Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale

Staying fit and healthy is one of the toughest challenges people face, and the long-term consequences of not doing it can be dire. One element of the fitness equation, watching your weight, should be a digitized, routine, and largely automated occurrence. With the release of the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale ($129.95, direct), digital health company Fitbit has taken this challenge on. The bathroom scale measures your weight and body fat, and syncs the stats to your Fitbit Web account, where you can also log and monitor your physical fitness activities, food intake, and even how much sleep you get.?

When coupled with the activity-tracking Fitbit Ultra ($99, 4.5 stars), an Editors' Choice, the Fitbit Aria further simplifies how you keep tabs on your health. Another scale that also connects with the Fitbit Ultra and the Fitbit website is the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale ($159.95, direct, 4.5 stars and Editors' Choice), which is a bit more expensive but packs in a lot of value by including a great companion Web account and fantastic features for charting your health and sharing the results with your doctor, family, or social network.

Design and Features
I love the look of the Fitbit Aria scale, available in black or white, which has a sleek low profile design. At eye-level, you can see that the Aria has some beautiful curves. Tempered glass used for the top surface makes wiping off footprints a breeze. It's also highly durable. The Aria is powered by four AA batteries, included with purchase. It measures 1.3 by 12.3. by 12.3 inches (HWD) and weighs 4 pounds 4.3 ounces. The body weight limit for the scale is 350 pounds.

The Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale works in conjunction with the Fitbit website.?Be sure to sign up for Fitbit before setting up the scale.?Accounts are free, and the graphs and reports are excellent. Without the website, you can't see changes in your weight or body fat over time, and without that information, the Aria is but an overpriced bathroom scale.

Out of the box, the Aria needs to know a little about you?gender, age, height, initials?and anyone else using the scale, up to eight people total. It also needs help finding your Wi-Fi router so that it can sync information to your account. The large display on the scale, in tandem with a short reference page, walks you through these steps in about five minutes.?

In Use
To use the scale, you must have bare feet? and it helps to be naked (two pounds for clothes!). If you start to step on the scale, the display will say, "Step on," as it wakes up. Hold still for a few seconds, as it proceeds to take your measurements. The Aria calculates weight, as any scale would, and also sends a small and harmless electrical pulse through your feet to calculate fat and lean mass.

It's also advisable to use the Aria on the same hard surface, like tile, every day for consistency.

When you've seen all your numbers, the Aria will display a syncing icon to show it's connecting to Wi-Fi and uploading your stats. If you move the scale out of Wi-Fi range or if your router is turned off when you weigh yourself, the Aria will still sync your stats to the Fitbit website the next time it makes contact.?

At home, I've used a bathroom scale from Tanita, the BF-679W ($49 street), for about six years that includes body fat in the results, too. It's been instrumental in helping me keep off my, ehem, baby fat. While the Tanita scale does not have Wi-Fi capabilities, nor a completely personalized online site to sync with, it does have one feature missing from the Aria: body water percent. It's not a crucial stat to know, but body water can be a clear indication of an unexpected increase or decrease in weight not caused by calories. But at least with the Aria, you can see your weight and lean/fat mass over time via the Fitbit website, where abnormalities will stand out in graphs and other reports.

Complete Picture
After falling in love with the Fitbit Ultra and using it to track everything about my health and fitness, from how many calories I burn cycling to work to the number of times I ate dessert last week, the Fitbit Aria Smart Wi-Fi Scale was the final piece of the puzzle. It doesn't have the same highly intuitive readouts and contextualized information as the Withings Wi-Fi Body Scale, our Editors' Choice, but the Aria is very nearly as good and costs $30 less.

Having the Fitbit Aria completed my personal health picture with accurate daily weight and body fat readings. With all my fitness stats now aligned and syncing, it's going to be very hard for me to give it back. Maybe I won't.?

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/rOFwI7fTLoc/0,2817,2405897,00.asp

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