2022 is behind us, but it seems like the mystery of just what the hell went down with Warner Bros.’ scrapping of the Batgirl movie will be with us for a while yet—especially while star Leslie Grace is still teasing tidbits of what the allegedly near-completed movie could’ve done for Barbara Gordon.
Data is a useful tool in any battle, especially if you’re opting to wage war against your waistline in an attempt to be healthier. Back in 2007, I bought a dirt-cheap scale and drew my own graph sheets in order to chart my weight’s downward progress after a rough year at university. I think that while 2007 me wouldn’t be pleased with my own fitness journey, he would love the fact that the process is entirely automated, and affordable. Consequently, allow me to take you (and him) on a journey to pick the best smart scale to help you on your own journey toward behavior change.
There are valid reasons to weigh yourself, but your self-worth shouldn’t be defined by the number that shows up between your feet. If you’re looking to alter your body shape, that figure could go up as your waistline goes down, since muscle weighs more than fat. Dr. Anne Swift, Director of public health teaching at the University of Cambridge, said that “weighing yourself too often can result in [you] becoming fixated on small fluctuations day-to-day, rather than the overall trend over time.” Swift added that “it’s sometimes better to focus on how clothes fit, or how you feel, rather than your weight.”
(A meta-analysis from 2016 found there may be some negative psychological impact from self weighing. A 2018 study, however, said that there may be a positive correlation between regular weigh-ins and accelerated weight loss. It can be a minefield, and I’d urge you to take real care of yourself and remember that success won’t happen overnight.)
A weighing scale that weighs you is probably the top requirement, right? One thing to bear in mind is that, with all these measurements, the figures won’t be as accurate as a calibrated, clinical scale. Consequently, it’s better to focus on the overall trend up or down over time, rather than the figures in isolation.
Most scales will either connect to your phone over Bluetooth, or to your home’s WiFi network, and you should work out your regular weighing routine ahead of time. A lot of lower-end, Bluetooth-only models will only record your weight when your phone is present and don’t keep local records. That means if you routinely leave your phone outside the bathroom, you could lose that day’s stats. WiFi-connected scales, on the other hand, post your stats to a server, letting you access them from any compatible device. But you need to be mindful that there’s a small risk to your privacy should that information be compromised.
The stronger your bones, the less you’re at risk from breaks and osteoporosis, which you should keep in mind as you get older. Clinical bone density tests use low-power x-rays but higher-end scales can offer an approximation from your own bathroom. These tests pass a small current through your feet, measuring the resistance as it completes its journey. The resistance offered by bones, fat and muscle are all different, and your scale can identify the difference.
Fat and muscle are necessary parts of our makeup, but an excessive amount of either can be problematic. Much like bone density, a scale can identify both your body fat and muscle mass percentages using Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis (BIA). This measurement tests how well your body resists the electrical signal passing through your body. (It’s a rough rule of thumb that you should have a 30/70 percent split between fat and muscle, but please consult a medical professional for figures specific to your own body and medical needs.)
A lot of scales offer a BMI calculation, and it’s easy to do since you just plot height and weight on a set graph line. Body Mass Index is, however, a problematic measurement that its critics say is both overly simplistic and often greatly misleading. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the most common clinical metrics and medical professionals will use it to make judgements about your care.
French health-tech company Withings has offered Pulse Wave Velocity (PWV) on its flagship scale for some time, although regulatory concerns meant it was withdrawn for a period of time. It’s a measurement of arterial stiffness, which acts as a marker both of cardiovascular risk and also other health conditions. I’ve had anecdotal reports that PWV scales have sent people to the doctor, where they’ve found they were close to a cardiac event. It’s worth saying, as with all of these technologies, that there is limited, albeit positive, research into how accurate these systems are.
Less a specification and more a note that smart scales have displays ranging from pre-printed LCDs or digital dot matrix layouts through to color screens. On the high end, your scale can show you trending charts for your weight and other vital statistics, and can even tell you the day’s weather. If you are short-sighted, and plan on weighing yourself first thing in the morning, before you’ve found your glasses / contacts, opt for a big, clear, high-contrast display.
You’ll spend most of your time looking at your health data through its companion app, and it’s vital you get a good one. This includes a clear, clean layout with powerful tools to visualize your progress and analyze your data to look for places you can improve. Given that you often don’t need to buy anything before trying the app, it’s worth testing one or two to see if you vibe with it.
Several companies also offer premium subscriptions, unlocking other features – including insights and coaching – to go along with your hardware. Fitbit and Withings both offer these services, which you may feel is worth the extra investment each month.
Using the same scale or app platform for years at a time means you’ll build up a massive trove of personal data. And it is, or should be, your right to take that data to another provider when you choose to move platforms in the future. Data portability is, however, a minefield, with different platforms offering wildly different options, making it easy (or hard) to go elsewhere.
All of the devices in this round-up will allow you to export your data to a .CSV file, which you can then do with as you wish. Importing this information is trickier, with Withings and Garmin allowing it, and Omron, Xiaomi, Eufy and Fitbit not making it that easy. (Apps that engage with Apple Health, meanwhile, can output all of your health data in a .XML file.)
It’s not a huge issue but one worth bearing in mind that each scale will either run disposable batteries (most commonly 4xAAA) or with its own, built-in battery pack. Sadly, all of our crop of smart scales use batteries, adding an environmental and financial cost to your scale life. That’s just about forgivable for scales that cost under $100, but this stretches even to the highest-end models. When you’re spending more than that on a device, the lack of a rechargeable cell feels very, very cheap indeed.
For this guide, I tested six scales from major manufacturers:
Our cheapest model, Xiaomi / Mi’s Body Composition Scale 2 is as bare-bones as you can get, and it shows. It often takes a long while to lock on to get your weight, and when it does you’ll have to delve into the Zepp Life-branded app in order to look at your extra data. But you can’t fault it for the basics, offering limited weight and body composition for less than the price of a McDonald’s for four.
Fitbit, now part of Google, is the household name for fitness gear in the US, right? If not, then it must be at least halfway synonymous with it. The Aria Air is the company’s stripped-to-the-bare bones scale, offering your weight and little else, but you can trust that Fitbit got the basics right. Not to mention that most of the reason for buying a Fitbit product is to leverage its app anyway.
Eufy’s Smart Scale P2 Pro has plenty of things to commend it – the price, the overall look and feel (it’s a snazzy piece of kit) and what it offers. It offers a whole host of measurements, including Body Fat, Muscle Mass, Water, Body Fat Mass and Bone Mass, as well as calculating things like your Basal Metabolic Rate (the amount of calories you need to eat a day to not change weight at all) all from inside its app. In fact, buried beneath the friendly graphic, the scale offers a big pile of stats and data that should, I think, give you more than a little coaching on how to improve your lifestyle.
Shortly before publication, Anker – Eufy’s parent company – was identified as having misled users, and the media, about the security of its products. Its Eufy-branded security cameras, which the company says does not broadcast video outside of your local network, was found to be allowing third parties to access streams online. Consequently, while we have praised the Eufy scale for its own features, we cannot recommend it without a big caveat.
Given its role in making actual medical devices, you know what you’re getting with an Omron product. A solid, reliable, sturdy, strong (checks the dictionary for more synonyms) dependable piece of kit. There’s no romance or excitement on show, but you can trust that however joyless it may be, it’ll do the job in question. The hardware is limited, the app is limited, but it certainly (checks synonyms again) is steady.
Joking aside, Omron’s Connect app is as bare-bones as you can get, since it acts as an interface for so many of its products. Scroll over to the Weight page, and you’ll get your weight and BMI reading, and if you’ve set a goal, you can see how far you’ve got to go to reach it. You can also switch to seeing a trend graph which, again, offers the most basic visualization on offer.
Garmin’s got a pretty massive fitness ecosystem of its own, so if you’re already part of that world, its scale is a no-brainer. On one hand, the scale is one of easiest to use, and most luxurious of the bunch, with its color screen and sleek design. I’m also a big fan of the wealth of data the scale throws at you – you can see a full color graph charting your weight progress, and the various metrics it tracks in good detail. If there’s a downside, it’s that Garmin’s setup won’t hold your hand, since it’s for serious fitness people, not newbies.
At the highest end, Withings’ flagship Body Comp is luxurious, and luxuriously priced, a figure I’d consider to be “too much” to spend on a bathroom scale. For your money, however, you’ll get a fairly comprehensive rundown of your weight, body fat, vascular age, pulse wave velocity and electrodermal activity. Its monochrome dot matrix display may not be as swish as the Garmin’s, but it refreshes pretty quickly and feels very in-keeping with the hardware’s overall sleek look. If there’s a downside, it’s that Withings ditched the rechargeable battery found in the Body Cardio (its former flagship, and an excellent scale I’d recommend if it were within the parameters of this guide) in favor of AAA batteries. Which, when you’re spending this much on a scale, makes me feel very nickel-and-dimed.
It’s very competitive at the low end, and Xiaomi and Fitbit offer dramatically contrasting products for a very low price. Fitbit’s scale has far fewer features, but has better build quality, is faster and more reliable than its cheaper rival. Crucially, it also leverages Fitbit’s own app, which is a long refined and easy-to-use app that offers clean, easy-to understand visualizations.
Xiaomi, meanwhile, offers weight and some basic body composition checks, although this extra data is only visualized inside the app. From a data perspective, the Xiaomi has the edge, but its companion app – formerly Mi Fit, now branded as Zepp Life – is terrible. The lag time for each weigh-in, too, leaves a lot to be desired with the Xiaomi, although I had no qualms about its accuracy.
When I was a kid, and complained about something, my nan would say “look, you can either have a first class walk or a third class ride.” And Fitbit’s scale here is the very definition of a first class ride – polished, snappy and with a world-class app by its side. The Xiaomi, meanwhile, offers more for your money, and charges less, but both hardware and software lack any sort of polish. It’s therefore up to you if you’d rather the first class walk or the third class ride.
Well, this is awkward. Not long before this guide was published, it was revealed that Eufy is in the midst of a massive security issue. Researchers found that its security cameras, which were promised to be secure, allowed internet users to access the stream using VLC player. Consequently the high praise for Eufy’s P2 Pro I have as a scale will need to be moderated by the fact that we don’t yet know how deep the company’s promises around privacy and security really run.
It’s unfortunate, as the scale does leap head-and-shoulders above the competition at this level, and it surpassed my expectations by quite a bit. The ease of use was one thing, but the depth of data made available in the app, and the way it presents that information, is fantastic. While I don’t think the Eufy Life app is better than, say, Withings’ class-leading Health Mate, it offers exactly what a would-be weight-watcher would need.
The fact you can get plenty of your vital statistics graphed by hitting two buttons helps you visualize your progress, but the stat dashboard laying out everything, including your BMR, is so useful. If you’re going all Quantified Self, you could theoretically calculate your daily calorie intake to the finest of fine margins looking at this thing every morning.
I’m very partial to Garmin’s Index S2, but I also think it’s the sort of scale that needs to be used by people who know what they’re doing. Almost everything about the hardware is spot-on, and the only fly in its ointment is the low refresh rate on its color screen. I can’t say how upsetting it was to see the display refresh in such a laggy, unpolished manner, especially when you’re spending this much money. But that’s my only complaint, and the rest of the hardware (and software) is otherwise pitch-perfect. If you’re looking to alter your body shape, this probably isn’t the scale for you – it’s the scale you buy once you already calculate your BMR on a daily basis.
Naturally, if you’re looking for a machine that’ll cater to your every whim and hypochondriac urge, then Withings’ Body Comp is the way forward. It’s a luxury scale in every sense of the word, and you should appreciate the level of polish and technology on show here. Apart from the batteries, which I’ve already said is a cheap and nasty way to save money given that you’re dropping this much money on a product.
The group of people who think it’s reasonable to spend $200 on a scale is, especially with food and energy prices spiking, a fairly small one. But if you’re the sort who already spends hand over fist to keep your body in check, this is probably justifiable as an “investment.” Knowing all of the extras about your nerve health and arteries is a bonus, but let’s be clear and say this isn’t the scale for everybody. Hell, you might have second thoughts even if you do have a subscription to Good Yachting Magazine.
Anya Taylor-Joy teases the blood and dirt of Furiosa. Scream 6‘s new poster teases potential victims for Ghostface’s New York trip. Charlie Cox still isn’t sure just what parts of his Matt Murdock are carrying over to Daredevil: Born Again. Plus, new pictures from the return of Shadow and Bone. Spoilers, away!
Samsung is pushing further into the realm of humongous monitors with the next-gen, 57-inch Odyssey Neo G9. Some may find this model a bit more palatable than the 55-inch Odyssey Ark Samsung released last year, as it’s an ultrawide with a ratio of 32:9 (the Ark is a 16:9 display). Sure, you might need to turn your head to fully take in Zeta Halo while playing Halo Infinite or see all the apps you have open, but it might feel more immersive and be more comfortable to use as an up-close monitor than the Odyssey Ark. Just don’t expect to use the Neo G9 in a vertical orientation.
The latest Neo G9, which Samsung started teasing in November, has an 8K display with a resolution of 7,860 x 2,160 pixels. Samsung claims it’s the first dual UHD mini-LED monitor. It has a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and HDR 1000 support, along with a matte display to absorb light and minimize glare. The Neo G9 may be a viable option for high-performance gaming, given its 240Hz refresh rate and 1ms response time. In addition, Samsung says it’s the first gaming monitor with DisplayPort 2.1 connectivity as well. The company will reveal more details later, including the all-important price.
Samsung has other displays to talk about at CES this year, including its first curved OLED gaming monitors. It announced the Odyssey G8 OLED at IFA last year. The 34-inch, 21:9 display has a resolution of 3,440 x 1,440 and a 175Hz refresh rate. Samsung has already started selling it in some markets and says it will be available in the US very soon.
The company has now revealed a 49-inch curved OLED gaming monitor, with many of the same features as the Odyssey G8. Both have a 1ms response time, a 3.6mm thick design, and a screen curvature of 1800R, along with adaptive sync and AMD FreeSync Premium to minimize screen tearing. They each have a Neo Quantum Processor that Samsung claims can deliver “brighter whites, deeper blacks, and near-infinite color contrast,” as well as HDR True Black 400. In terms of ports, you’ll find Mini-DisplayPort, HDMI and USB-C, with the latter offering up to 65W charging. Both monitors include the Samsung Gaming Hub with access to cloud gaming services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and NVIDIA GeForce Now.
The Samsung Odyssey G95SC, however, is said to be the planet’s first OLED gaming monitor with a 32:9 aspect ratio. It has a 240Hz refresh rate and a Dual Quad-HD display with a resolution of 5,120 x 1,440.
Elsewhere, there’s a new version of the Smart Monitor with support for video streaming and cloud gaming services, as well as Microsoft 365 apps and a SmartThings hub. The Smart Monitor M80C is a 32-inch 4K, 16:9 display with a detachable SlimFit Camera.
What’s new in the latest model is a personalization feature named My Contents. This will show the weather, photos, schedules and more on the ambient display. The personalized content will only be shown when a connected device is within Bluetooth range.
Samsung also announced its first 5K monitor, which is geared toward creatives. The 27-inch ViewFinity S9 has a resolution of 5,120 x 2,880, a wide color gamut of 99 percent DCI-P3 and HDR 600 support. The idea is to provide users with detailed, clear and clean images. In addition, there’s a matte display, detachable 4K camera and HDMI, DisplayPort and USB-C ports. You’ll be able to calibrate the ViewFinity S9 with the help of the SmartThingsApp and a smartphone camera.
Today at CES, MediaTek announced the latest addition to its Genio portfolio introduced last year, a range of systems on chip (SoCs) dedicated to IoT applications.
According to MediaTek, the new octa-core Genio 700 is designed for smart home, smart retail, and industrial IoT products. It will complete the Genio family, between the flagship Genio 1200 focused on high performance, and the Genio 500, a 12 nm architecture designed for edge processing and multimedia capabilities.
Designed with power efficiency in mind, the Genio 700 is a 6nm chipset equipped with two ARM A78 performance cores clocked at 2.2GHz and six ARM A55 efficient cores running at 2.0GHz. It delivers 4.0 TOPs AI accelerator. By comparison, the performance-oriented Genio 1200 features four ARM A78 cores (2.2GHz) and four ARM A55 cores (2.0GHz).
The new SoC offers Dual Display support FHD60+4K60 with AV1, VP9, H.265 and H.264 (video decode) support. The ISP allows for camera support, however, MediaTek did not share the specifications of the camera it will support.
The Genio 700 SDK will allows developers to create and customize industrial and smart home products running on Yocto Linux, Ubuntu, and Android.
Additional features include:
MediaTek Genio 700, IoT SoC for Industrial and Smart Home Products
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“At first I looked for Matt in every profile — obviously he wasn’t there, but guilt and grief often were.”
Harrison Ford’s car collection may not be the holy grail, but it is certainly a fun and unique collection.
Every year, many of us put things like “eat better,” “stress less” and “get in shape” on our New Year’s resolutions lists. And sleep can play a big part in achieving all of those goals. Missing out on rest makes us eat junk and pumps up stress hormones to the detriment of pretty much every other way we try to better ourselves. Thankfully, technology can help; in addition to just reminding us to take enough time to sleep, as the bedtime modes on your iPhone or Android device do, there are other gadgets that can help make the sleep you do get deeper and more restful. For those who need a little extra help getting some shut-eye in 2023, here are a few gadgets to help you sleep that we’ve tried that could work for you, too.
Oura’s smart ring tracks your activity during the day and your sleep at night (or whenever it is you go to bed), giving you an overall score from one to 100 each morning. Using temperature, movement, blood oxygen and pulse sensors, Oura gains insight into how long you stay in the various sleep stages and uses that data to offer suggestions on ways to get better quality rest. When we tested it out, we called it the “perfect wearable for people who don’t like wearables,” appreciating the data it provides while slipping seamlessly into everyday life. After a few days of wearing it, our reviewer quickly started to ignore its presence, which means you’re probably much more likely to wear it to bed than a fitness band.
Since it doesn’t have a screen, all of Oura’s information comes to you via the companion app. That lack of screen is also the reason you can squeeze up to seven days of battery life out of it, an important feature since no device can track your sleep if it has to spend its nights on a charger.
If you prefer a wearable with a screen, a fitness tracker is arguably better than a smartwatch when it comes to sleep tracking since they tend to be less obtrusive and have longer battery life. That means you’re more likely to wear it to bed many nights in a row, until it eventually has to be recharged. Far more affordable than the Oura, Fitbit’s Inspire 3 is our budget pick for the best fitness tracker right now, and it does a good job tracking your Zs.
It runs for around $100 and has similar sensors to the Oura, including heart rate, temp, movement and blood oxygen. The company has put a lot of effort into expanding their sleep metrics, and the app can offer you detailed insights into how long you’re spending in each stage of sleep. Even without the premium membership, you’ll get a sleep score each morning. With the $10-per-month membership, you get a more detailed breakdown of the score, so you can better track your sleeping trends over time. Along with that, the alarm on the Inspire 3 can wake you up when you’re in a lighter sleep stage so coming back online isn’t as jarring.
If you don’t want a wearable at all, the Sleep Pod 3 from Eight Sleep will track your metrics and give you a sleep score. It also heats or cools your side of the bed and wakes you up with a subtle rumble beneath your chest. The mattress-and-cover combo goes for between $3,000 and $4,400, depending on the size and thickness of the mattress, which puts it well above any traditional wearable in terms of affordability. The bulk of the cost is in the cover, which conceals tubing through which warm or cool water flows from an external base, regulating the temp, while sensors in the cover monitor your sleep.
You can buy the cover alone and that will save you between $900 and $1,900 off the sticker price, but it’s still not cheap. You’ll also need a $19 per month subscription to access all the sleep tracking features. But in our review, with a score of 81, our reviewer (and new dad) Sam Rutherford said the Pod 3 has delivered some of the best sleep he’s ever had.
Part sunrise alarm clock, part audio machine, the Hatch Restore made the cut in our guide to smart lights for its ability to help out before, during and after sleep. To get you to dreamland, the Restore offers guided exercises and sleep stories, and to keep you asleep once you get there, you have your pick of white or pink noise sounds. To wake up, the gentle sunrise alarm slowly brightens, mimicking the sunrise and priming your brain for morning. The caveat here is that you’ll need a subscription to access the library of sleep meditations and guides, and that currently goes for $5 a month or $50 per year.
Personally, the best thing I’ve done for my sleep is banishing my phone from the bedroom, so it may seem ironic to add a smartphone app to this list. Headspace, however, has the opposite effect on sleep that social media does. Like the Hatch Restore, this app has an extensive library of meditations and exercises to help you relax and fall asleep.
I prefer the shorter, wind-down segments that last a few minutes and help you do a full body scan to relax. Longer “Sleepcasts” run around 45 minutes and tell you stories in calm voices – there are even a few Star Wars-themed tales, but those just made me want to get up and watch more Andor. Sleep music and soundscapes combine ambient sounds with tones and melodies, lasting up to 500 minutes. And perhaps most critically, there’s a “Nighttime SOS” page, with guided exercises to help you get back to sleep if you wake up with bad dreams, work stress or something else.
A subscription goes for $70 a year or $13 a month. In addition to sleep content, you also get daytime meditations and sessions that help you breathe, focus and manage stress, which can also help with sleep. If you do decide to bring Headspace into the bedroom, make sure you have your phone’s sleep focus or bedtime mode turned on before you do, otherwise nighttime spam emails and Messenger alerts will undo all of the good work your sleep app just rendered.
We think Philips Hue White + Color are the best smart light bulbs you can buy, and certain features can even help with sleep, such as programming them to change to a warmer color when it’s getting close to bedtime. You not only get a subtle hint that it’s time to wind down, but also the warmer tones have lower levels of sunlight-mimicking blue light and can help your brain prepare for sleep. You also have the ability to control them using your voice, so instead of getting out of bed to shut off the lights, you can ask Alexa or the Google Assistant to do it for you.
Speaking of blue light, it’s not great for sleep. But the habit of staring at screens isn’t going anywhere, which is why blue light-blocking glasses exist. I’ll admit I first thought they were a gimmick, but have since come to rely on the pair I bought from Felix Gray. The science seems to check out and do I notice a difference with my sleep patterns when I wear them versus when I don’t. I initially only wore them in the evening hours, when I was working past 5PM or otherwise still using my computer. Now I wear them basically all day because I feel like they help my eyes feel far less tired. They come with or without your prescription and in enough styles to make them your own.
You’ve probably met someone who swears by their weighted blanket. Our colleague Nicole Lee is one of them. As someone plagued by insomnia, she finds she’s “nodding off faster and staying asleep longer” with the Bearaby weighted blanket and recommends it as one of our top self-care gifts. Unlike other weighted blankets that are filled with glass or plastic beads, Bearaby comforters are hand-knit from a heavyweight cotton, Tencel or eco-velvet, looking more like enormous scarves than a bland sleep aid.
While blue light is bad before bed, any type of light hitting your eyelids can keep you from reaching those deeper levels of sleep. Along with blackout curtains and shutting off the nightlight, we recommend this sleep mask from Manta. There are a ton of sleep masks out there, but Engadget weekend editor Igor Bonifacic finds this one to be better than the rest and recommends it for travelers in our guide. It has removable, repositionable eye cups for a customized fit and they stand up to their claim of blocking out 100 percent of ambient light. You can also buy additional eye cups that you can microwave to provide a warming effect, or eye cups wrapped in silk that will be gentler on your skin and others.
“I don’t know a damn thing about odds,” Rose said after making the bet.
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