Fitbit Aria Scale

I have worn a Fitbit activity tracker for a long time. I enjoy it and the calorie estimation based on my 'daily activity' is really helpful in managing my weight. I figured I should try out the Fitbit Aria, their wifi enabled scale.

It is beautiful and does what it claims -- ONCE YOU GET IT TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET. My experience was terrible and it doesn't seem uncommon. You need to have a very basic home configuration with DHCP active and few repeaters or extenders.

That said, now that it is online I am happy. At $130 it probably costs too much for what it is, but that is the price of early adoption. If you aren't a Fitbit user, it makes NO SENSE at all for you.

End of day, its just a scale with wifi but I enjoy it.

Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale

Jason Weisberger is Boing Boing's publisher. He often does what he ought, instead of what he should. On instagram and twitter he is @jlw

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http://twitter.com/m0bilitee m0bilitee

I have one of these, and unfortunately it’s miserably defective. It always weights over 8-10 pounds my actual weight. Fitbit help wanted me to use it in my garage (cement floor). Minnesota + garage = ubercold so that’s not a solution (that didn’t make a difference anyway) It often detects when nothing is on it so goodbye batteries. Not happy here, though love my Fitbit tracker.
- TooGoodToCheck
  
  Is it just a problem of needing a flat/hard surface? Like, could you set it on a small sheet of plywood to get the same effect?
  - http://twitter.com/m0bilitee m0bilitee
    
    Yep, tried that. Linolium, flat board, put it in the kitchen on hardwood floor. They felt the flat board solution wasn’t necessarily adequate.
    - TooGoodToCheck
      
      I’ll preface this by saying that my knowledge of weight measurement tech is spotty at best, but. . .
      
      that sounds like total bullshit.
      - dbergen
        
        What part is bullshit?
        
        I own the scale as well and can confirm the totally different measurements depending on the surface, the harder the surface the higher the weight measurement. The hard tile floor in my bathroom measures consistently different from the cement in the garage.
      - Mark Dow
        
        Why would the force on a mechanism depend on the surface supporting it? Is the mechanism connected to the bottom plate, so if it bends differently on a soft surface the reading is inaccurate?
        
        If one weighs a fish by hanging it on a spring scale, does it matter wether it is hung from a rigid bar or a flexible tree branch? No.
- Wordguy
  
  Every scale I’ve ever owned has read 8-10 over…
  - http://twitter.com/m0bilitee m0bilitee
    
    I am comparing this to an old Walmart cheapie and the high scale at the gym, my cheapie is almost always within 2 pounds of the expensive one at the gym. Aria is off on it’s own.
http://twitter.com/popnwave VJ Mike

I’d just put my scale in my office by my router? I usually go there before I hit the bathroom/kitchen in the morning when I wake up anyway :)
duncancreamer

The problem I have with these type of device is that you have to upload your data to somewhere else. I see that as a breach of privacy, for no good reason as I suspect my laptop or even iPhone, could keep track of everything these record just fine.
nixiebunny

Hmmm. How about an app that would take a photo of your scale every morning, OCR your weight, and stick it in your private database?
- KvH
  
  Seriously? Why not get a db app like (on ios) Bento, or I’m sure android has plenty. Then just type the damn number in. Or heck use a text file. OCR for 3 digits?
taylorishere

Works fine for me. I have it in my bathroom. Although, I think the bodyfat percentage is a bit off.
- dbergen
  
  Lol, you don’t think your body fat % swings 10% +/- every 30 seconds?
morcheeba

When I switched my router to 5 GHz (to avoid the cluttered 2.4GHz band in my neighborhood), my scale was the only thing that couldn’t make the transition. So I programmed it to steal the neighbor’s wifi.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=531022789 James C Wise

love mine. it’s accurate and works well with my wifi. bodyfat % is a joke but that’s OK. lost my fitbit :-<
- dbergen
  
  Accurate?
  
  Stand on it 3 times in a row, do you get the same or very similar results? I certainly don’t.
  
  It’s the opposite of accurate.
  - KvH
    
    This doesn’t measure accuracy but consistency. It can be consistent but wildly inaccurate. But then you would at least know the proper offset and adjust the number.
    - dbergen
      
      Please explain how three completely different measurements within a 5 minute period can be accurate but not consistent. I mean, I get the inconsistent part….
Gordon Meyer

The Withings Scale was in this space before Fitbit, and in my view, is better. The display is better and setup is flawless.
- Halloween_Jack
  
  Got one, love it.
- KvH
  
  Same here, plus i tied my fitbit account to my withings account and have the number in both places.
John Whalen

Has anyone test-driven both the Fitbit Flex and the NIke FuelBand? Which is the better product for tracking activity/motivating weight loss?
confu

Who needs stuff like that?

Had no scale for ages and was fine with that. Now I own a scale 10 € worth and I use it maybe twice a year.

And maybe for those who really are into that “self-monitoring” bulls***, err, thing (which I suggest to be pretty disadvantageous for your mental health and overall well-being), why do you need a 130 $ Wifi-capable scale which doesn´t work as intended, does wrong measurements and needs “network-admin skills” to configure it properly, … instead of manually typing in three to six digits per day into that monitoring software of your choice?! Well, even that burns calories ;D

1st world problems…
- Jonathan Badger
  
  If you never needed to monitor your weight because you never tended to gain, then congratulations. Most of us aren’t so lucky. Maybe we don’t need a scale that automatically syncs to the Net, but we certainly need to use one more than “twice a year”.
David Pescovitz

My wife recently bought the Aria. She has never ever messed with network settings on any device and while she did have some challenges getting the Aria to connect at our home, she did ultimately get it to work just fine. But yes, she had to put it in the same room as our router because it wouldn’t work when connecting to wifi via one of our repeaters. I haven’t tried the Withings scale but I can vouch for their blood pressure monitor. A physician friend who is very tech-savvy, and generally critical of consumer medtech, recommended it to me.
- http://boingboing.net/ Jason Weisberger
  
  Do you or she want the spare Fitbit Ultra I have here for you?
James Raybould

I have a FitBit One and I love how easy it is to track activity but it is just such a shame that you can’t get free and open access to the data that you generate.

The last time I asked they told me that I couldn’t get access to the raw data because, and this is a direct quote, “users could use that data to figure out how we calculate our raw data and algorithms so this data is all proprietary.”

I’d love to have access to my OWN data to try and do interesting things with it but alas…
- confu
  
  Jeeez, if you want to access your data, maybe just look at the display.
  How many times a day do you step on a scale?!
  Sorry, I don´t want to be trolling in here, but I just don´t get it.
  Your weigth is fluctuating by 2-6 pounds over a day, that´s pretty normal.
  Step on a scale if your feeling that you gained or lost weight. Gained over the christmas holidays or lost while you were suffering from an infection for example.
  And this will settle within a few days or weeks.
  No need to “big-brother” yourself.
  If you wanna live healthy, just do it and you will notice the effects within a short time; if you need data and figures to notice any improvement, you are probably doing sth. wrong.
  
  No affront, just my opinion :)
  - James Raybould
    
    For me its about the Fitbit One, basically a smart pedometer which can quite accurately track my activity though the day. What I’d like to do is get hold of that raw activity data and see if I can use it to automagically map where I am and where I have been without me even having to feed it any more data.
    
    That and I like to think that it isn’t unreasonable to be able to see the raw data that I am producing!
http://goodsharer.com/ Aloisius

I have a wiithings scale. Works shockingly well even if the fat percentages are probably well off (it is the trend that matters!).
http://anholt.livejournal.com/ Eric Anholt

For anyone looking into these, if you’re interested because you have some goal to do with weight (whatever that goal might be), and especially if you’re interested because you’ve read The Hacker’s Diet, then also check out Beeminder for a solution that lets you attach consequences to not meeting your goals, while it handles everything to do with getting and munging the data coming out of the scale.
http://www.aribraginsky.com lemonkey

Do not store this scale vertically, as it will initially be around 5 pounds off on the first reading. If stored flat, it’s more accurate on the first measurement.
Andy Simmons

I have the Aria scale, and had no problems setting it up, and my network setup is not exactly “basic”. I’ve also been quite happy with it overall, I find that the body fat reading is at least as accurate as — if not more accurate than — any of the several other body fat measuring scales that I’ve owned in my life.