A couple of weeks ago, I received a brand new Taylor Smart Scale from EatSmart Products. I love new gadgets and was so excited to get it set up.
The Taylor Smart Scale:
—Uses bluetooth technology to transfer your data wirelessly to a tablet or smart phone through the free SMARTRACK app.
—Tracks weight, and estimates body fat, body water and muscle mass, and has a goal setting and tracking feature through the SMARTRACK app and can connect with other apps like myfitnesspal, mapmyfitness and RunKeeper as well.
—Calculates daily calorie intake needed to maintain current weight.
—Supports up to 8 users.
Josh and I set up the scale right before Christmas, perfect timing to start tracking our weight, huh?! The set up was a little more complicated than I had expected. Once we downloaded the SMARTRACK app, it took a little while to get our phones paired to the scale. It wasn’t the most intuitive, but after 30 minutes of fumbling around, we finally got it to work. Setting up your profile in the app was pretty easy – gender, body style (normal or athlete), birthday, height, activity level, and goal weight.
We each stepped on the scale with the app open on our phones. It took a few tries for the scale to transmit the data to the app, but eventually Josh and I had our base weight, body fat, body water, muscle mass, and the calculated calorie intake stored.
The scale is supposed to be able to recognize which user it is each time you step on the scale based on weight. If the app is active near the scale, then it will transmit the data via bluetooth. For the next couple of weeks, we both weighed ourselves daily (except for the days we were traveling for the holidays) to test out the scale. Each time we weighed ourselves, it took a couple of attempts to get the data transmitted to the app. If the scale doesn’t recognize your user profile, it will not calculate body fat, body water, muscle mass, or calories. On average, it took about 2-3 attempts before the scale would recognize us correctly and record the information. Sometimes it would get confused about which user if we both stepped on one after another even though Josh and I have a pretty large weight difference. Eventually we started clearing out the scale each time (by stepping on the edge and weighting for the scale to register 0.0) and it seemed to work better.
Prior to this new toy, we were using an older version of this Tanita scale that tracked weight, body fat percentage, and body water for up to two people. For the price of $59.95 on Amazon, there are definitely a number of pros despite some of the cons (even in comparison to what I was used to):
—Tracks more than one or two users. Though for us, there’s just the two of us using it.
—While the app has some room for improvement (see cons list), it is nice to be able to store your data points somewhere. I am not going to lose sleep if I am up/down a pound from day-to-day, but it is nice to be able to see historic changes where in the past, I relied on my memory and how pants fit!
—Since the app tracks everything, this will be a great feature when I am further in marathon training to capture weight and water loss before and after a long run.
—For body weight and water, the app shows your most recent data point and how it compares on a spectrum based on your profile – low (blue), normal (green), moderate (yellow), and high (red).
—The scale is pretty slick and modern looking. The platform is made from tempered glass and looks pretty stylish in our bathroom.
—Good value for the price.
The cons are not so much about the scale as it is about the SMARTRACK app.
—Bluetooth technology is not always perfect so it is expected that data transmission will not be seamless each time.
—The app is fairly basic, it shows a line graph for the data points – body weight, body water, muscle mass, and calculated calorie intake. I wish it would give more details about the different ranges, etc.
—The calculated calorie intake is based on my activity level and profile to maintain current weight. My goal weight is not factored into this calculation. It would be neat to be able to calculate calorie intake to achieve my goal weight. There are a number of programs that do this today, especially online food diaries, so it would be neat to incorporate that with the app.
We will continue to enjoy our new scale, but looking forward to future enhancements in the app.
This is a sponsored post, but all opinions and comments are my own. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions at all about the scale or app.
