Tanita BC-401 White

Great device, missing user manual. And how it all turned out okay.

For me, installing the app, setting up the Bluetooth connection and measuring itself went without any problems. You can weigh yourself with or without using the app, which I find useful. But without starting the app first, the results are not saved, so you will almost always first tap MEASUREMENT -> START MEASUREMENT in the MyTanita app.

You will then hear a beep, and after a second beep the measurement will start. I don't have huge feet (size 43), but my toes, as other people have said, hang over the edge. Is that a problem? Not for me. I find it rather difficult to stand for ten seconds without wiggling back and forth like a drunk.

Then the results appear: your weight of course, but also many other things, such as your BMI and your fat percentage. Some of this data is said to be inherently unreliable, but hey, our motto is: a lot of data is good data.

Your weight is put in a graph, which looks very bald! And what next? On this point Tanita scores an unsatisfactory, because the App help and the user manual completely fail. I was therefore about to send the scale back to the store but, curious as I am, I fiddled a bit further, until….

Let me summarize. The app is pretty basic, but there's also a website, and it's called http://tanitaservices-production.uhp-software.com. If you log in there with the username and password of the app, a whole new world will open up for you. On your mobile or, better yet, on your desktop, the data is much clearer, there are more setting options, and (on the PC) also in large format. By default you enter the weight chart (MY TRENDS), but you also have MY MEASUREMENTS. On this page you can cast a measurement in the form of a very slick and professional-looking PDF, but you can also save all measurements as a CSV file, so that you can import them into (for example) Excel. This is more for the real data junkies among us.

The website is also useful because you can share your results with your partner (never, I hear someone yell), or with your dietitian. This without embarrassing them with unnecessary e-mails and WhatsApp messages.

But it's kind of a weird situation that you need an app to weigh yourself (oops, I mean analyze your BODY COMPOSITION), and then do the interpretation better outside of that app. The app is Spartan. Not in the good sense of being economical and effective, but in the sense that you have no idea what you can do and how.

My conclusions:

1. The scale is accurate and quite consistent, at least when it comes to weight (I checked). I prefer to take all other results with a grain of salt.

2. The device is small and expensive compared to other brands, but if your shoe size does not exceed 44 then you can and should live with that. Remember that this model is cheap (hum) because the company saves on material costs. The model from one step higher immediately costs well over a hundred euros.

3. I'm a sucker for functionality and don't care much for design. In one of the many nonsense reviews that can be found on the internet, I read that the look is very 2010. Why, and who says that, and why 2010 and not 2011? I think it looks good with its glass footboard and yes, I chose the white version because the black one was out of stock. The compact size has a nice side effect: tilted 90 degrees, the thing is on the bookcase, brotherly surrounded by all my slimming literature.

4. I had no problems with the Bluetooth connection setup or with its stability, something many people have run into: see the commentary in the Google Play Store. I suspect this was a clunky update, and of course you can never rule out another clunky update coming out next week. This is inherent to the use of many modern devices and a risk you will have to take: if the software doesn't work, then the thing itself is immediately useless.

5. The purpose and operation of the app are completely opaque on a number of points. Tanita explains in detail how much fat you should or should not have in your body, but declines to give the most basic explanation of how to USE the software. This will cause many people to drop out.

I'm glad I didn't send the scale back, but with some effort and luck I found out about the capabilities of the app and the site. You can still make such a great piece of hardware and software, but if users only get to know how it works through pain and effort, improvement is desperately needed. Despite this, however, I can heartily recommend this Tanita.

still shows the same weight after several measurements

I was hesitant to buy this product, because many reviews indicated that the weighing platform is very small... I got used to it very quickly and I'm just happy that it doesn't take up so much space.