The Best Smart Scales for Tracking Weight and Body Composition (2026)
Wired · LC · trust 28/100
After years of sleepiness, the smart scale world has finally woken up—driven almost certainly by the GLP-1 craze, as millions of consumers find themselves wondering if those weekly jabs are actually working.
What was previously a category occupied by dated gear has abruptly exploded, and for good reason. Today’s smart scales don’t just report on your weight; they do things like measure your heart rate and break down muscle composition, and some can even give you an eye on your heart health, courtesy of technology like integrated ECG systems. Through mobile apps, they can track all of this information over time.
The big shift in the category in the past year has been a flood of new full-body scanners hitting the market from all corners. Essentially bathroom scales with handlebar-based scanners, these don’t just use bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to measure conductivity (and, thus, body fat percentage) through your feet. They can now scan through your hands, too, giving you a much more holistic (and ostensibly accurate) look at your body metrics than a floor scale will provide. I’ve personally seen body fat percentage numbers swing up to 6 percent between the two types of scales. (Spoiler: The full-body scanner data is always higher.)
Do you really need all that information? I’ve long suggested that it’s really the trend line that matters most, not the absolute numbers, and as long as your metrics are headed in the right direction, it doesn’t matter quite as much whether things are off by a small percentage. Consistent weigh-ins are the most important part of the process, along with tracking that information over time to determine whether your diet and workout regimen (or medication routine) is getting you the results you need.
Mind you, scale prices are headed up, and new full-body scanners can now top $600 for top-tier tech. That’s part of the reason why I still recommend a standard scale for most users, as these devices are considerably less expensive, and the results they offer are likely to be good enough for all but serious athletes.
Either way, this roundup has an option for every type of user.
Updated October 2026: I've added Withings’ BodyScan 2 and new honorable mentions from Runstar, Tanita, and Withings. I've also added scales to avoid and ensured up-to-date prices throughout.
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 generally more expensive but more versatile. While older scales often featured erratic wireless connections, newer models have 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 (BIA), 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 (BMI); and, sometimes, arcana like your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is 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 yourself 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.
Love WIRED? Add us as a preferred source on Google to see more of us.
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 regularly skews about 10 beats per minute too fast. It also reports the day’s weather and even forecasts 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 long-standing 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. 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.
Etekcity’s smart scale offers a bevy of features you’d normally pay for through the nose, including Wi-Fi…
Read the original at Wired →
Open in TruthVane →