Some others have asked about this communicating with Trainingpeaks, and I would *assume* since they already have a relationship established with Connect to TP’s talking that we should hope to see a connection in the future. What are your thoughts on them getting the Weight & Sleep data over to Trainingpeaks since it is already able to capture those fields as well?
Thoughts?
In theory, if Garmin sends a .FIT file (which are created for scale data) to 3rd parties, then in theory they could pick it up, parse it, and update accordingly. Would be nice to see that happen.
In the meantime, I need to see if Withings to TP is still working. I had it working years ago, then someone said it broke. Gotta go check what’s up there.
I still have my withings connected and it works into TP’s. It feeds Weight / Body Fat, but not sure on BMI as I hadn’t had that in the past as a field in my metrics. Just added it and will see if it starts capturing it.
Theory is always great, hopefully Garmin will take note and start allowing that data to be exported, wouldn’t think it would be that hard since it is already there and TP’s has the fields to receive it.
Just re-linked mine to see as well if it pulls there here shortly.
If Garmin ends up feeding the data to partners, then it’s up to TP to parse it. Neither would be terribly difficult. Though, TP hasn’t done much in the way of using other Garmin metrics (Cycling & Running Dynamics come to mind).
Fwiw, it doesn’t seem to be working for me (Withings to TP), after a few days of letting it do its thing.
Look like the manual is posted 🙂
link to www8.garmin.com
Will the metrics appear in my personal settings in GC? I use the tanita scale now and have to change the settings manually.
It seems to be becoming available in a couple of days- would be great if anyone who has it already could post their impressions! The Garmin Index Smart Scale definitely looks interesting- the big question is how accurate it really will be!
Thanks for all your reviews, they’ve been helpful.
Just wondering if you’ve been able to use the scale a little more and have been able to test it’s overall accuracy?
Thanks…
No further time with it yet. I’ll poke the local folks to see if it’s ready enough I can borrow for the weekend.
Ray,
Should I wait for the Garmin scale or I should just get the Withings WS-30? The Withings is much cheaper and I’m not really sure if I need the bells and whistles that comes with the Garmin scale as well as Withings’ WS-50 scale, which is top of the line at the moment. I think the lack of Garmin Connect integration is what’s holding me back from buying the WS-30 right now.
I’ll have my scale round-up likely late next week. I’m getting a few days to play with the new Garmin scale starting tomorrow.
Does the manual come with tips on how to execute this magical “lose seven pounds in five days” “diet” as shown on the product page? Or is that just setting up expectations on how inaccurate the device is?
I wonder if Garmin wil release a IQ Connect app in order to support the smart scale with the latest gps watches (F3, 920, Epix,…….) and if the scale will work with the Edge 1000 or “just” with home wi-fi/smartphone
The status on Amazon UK just changed from pre-order to temporarily unavailable. Still some progress there, I guess!
I’m leaning towards getting one, and thinking about white vs. black. Seems like all my previous black scales just tend to look a tad dirty. Sort of like white or black cars.
any updated shipping dates on this yet?
I believe we should be expecting your review to be up soon- as it was supposed to be published late last week? I find it a bit puzzling how it is still not available to purchase, given the shopping season we are in.
On top of that, I have not seen a single review of it, which leads me to believe that Garmin has been having some issues bringing it to market (or it could be simply lack of interest);
Well I’m interested 🙂
Amazon UK is accepting pre-orders with availability date set at 30th November
Not entirely sure that’s the case- it only says that about the white scale (it was still like that back when the black scale was due to become available)
I bought one of these today at Best Buy – the only one there. I didn’t even know this was being released, but I’m totally bought into the Garmin world and had been looking for a scale that would connect into that world as well. So far…not impressed. It would connect to my WiFi but lose that connection, so I had to revert to ANT+ on my desktop. Can’t get the device to show up on my iPhone, only on the web. Plus, it’s only showing weight & BMI, not the other statistics. Not sure what that’s about. Again, this has only been in use for 2 hours, but it hasn’t been “plug & play” for me. Hopefully, I can dig in and work out the kinks.
OK, stupid me, I didn’t realize you had to be in bare feet for the other stats to register (first digital scale). Sorry to be such a noob. Still, the tech setup has been a pain, and there, I’m not a noob. More to come…
Good to see that there is a person out there, who already owns it. John, we look forward to hear more on your experience and first impressions with it:)
my setup was mixed. it was pretty simple for my iOS device to see the scale and set it up to use wifi etc. but my profile data somehow got the inaccurate height so it threw off a bunch of metrics on the scale. it took like 7-8 tries of modifying my height on garmin connect, the iOS app, resetting the scale etc. until suddenly my profile “took” and the scale was accurate. not sure what i did that fixed it but it was frustrating.
my weight reads exactly the same on the index as the fitbit aria but the body fat % is 3% lower. the aria is likely low too, so i would estimate the garmin index is showing my body fat% about 5-6% less than actual. i can’t see a way to set a lean vs. regular or athlete vs. normal mode like every other wifi scale has and can cause this. not sure if there is a way to make it more accurate, i know i am looking at trends but i also know every time i step on this scale the number makes me a lot leaner than the mirror tells me.
i do like the larger size, way easier to stand on than the aria without thinking about it.
Got my Garmin scale today from BestBuy. Set it up using my phone. Seems to work. Tried updating thru Garmin Express but it won’t appear. Call Garmin and they don’t have an answer. They said they tried and came up with the same thing. They said they will work on the problem and will email and answer when they figure it out. Would of been nice if they would of included a USB port for those of us that don’t have an ANT stick.
Ray… is there anything like an athlete vs. normal mode on the Garmin Index? I ask because after setting it up my body fat reads nearly 3% lower than my Fitbit Aria which itself I think is a bit low of my actual body fat. I know to get the Fitbit Aria even half way accurate I had to set it to regular/normal mode vs. athlete/lean mode so is it possible there is something similar I am missing with the Index? Does my “activity index” on Garmin Connect have anything to do with this?
PS: I know Body Fat readings are pretty much a wag and its the trends that count reading your previous comparisons but I truly think the scale is pretty far off my actual body fat % and i’m just curious if Garmin like all the other scale companies has done anything to help us help them make it more accurate.
Thanks!
No, nothing that I’ve seen either as far as modes go. 🙁
Hate to do it, but I’m returning this scale… here is my review to tide folks over until Ray can chime in…
There are 3 ways to setup the Garmin Index. Via your Wi-Fi router directly using a sync button, your newish Bluetooth 4.0 enabled smartphone or an ANT+ USB stick in your computer using Garmin Express. I’ve heard mixed reviews of the difficulty of using the router or Mac/PC but I used my iPhone 6S running iOS 9.2 and the process went ok, not perfect. The first time I tried to add the device in the Garmin Connect app on my phone it didn’t “see” the scale despite the scale showing the setup wrench icon. A second try and it found it. Who knows what changed. The process seemed straight forward and I was successfully able to get the scale linked to Garmin Connect account but the results on the scale when I tested it were way off in terms of BMI etc. because the “user” data for the scale showed I was a different height than I set. I tried over, and over, and over to reset my height and just when it looked successful it would change back. My height was accurate on every Garmin device I own, the user data in my Garmin Connect app on the phone and the Garmin Connect website. After 7 or 8 attempts it finally stuck and the BMI was corrected. The device had learned my height! Good start huh? Well it was working.
The scale itself is physically nice. I like that it is the largest base of the common Wi-Fi scales out there because it makes it very simple to stand on the scale. Some of the slightly smaller scales I sometimes feel like I need to be more carefully putting my feet on the smaller base. Not a big deal at all of course, but its nice. The screen is bright and easy to read. I did notice that sometimes when the scale is “asleep” it doesn’t wake up when you stand on it. That isn’t cool but then when you get off it and give it a slight nudge with a foot it seems to wakeup and then you can stand on it. If it wakes up currently seems to me to be 50-50 which stinks. I never have a problem “fixing it” but it should just work. I never had a similar problem with my Fitbit Aria scale. When the scale does give you your metrics it syncs that via Wi-Fi very quickly in my experience and then shows you all the interesting metrics. The weight itself matches my Aria exactly so that bodes well. What is interesting to me is how woefully off the body fat % is. It shows 3% or more LESS than my Aria which itself was likely underestimating my body fat by at least 3%. That means the Garmin is likely 6% or more less than my real body fat. Now I know that body fat as read by this type of scale always has some degree of inaccuracy this to me is way out of line. The Fitbit Aria and every single other major Wi-Fi, online linked scale today has an option to tell the scale if your body type is lean/athletic or normal/regular. This setting dramatically effects the calculation for body fat and makes it more accurate. The Garmin scale doesn’t have this option and seems to instead be “splitting the difference” between the two settings on other scales. This is a master of none in my opinion, it will be inaccurate for very lean folks, and inaccurate for those of us who could lose a few pounds. I also wonder how all the other unique to this scale metrics are being derived. To be honest it may well be just a math formula based on weight, body fat%, and your user data of age, height, and sex which means the data may not be “unique” to the scale at all. All in all I’m happy with the width of the scale platform and its accuracy showing my weight but I’m unhappy with how erratic it is waking up and the inaccuracy of all the other metrics it is showing me.
The next thing is the upload to Garmin Connect. In my experience it works very quickly and the data is instantly on Garmin Connect. The problem is Garmin Connect, unlike every other platform connected to a Wi-Fi scale, can not store more than one set of weight data per day. I weigh myself each morning but if for any reason I want to weigh myself again later in the day that weighing will overwrite my morning weigh in on Garmin Connect permenantly. This is a huge, huge deal breaker. While I admit most people weigh themselves at most once per day, there are always important exceptions to the rule. When I train for a half marathon and am doing longer runs I like weigh myself before and after the run to see how I did on my hydration and perhaps lost to much weight. Who knows the reason but the idea that I can’t weigh myself anytime I want on my $150 scale or wipe out my careful tracking of morning wakeup weight is simply unacceptable. At the very least Garmin should “weigh in” immediately with us and tell us if they plan a fix or if this is just the “way” this scale works. Totally nuts.
Next I tried to setup my wife as a guest user. She has a Garmin Connect account so I invited her, she was “accepted” and now appears as a guest user on the scale. Great. Her user data shows her weight as 102.5 lbs and I then synced the scale. She climbs on and the scale shows 102.6 lbs and has a big “?” who it is. At this point I was so frustrated I didn’t explore further. I know some got this working and some combination of tapping might get the scale working for her but how in the world shouldn’t it have recognized her since she was a listed user, the scale had synced, and her weight was only .1 lbs off her set user data?
Garmin partners. Well there is 1. Fitbit has 32, Withings and others 100’s. The good news is that Garmin’s partner is the BIG one, myfitnesspal. This scale is advertised, ON THE BOX, as working with myfitnesspal. The problem is it doesn’t. Weighing yourself on this scale does not change the weight on myfitnesspal even if myfitnesspal is connected to your Garmin Connect account and getting other data like your calorie burn, steps, workouts etc. The problem here is myfitnesspal NEEDS accurate weight information to calculate calories needs so not having it update it unacceptable. Further even if I were to manually change the weight in myfitnesspal the reverse would happen… myfitnesspal would then overwrite the weight information from the Index Scale in Garmin Connect, causing me to lose everything but the weight itself, no body fat%, no other metrics at all. People who pay a lot of money for these wi-fi scales are very, very likely to be using smartphone app platforms to leverage the data. Not only does Garmin and myfitnesspal need to fix this problem, yesterday, but Garmin needs to open up the weight data freely to the rest of the internet, apps like Runkeeper, Loseit! and more should all get data from this scale.
In other bugs the Garmin app is now showing my weights to the second decimal place, ie. 145.43 lbs in the app. Who knows why.
So here is where I am… because I’m a Garmin user I bought their latest and greatest scale. I paid premium price, $150 despite other scales with the same or more features costing $99-130. It looks nice and is accurate showing my weight but is finicky to turn on, shows inaccurate body fat percentages, only allows me to weigh myself once per day, doesn’t properly or easily work with guest users, and doesn’t work with the one and only partner they claim it should work with. I almost never do this but what choice do I have, I’m returning this to Best Buy as soon as I can. The Fitbit Aria I was using was just as accurate, had more accurate body fat %, never failed to wake up, was easier to setup with a guest user, updated myfitnesspal (and others) instantly, and could even remotely update Garmin Connect (with weight only) through myfitnesspal. Oh and it was cheaper. Ugh.
What am I missing? I wrote support. I wrote the Garmin “Ideas” link. Hopefully someone from Garmin address these issues, even just acknowledge they are aware?
“The problem is Garmin Connect, unlike every other platform connected to a Wi-Fi scale, can not store more than one set of weight data per day.”
My friend ordered one of these and when I told her about this, she said that she will probably return the scale (it hasn’t arrived yet). She weighs herself multiple times a day and so this is a deal breaker for her.
Spent the last few hours trying to get the new scale to connect to either one of my two routers. No luck. I’ll try again tomorrow. Not a good start.
Received my scale from Clever Training today. Very easy set up for me and I invited my wife and she is set up. Took about 15 minutes to get set up via the GarminConnect iOS on my phone and her phone after I invited her. We tested weight and looks accurate based on recent weigh in. The other metrics are interesting but I have no idea on accuracy. The weight instantly being recorded will have better accountability.
Ray – thanks for this write up. I just got an Index, and am generally happy with it. My one complaint is on the process for software updates. Ant+ is the only way to do a software update on the Index. My Ant+ stick is wonky (Garmin unit – not sure if it’s dead or not, but I rarely use it, so I don’t care to buy a new one). It’s a shame they didn’t allow for WiFi push to the device from Connect, or BT updates (via computer or mobile). Wahoo uses BT from a mobile device for software updates on the KICKR, so obviously this is doable. It would have been nice to see Garmin allow this, too, or throw a USB port on the thing to really simplify matters.
Do you know if they’re considering enabling BT updates via a mobile device?
I believe the Index still will get updates via Wi-Fi, on Garmin’s timetable (you can’t force a push like using Garmin Express.) I am almost certain mine updated 2.1 to 2.5 firmware via Wi-Fi, it has never been connected to anything else.
Thanks, David. I had no idea that was possible (I didn’t see mention of it anywhere). Hopefully it happens automatically. Otherwise, I’m really happy with the unit. It’s very responsive and quick – much faster than other bio-impendence scales I’ve used.
Well ordered my white Index scale from CT back on Nov. 29th. I got a couple of emails stating Garmin delays, and then yesterday CT informed me that the white scale was being delayed until mid-January sometime, and offered to keep the original white order or switch to black. I made the switch to black, and got ship confirmation today Dec. 18th. So hopefully it will arrive here before Xmas day. I’m hoping I won’t be disappointed.
Did the exact same thing Jim. Scheduled for delivery on Christmas Eve
Just checked my tracking, due here on Wed. 12/23.
I can confirm that firmware updates can be applied to the scale with Wi-Fi connectivity only. My scale initially did not update the fw (from 2.1 to 2.5) during the first week of use, with the Garmin Connect web client showed the pending update to 2.5. However, the firmware was automatically updated to 2.10 after a weigh-in a couple days ago.
I’m pretty happy with the look and feel of the scale, and the integration with the Connect platform (also using the Vivosmart HR). As mentioned, the scale doesn’t always seem to immediately wake up for a weigh in when standing on it. I’ve found that tapping the front edge before getting on top is a reliable workaround but hopefully Garmin can tweak the sensitivity in a future fw release. The other issue I’ve noticed is that after one successful sync of my weight from Connect to MyFitnessPal, the weight data for subsequent days was no longer pushed automatically to MFP. This may be an issue with the integration between my accounts and not a problem with the scale itself.
Just an update. Scale working great since I received it on 12/14/15. I have 4 family members linked up to the scale and and no issues with recognition. So far we are really pleased with scale.
Hi can you tell me if you had to set up connect accounts for each user? My wide doesn’t have one but she’d still like to track her weight. Likewise with our young kids who obviously don’t yet have email accounts.
each person using the scale to track weight over time MUST have a garmin connect account of their own.
Thanks. That’s a shame as my kids are only 5 and 6 so too young to have their own accounts, although they’d like to track their weight for fun and to see how they’re growing. Does anyone know a workaround?
I just “fudged” the date of birt for my kiddos 😉
Think I’ve read all the comments, but didn’t see the answer. Is it possible to export the Index weight data in Garmin Connect to the iOS Health app on my iPhone? The only options I see within the Garmin Connect section on the Health app are Active Energy, Steps and Walking + Running Distance, so I’m guessing it’s a no-go at the moment.
It’s a no go right now Steve. It appears ONLY myfitnesspal is supposed to get the data (other than Garmin’s own Connect) and even that appears 100% broken right now, nothing will get it to work for me despite the rest of Garmin’s data going to myfitnesspal.
I’ve been back and forth with the My Fitness Pal team on this (trying to get weight from scale to post to MFP, so that it then shows in the Health app on my iPhone). Their latest was thus: “After working with our integrations team, we are currently investigating this issue with the Garmin index scale. We hope to have this fixed soon and appreciate your patience and understanding.”
Thanks for the follow up.
I still can’t get it to work either yet some folks on garmin forums say they figured a way.
To be clear to prospective buyers mfp integration is not yet functional
hmm picked up the scale – set up was easy.
so how do we verify the scale updates ? i cant see a place where we can check the firmware.
also myfitnesspal hasnt updated.
no mention that garmin only allows for one weigh in – it will overwrite the previous.
fair warning to others.
Initially had problems with mine connecting to my WiFi network. Said it was in the GC mobile app, but never did. I have special characters in both my SSID (an underscore) and my password. So I turned on my guest wireless network and set an easy password. The scale connected right up and my info was posted to Garmin Connect, but alas this morning it weighs me, but I get the X at the end of the >>>>>>>>> So apparently it doesn’t feel like reconnecting to my network… Kind of getting frustrated with it.
After the one failure I have not had any problems with it connecting, fingers crossed. And yes the one weigh per day is a pain.
Been using mine for the last few days. Seems to work well. It was straightforward to set up and add additional users.
A bit sceptical of the measurements outside of weight. I appear to have “lost” 200gms of bone mass since yesterday.
The automatic user detection works well if everyone using the scale is competent. However, I have a small child in the house. It’s very easy to double-tap and set it to a different user. Twice “my” weight has dropped to 13kg!
As others have noted it’s not ideal that Connect only stores one measurement per day.
Also the Connect app and “new look” web page only allows one to see 1 year’s history. On the old web page one could see one’s complete history.
Received my index yesterday. Set up was a breeze (via smart phone & later ant+ stick/express) and it updated to v2.5 firmware. However after a few measurements of two different users the scale has stopped calibrating / tare to zero kilograms when turned on. It will run anywhere from 2.0 to 7.0 kg baseline which subsequently increases the final weight measurement by the same amount.
If I hold it in the air without the feet touching it calibrates to zero. However either when placed back on the ground or calibrated on the floor the offset occurs.
Resetting several times hasn’t helped nor is there a tare function similar to kitchen scales. I’ve written to Garmin, will see what comes of it.
Now that I’m connected I love it. I was using a Cisco e4200 router and nothing seemed to make my scale happy. On the app it would show that I was connected but on the scale it would show the dreaded wrench with the WiFi signal and an x (meaning not connected). Wap security wasn’t working, wap2 didn’t work. Both with or without passwords. Finally I made a new network name for the 2.4 ghz signal, set the security to WEP and when I connected using one of the keys generated by the router it worked. Hopefully this helps someone out there.
I got 1 weigh-in to MyFitnessPal (MFP) on 1/7 after initial Index scale setup.
No weight data syncing since. Tried unlinking and relinking accounts — no joy.
Weight data is syncing with Connect. Activity data syncing with MFP.
OK. Looks like the weight is syncing to myfitnesspal today. Albeit yesterday’s weight appearing for today’s weight… getting better than no weight.
Back to no weight today. Still showing 1/12 weight which was 1/11 weight.
I have been having the same issue since day 1. Weight does not transfer over to MFP. Calories and activities transfer fine between the 2, but index scale weight from connect doesn’t show up on the MyFitnessPal side.
Last weight synced to MFP was on 1/14. It is 1/20 and I weigh in daily.
This response from Garmin:
“We received some feedback from our Garmin Connect team. The weight information will not transfer to MyFitnessPal and this is by design currently. We only share calorie information back and forth with the other site. Thank you for your time and have a good day.”
Hi folks,
Anyone else notice that the scale seems to show 0.5kg increments only?
There even is a field in the Garmin Connect app, on the “weight page” showing something called “Sensitivity”.
(see attached image).
My naming is based on my own translation, from Swedish. So it might be that things are actually called something else. But I think you get it. Also, I’m guessing that the sensitivity is 1 pound, if not metric.
Picture attached is in Swedish, using metric values.
Perhaps not a big deal, but all my other bio impedance scales (yes, I’ve had a bunch) showed 0.1 increments.
Just some further clarification. You can see that the weight is 66.6kg. So what do I mean with 0.5kg increments? Well, it seams that the scale takes an initial “exact” reading, and after that only shows 0.5kg deviations.
Ray, can you get a comment from Garmin?
Not the case with mine. I’ve lost (and gained) amounts smaller than 0.5kg over the last few days. 0.2kg is the smallest increment I’ve observed.
Yup, just looked at mine, I don’t see that either (it’s in pounds). Here’s a variety of weights shown on the scale & and on GC:
182.7 lbs
181.9 lbs
181.6 lbs
180.9 lbs
180.3 lbs
Ok, I see! Thank you for your replies!
Then it has to be my bodyfat that only changes in 0.5kg increments. 🙂
Joking aside. It is likely just a bad translation. The Swedish word is “Känslighet”, which translates into “Sensitivity”.
What is the field called in English? (the one my red arrow points to, above).
I’m guessing something lite “Difference” or “Change” or “Delta”…
Note, it wouldn’t be the only bad Swedish translation in Garmin Connect. I’ve tried to make them change things, but they haven’t.
It’s “difference” of the last entered weight (displayed in your case 66,6 kg) compared to previously entered weight value.
Ray
When I use the scale it seems to be honing in on a weight and then it throws 0.5 pounds onto it at the end. Does yours do this?
Mine does the same, jumps about 0.2kg near the end of the measurement.
This is the second unit, the other went back for a calibration issue but did something similar on the reading itself.
I received this from Garmin when I was having issue setting mine up. It helped…
We support the following password lengths/types:
Character: is normal ASCII letters
Hexadecimal: is a hexadecimal key
WEP:
5 character
10 hexadecimal
13 character
26 hexadecimal
WPA:
8-63 character
64 hexadecimal NOT SUPPORTED by Express or GCM at this time. Can only be used if setup using WPS.
Hi Ray
I wondered if you could help.
I have just bought a Garmin Index based on this great review (as for all your reviews).
Very happy with the functions.
I thought that it would be good for all the family including 2 children of 12 and 9 to discover that I cannot track their weight as they are not allowed a Garmin Connect account if they are under 13 !
Am i missing something here, seems like a pretty common use case for a family…
Appreciate you raising this if you have any connections…
Thanks in advance.
I believe from someone else that stumbled onto this from a Fitbit standpoint, it has to do with some legal issues around creating accounts for kids under 13 and them not being able to waive their rights to sue over the service (i.e. sue Fitbit). Roughly. I suspect the same applies here. But, I’ll try and find out why exactly for Garmin.
I’m hoping they will add the possibilty of creating a couple of “guest” accounts that will not synch up to the web. That or else give you the option of whether or not you want the data uploaded. This last one could provide us customers the capability to weigh ourselves as many times per day as we wanted. Seems strange that these types of features are not available in a device that costs this much! Like having a scale that uploads and is part of the garmin ecosystem though!
Can someone tell me if I can connect this to my Garmin accpunt, and use its full functionality WITHOUT using WiFi.
I want to take it away with me and only have more mobile phone internet or my old ant+ stick.
The last scale (ihealth) couldn’t connect to y mobile internet, so was useless to me most of the time.
Thanks
I got the Smart Scale but having a lot of issue with my wi-fi router,….which one are you using (brand, model) in order to get successfull syncronization?
I had lots of problems myself. I have a FIOS router. By default the security is WEP. I was never successful with the WIFI connection with WEP. After I went into the advanced settings and enabled WPA2 security, I had no problems.
My scale loops from been asleep (batt save mode) to on and off again, does anyone have the same issue ?
link to youtu.be
I’ve had the Index for a few weeks now. I love it minus these 2 flaws/requests.
1) Weight not syncing to MyFitnessPal, I like that interface more for 2 reasons. A- it has al my weight history, B- the graph is better.
2) I’d like to weigh in more than once a day at times.
Garmin if you read here please fix sync to MFP and record each and every weigh in
A third thing is trying to create an account for my kids and entering their real age I lost all their GPS data, Garmin closed their accounts because they are under 13 :-(, I guess I fudged their age when I first created them an account.
Are there any sites or apps that offers reports that show the evolution of other measures captured by this scale ? For example, the evolution of bone mass, etc. I could find nothing on Garmin Connect …
you can change the view (weight/body fat/ etc) in the Garmin connect app.just tip on weight in your Health data and change the topic on top.
hi!
since i got my Index Scale (one week) it is showing me the exact same amount of Body water, body fat, bone Mass etc. only the daily weight and the bmi changes.
Gas anyone Else expierenced this?
Trying to configure wifi on my Garmin scale via the Garmin connect apps (iOS) and every time I select my network ( Apple express protected network) the Garmin apps crashed…. That work great when I setup my network unprotected … Any suggestion?
The scale seems to have trouble if there are any special characters in the SSID or password. I think there’s an earlier post that contains which characters are allowed. Hope that helps!
Hmm, I wonder if it’s a certain wireless security type + a special character. I say that because I do have a special character in my WiFi password, without issue.
I wish Garmin Connect offered a manual entry point for body fat % as well, since their back-end obviously supports it. If I speculate that they do it because they’re so determined for wanting that people buy their scales instead, why offer manual entry of weight then ? Weight data is useless without complementing it with the body fat % value.
Anyone else noticed that Garmin Connect seems to lose the additional metrics from the Index scale? If I look at the weight snapshot on the iOS app then it only has the weight, nothing else. If I look online, yesterday’s weight and other metrics are shown, but for today’s, only the weight? I stood on the same set of scales!
Happend for me too!
i guess there are some software problems on garmin. some of my sleep-data was lost too.
Tom,
I’m actually now thinking after a bit of experimentation that the weight is being overwritten from myfitnesspal. In that the Index takes the measurement, uploads it to garmin connect, then posts it out to mfp. I then think mfp writes this back to GC (as it used to when I had the Fitbit scales), and this has the effect of overwriting your Index measurements with just the weight (which I believe is the only metric that mfp syncs to GC). It gets overwritten because GC only supports a single weight measurement per day (great decision whoever that was!).
I disabled mfp to GC and it seems to have stopped it happening but having reconnected I get my calorie intake in GC but mfp has no exercise or activity measurements at all now (and I’ve disconnected from both mfp and GC and tried to reconnect from GC multiple times). I’d be interested to know if you’ve got mfp sync on.
Stuart
Just verified a bug with Garmin today, if you make changes to your personal info on Garmin Connect and save the settings it will erase the current day’s info. This is the path from GC choose 4 bars on the left then devices>index scale>user settings then make changes and save data will be erased,the setting I changed was activity level so not sure if all changes have the same effect. Garmin is aware of this now.
Interesting note (corner case) for pairing the Index to a Wi-Fi network using iOS with a different language (and presumably different character encoding (which seems sloppy, but I’m not a Cocoa / iOS developer, so I don’t know what normal practice is) than the language (again, presumably differently encoded) used for the Wi-Fi key.
I went through a bunch of tries to get the Index on my Wi-Fi network using WPS [Wi-Fi was recognized and I could do the initial pairing registration; however my Connect App displayed a red exclamation point next in the device screen. This was accompanied by the scale showing a blinking Wi-Fi baseball diamond with an X next to it and the big wrench. I didn’t try this at all after changing the language setting in iOS] and using my Connect [didn’t work until changing the language setting].
My assumption is that the Connect App internals only attempt to use the current iOS encoding (there is no default, see: link to developer.apple.com) to transmit a password. If that fails, there is no retry/fallback to ASCII/UTF-8/UTF-16. Instead, the Connect app, in the best case, provides a relatively descriptive message that the password is incorrect, and in the worst case crashes (at least in my case, having used the German language iOS and American English with my AirPort it did so repeatedly).
MORAL OF THE STORY:
So, it seems that if you set up a Wi-Fi network using Mac OS X + AirPort + Language Setting #1 that you will not be able to complete your pairing using Wi-Fi + iOS + Connect + Language Setting #2 — you must use Language Setting #1 (in my case US English).
Although I have not yet reported this to Garmin, I will and will post back their reply.
Cheers,
James
Hi,
Is there a way to export data (weight, %body fat, ….) from Garmin Connect ?
Or is it possible to access to a FIT file anywhere ? on the scale ? Garmin Express ?
If someone has a idea it will be great
Hi all!
I see that mostly discussion goes around wifi settings, connectivity, multiple users, macos etc.
But what about fat and bone mass accuracy?
Weight accuracy?
Is Garmin scale any better than ws50 or aria? (let’s assume I’m not tied to any fitness gadgets/brands at the moment)
Any good sites with product review “after 2 months of usage”?
Thanks!
I’ve had zero issues with weight accuracy. As for muscle/bone accuracy – that’s tougher. The technology being used isn’t known for being super accurate, and can usually be tricked by things like hydration.
Personally, the more I use it, it all really comes down to what platform you want your data in. If you’re wholly within the Garmin Connect realm, then the scale probably makes sense. If not, the other options make more sense.
Thanks for quick response.
So daily weight measurements are pretty much consistent? Doesn’t jump around?
Regarding other measurements.. yes I’m aware that it depends very much on many factors. But if you weight yourself everytime in the morning – maybe hydration should be the same each morning? I know technology doesn’t allow good accuracy. I’m more interested in consistency. Can we at least see any trends in fat/muscle mass?
Just wanted to give my 2 cents on the accuracy of the body fat.
Let me start out by saying, I’m not the skinniest of people, and on top of that, I have been long term sick for 2-3 month and done NO training at all, which has lead to a 6-7 kg weight increase. And since I have just gotten the Garmin scale, I do not have data for a normal situation for me.
I also have an Omron BF500 (same as the 510) It includes a handle with electrodes too. On that, I used to be around 18% fat, but today is 22%. Guess that’s fair with weight gain and muscle loss.
On the Garmin however, I’m even more fat. 26.5%!
It will be interesting to see if they start to align, once I get back in the saddle.
Another interesting thing, that just goes to show how in-accurate these measurements are. Back in September I rode coast to coast, through the Pyrenees. A week with some 10.000 meter of climbing. Needless to say, a ~95kg guy like me produce some watts for that. When I got back, I had gained 2 kg, and could see and feel my legs had more muscle to them. And the BF500 fat% had dropped from 18 to 6. Came back to the “normal” 18 after a week or so. Obviously there had been nowhere near this amount of change in fat over that time.
In terms of BF% you can manipulate the reading by going into Garmin Connect and adjusting your activity index (only available on desktop not mobile). This seems to be the only way you can put the scale into “Athlete” mode and have it adjust your BF% accordingly. I initially had my activity index set at 5 despite working out 7 days a week and it showed my BF% at 27%. I then changed it to an activity index of 8 and the next day when I weighed it had dropped my BF% down to 20%. Based on other test I have done to assess body fat I generally run in the 15% range so I will play around and increase my Activity index again and see what happens. Who knows what the “real” number is but once you dial it in I guess it is all about being able to observe shift and that you aren’t turning into a sloth.
Got one, and the main problem, as others have pointed out, is that it only allows you to weigh yourself once a day. Another problem is that if you e.g. weigh the same as your spouse, the auto-detect feature will not work and you have to make sure you are quick to tap-change to the correct profile when you weigh yourself…. If you do not manage to change user in time it will automatically upload to your spouse and then perhaps also override her days weigh-in. Bloody annoying.
For the one-weigh-in-a-day issue the workaround is to create a dummy Garmin Connect account. I do my official weigh-in every morning on my own GC-account, and if I want to weigh myself any other time during the day I’ll just choose my dummy GC-account on the scale (named TEST… couldnt think of anything more original)!
Sorry, forgot to circle back on this. I checked with Garmin, and they are working on adding support for multiple recordings per day. It sounds like a few months away until implementation is complete, however.
ok thanks for the info. I’m actually pretty amazed that it was launched with such an obvious flaw. “Here’s our new super hi-tech Smart Scale. Oh, but you can only use it once a day”… Seriously?…
I returned mine to the store because of this as it’s totally infuriating. I may or may not buy it again if/when they fix that.
Ray, another thing you might want to look into more if you are currently working on an in-depth review is why some of the data in Garmin Connect disappears after a couple of days. Every morning I get the full data-set (ink bmi, fat%, etc) into GC, but the day after its gone and only weight remains. I first thought that this was due to the (terrible) sync with Mapmyfitness – but I have turned this off now and the data still disappears… Very strange. Considering that e.g. fat% is probably not very accurate – however the trend develpment is perhaps the main value of measuring it – this becomes completely meaningless with only the last-days data point.
And also – please give Garmin feedback that the manual (online) is absolute crap.
So far, if I was to roll a dice on this scale, I would give it a 2/6.
Reading about these problems makes me glad I went for the Withings WS-50 (based on Ray’s Wi-Fi scale comparison write-up). I considered the Garmin since I like their devices, but the Withings was half the price (on sale $75) and seemed to do more. It’s never given me a problem and i can weigh myself as many times a day as I want. 🙂 And through MyFitnessPal it syncs to Garmin Connect and my Fenix3, so there’s not much of a downside.
Garmin Index Scale (+wifi) = Beuer BF-750.
link to beurer.com
Hi Ray,
After reading the early reviews above, I’ll think I’ll wait until you do your in depth review that i eagerly anticipate. I am a Garmin fan so I am very interested in the outcome of the review. I use Garmin Connect/Garmin Express and really like it, I bought the FR220 with HRM strap because of the review you did a few years back. I am going to upgrade to the FR235 soon ( Not completely thrilled with the HRM sensor though ) so I am really hoping to hear good things about the scale. If not, the Withings WS-50 will be good too. Thanks.
I see that a in depth review has been out for about a week now. Thank You!!
Here’s the link for those who are interested!
link to dcrainmaker.com
Claude S.
Thanks for the reminder! Forgot to update this post with a note.
And with that folks, like usual I’ll close up this one to new comments and direct any new comments over to that post. Cheers!