The Best Smart Scales
The humble bathroom scale has long been overdue to learn some new tricks. After all, who needs to devote precious real estate to a device whose purpose is merely to tell you your weight? The “smart scale” category sprang to life in the early days of the internet of things, but the first models weren’t always the best, hampered by connectivity issues and general usability problems. The category has largely stagnated; only a handful of companies are now making the devices, and some haven’t updated their product line in years.
That said, newer, faster, and better products have hit the market again. Not only can newer smart scales track a bevy of health metrics for multiple members of your household via sophisticated mobile apps, but they’ve also ironed out all the kinks, so it’s easier than ever to track your weight.
Just how smart can a scale be? And which should you buy? If an accurate weight is what’s most important to you, don’t sweat the decision too much. All of these scales I've tested are quite accurate. My highest and lowest weights never varied by more than 0.6 pounds across all of them—that means getting one of the cheaper models will suffice. But if you’re serious about weight loss or physical training, you’ll probably want to get further into the weeds with additional body metrics. That includes the wireless format, and the overall usability and robustness of the hardware and software. It’s here where I’ve spent the bulk of my testing time to find the best smart scale.
Updated December 2025: We've added the Etekcity EFS-A591S-KUS and Arboleaf Body Fat Scale CS20W.
How Do Smart Scales Work?
Smart scales come in two basic flavors: Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The former connects directly to your phone to sync its readings. The latter uses your home’s wireless network to sync readings straight to the cloud, which your phone’s app can then access. Wi-Fi scales are more expensive but more versatile. While older scales often featured erratic wireless connections, newer models have had many of their kinks worked out—and firmware updates have improved connectivity.
Virtually all smart scales use the same type of system to gauge your additional vitals: bioelectrical impedance analysis, which involves sending a minuscule electric current up one leg and measuring what happens when it comes down the other side. Some mathematical magic converts all of this into any number of derived measurements about things like your body’s percentage of fat, water, and bone; body-mass index; and, sometimes, arcana like your basal metabolic rate, a measure of your body’s energy consumption at rest. All the scales I tested can sync data with Apple Health and Google's Health Connect, either directly or by passing data via the app.
When Is the Best Time to Weigh Yourself?
Most experts say that the best time to weigh in is first thing in the morning, before you’ve eaten and after you’ve used the restroom. The main reason for this is consistency: Weighing at the same time every day is the best way to ensure that consecutive weigh-ins are taken under conditions that are as controlled as possible. Since eating and drinking will cause your weight to fluctuate considerably, weighing yourself on an empty stomach means you’re getting an apples-to-apples comparison each morning.
As a small bonus, your weight is usually at its lowest right after you wake up, so you potentially stand to give yourself a gentle confidence boost by stepping on the scale then instead of after dinner.
Best Smart Scale Overall
Early Withings scales weren't great, dragged down perhaps by complications related to the company changing ownership a few too many times in the past decade. Now back in the hands of its cofounder, Withings is doing things right again, starting with the Body Comp, a much more advanced version of its earlier Body Cardio scale, which suffered from a few flaws. In contrast, the experience here is quick and painless: Step on the new Wi-Fi-enabled Body Comp and it (very) quickly runs through a series of measurements, starting with your weight and moving on to a variety of biomarkers that include heart rate, various fat and muscle measurements, vascular age, and electrodermal activity—which measures “skin response via sweat gland stimulation in your feet.” Strangely, the scale’s heart rate measurement is regularly skewed about 10 beats per minute too fast. It’s capped off with the day’s weather report and even a forecast for air quality in your area. After the crawl of personal data, I’ve come to rely on seeing the weather on the Body Comp’s bright color display first thing each morning.
The company has resolved longstanding issues around the user having to stand in the perfect spot to get readings, and its app has matured impressively over the past few years. That’s good because this scale isn’t cheap. It’s the most expensive I’ve tested to date. But as an unintentional weight-watcher, I think it’s worth it. The Withings app tracks data for up to eight users seemingly forever; I now have readings on Withings devices going back to 2010 and hope to keep the streak going well into the future.
Runner-Up
Etekcity’s smart scale offers a bevy of features you’d normally pay through the nose for, including Wi-Fi connectivity, a bright color display, and long-term tracking of 14 biometrics that are quickly synced to your smartphone via the VeSync app (a kind of do-everything app that’s used across a broad range of home appliances). The scale, fortunately, doesn’t suffer from being part of this broader environment, offering an easy-to-understand interface that quickly syncs after each session and tracks your vitals by week, month, quarter, and year. It supports multiple users, and a baby mode adds extra flexibility.
The hardware is sleek and clean, and the display can be customized to showcase up to nine metrics you select, rotating across the screen after each weigh-in, so you don't need to turn to the app at all unless you really want to drill down into specifics. It can even connect to Alexa devices if you want to announce your weight loss success to the entire house.
Best Budget Scale
Wyze has built its entire business by offering smart home technology at a fraction of the price of other brands, and its products always manage to be capable and well-made. Its latest scale is the Wyze Scale X, an update of its old, no-frills Wyze Scale. The Bluetooth-only device displays your weight on its LED screen; you’ll need to turn to the Wyze app to get additional metrics—13 in total, including muscle mass, visceral fat, and BMR measurements.
You can share the scale with up to eight users, and there are even modes for babies, pets, and luggage, so you don’t screw up your stats before you go on a trip. Save the scary weigh-ins for when you get back. As with most Wyze products, it’s an amazing value, as sale events have brought the price as low as $20.
Best Full-Body-Scan Scale
In recent months, a new style of smart scale has hit the market in earnest. So-called full-body scanners or body composition scales are designed with a retractable handle that adds two or four extra hand-situated electrodes to the four positioned under your feet. Ostensibly, this gives you a more in-depth look at body metrics than you can get from foot-based scanning alone, which can’t really “see” above the waist.
In practice, these scales provide the same type of information as simpler scales—Runstar's FG2015 tracks 20 metrics and supports 24 users—but they also break down data by body part. Want a fat analysis for your left arm or the muscle content in your right leg? Runstar’s app, Starfit, will give you the breakdown. How useful is that information? If you’re training to be a pro arm wrestler—or better yet, if you’re trying to shed some weight from your gut—maybe you need that kind of detail. For the average slob tech journalist who’s just trying to make sure he can keep fitting into his pants, perhaps overkill.
Even if you don’t need all the extra limb-based information, there’s something to be said for the design, which affixes the data screen to the handles, so you can see it from a few feet away instead of squinting at the ground, where, for me, it is very hard to see. The unit is also rechargeable via a standard USB-C cable, which frees you from the tyranny of batteries. A full charge lasts about three months. The only real downside is that the unit is Bluetooth only.
The scale can be garish to look at, though mercifully, the unit has silver pads, not gold as they appear in photos, which is at least a bit classier. The price is also right: At $135, it’s cheaper than Withings and less expensive than other full-body scanners.
Other Smart Scales
Renpho MorphoScan for $150: The Renpho MorphoScan full-body scanner looks surprisingly similar to the Runstar FG2015, including a near-identical display attached to the handlebars. Well, spoiler alert, they are basically the same scale. They even use the same app to collect data (and you can even use both scales simultaneously with it). The only reason this scale isn’t our top pick for the category is that it’s $15 more expensive. You can rest assured that a price war is looming.
Arboleaf Body Fat Scale CS20W for $40: This affordable Bluetooth scale isn’t the most eye-catching I’ve tested, owing to its big silver electrodes and an oversized display that comes across as a bit garish. While weight is easy to make out, the six additional statistics showcased are difficult to read, all displayed simultaneously. I like the Arboleaf app better than the scale, where five more metrics can be found in addition to the seven above, each featuring a helpful explanation when tapping on it. It’s a solid deal at this price, but the upsell to get an “intelligent interpretation report” for an extra $40 per year is probably safe to skip.
Hume Health Body Pod for $183: Hume Health’s Body Pod, another full-body scanner with handles, is heavily advertised—at least to the apps on my phone—and touted (by Hume) as the Next Big Thing in the world of body management. While the app is indeed glossy and inviting, I was shocked to discover how flimsy the hardware felt, that it lacked Wi-Fi, and that some features are locked behind a $100-a-year Hume Plus subscription plan. It works fine enough, but you can get results that are just as good with a cheaper device.
Garmin Index S2 for $191: Five years after its release, the Index S2 is still Garmin’s current model, a surprise for a company otherwise obsessed with fitness. It’s still noteworthy for its lovely color display, which walks you through its six body metrics (for up to 16 users) with each weigh-in. The display also provides your weight trend over time in graphical form and can even display the weather. The scale connects directly to Wi-Fi and Garmin’s cloud-based storage system, so you don’t need a phone nearby to track your progress, as with Bluetooth-only scales. A phone running the Garmin Connect app (Android, iOS) is handy, so you can keep track of everything over time. Unfortunately, as health apps go, Connect is a bit of a bear, so expect a learning curve—especially if you want to make changes to the way the scale works. You can turn its various LCD-screen widgets on or off in the app, but finding everything can be difficult due to the daunting scope of the Garmin ecosystem. The color screen is nice at first, but ultimately adds little to the package.
Omron BCM-500 for $92: With its large LCD panel, quartet of onboard buttons, and oversize silver electrodes, the Omron BCM-500 is an eye-catching masterwork of brutalist design. If your bathroom is decked out in concrete and wrought iron, this scale will fit right in. The Bluetooth unit syncs with Omron’s HeartAdvisor app (Android, iOS), but it provides all six of its body metrics directly on the scale, cycling through them with each weigh-in (for up to four users). It can be difficult to read the label for each of the data points, in part because the LCD isn’t backlit, but the app is somewhat easier to follow, offering front-page graphs of weight, skeletal muscle, and body fat. On the other hand, the presentation is rather clinical, and the app is surprisingly slow to sync. For a scale without a Wi-Fi connection, it’s rather expensive too.
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