For a few years now, fitness trackers from Fitbit and others have motivated scores of people to improve their health and stay trim and fit.
But since you can’t improve what you can’t measure, a smart bathroom scale like the Fitbit Aria will come in handy for tracking how well you’re doing.
The Aria looks just like any other electronic weighing scale, with an LCD panel that shows your weight and fat composition readings, though pick it up and you’d find that its build quality surpasses that of cheaper bathroom scales sold at a hypermart, thanks to the use of tempered glass for its top surface.
The underside of the device comprises 16 protruding bubbles that help to distribute your weight evenly. There’s also a battery compartment that holds four AA-size batteries.
You can set up the Aria through a web browser on a mobile device by connecting to the Aria’s wireless access point. I tried this at first, but somehow the scale couldn’t be detected by my Android tablet even after a few tries.
I resorted to downloading the Aria’s setup desktop application, which took me through a process that includes signing up for a Fitbit account, giving the scale a name, entering my initials and finally, connecting the Aria to my Wi-Fi network. The whole process took about five minutes or so.
The Aria supports up to eight users, who can be registered by the primary user by sending out invitation e-mails through the Fitbit online dashboard. Each user is recognised based on his or her weight profile.
Besides measuring your weight, the Aria is capable of calculating your body fat percentage by using bioimpedance analysis, which sends a small electric signal through the body.
Because of this, Fitbit does not recommend that the Aria be used by people with an electrical implant, such as a heart pacemaker. Pregnant women should also consult their doctors before using the Aria.
Guest users can measure their weight, but not their body fat percentage.
After stepping on the Aria with my bare feet, the scale takes a couple of seconds to record my weight and body fat percentage. The data is then uploaded to my Fitbit dashboard in another few seconds. My weight reading was consistent with a recent measurement taken at a medical centre.
Note though that the weight of the body may change throughout the day based on your water and food intake, so it’s best to take your weight readings in the morning if you’re on a weight-loss regime.
Available from Challenger and Courts for S$188, the Fitbit Aria works best if you’ve already invested in Fitbit’s ecosystem or plan to do so, since you’ll get to see the results of your Fitbit-based fitness regime on a single dashboard, which also lets you log your diet and find out how many calories you need to cut each day to achieve your weight goals.
