Does anyone use or have any recommendations for a solid at-home body composition scale? Preferably in the $200 or less range.

I know they won't be as accurate as a DEXA scan, but I'd like something to track body fat, muscle mass, bone density, visceral fat, BMR, etc. and a body map.

I've done some looking around online, and it seems like info is all over the place on which are most accurate or work best, so I have come to you guys....

I have used a Garmin Index scale for a few years and it works just fine. I use Garmin Connect for all the health stuff so it integrates into that for me.

I don't think any are accurate. I have a garmin. It has showed me at 29% even though at a fancy gym where you hold the handles it shows 18% body fat. I plan on buying calipers and you can enter your starting body fat back into garmin. Then it will be close and move with your weight and probably stay within a given range of accuracy . I don't see how any scale less than 4500 dollars is going to show the metrics accurately.

I bought a Hume body pod after being duped by YouTube advertisement. It told me my body fat percent was 13%, and while I'm leaning ish just isn't standard photo references I'm 20-22%. Based on that difference alone I'd pass on the Hume.

Edited to add - I decided to just get a dexa scan at the local sports fitness doc.

I have a renpho, and it's trash tracking anything but body weight. I dropped 23lbs, but have melt all my strength, and it says I've lost only 1%bf.

I've started just taking pictures first thing when I wake up and uploading to chatgpt. It says I was 20% before and now in the 12-13% range. It'll comment on chest separation, striations, etc so I feel it's pretty darn accurate.

I've liked my Withings scale, but it's a cheaper one. They have more advanced ones now. All of these may not be very accurate but as long as they are constant you can track changes.

I've been using a Withings scale and it's good for measuring trends. The numbers won't compare to a Dexa scan though.

I got a scan done recently and my body fat was 15.6%. The Withings would generally show ~7.5% and that's not on the athlete setting.

We use a cheap one by Fit Index we got on Amazon. It's surprisingly accurate and the free app works great. We've had it for about 5 years.

They're all garbage. Keep a scale at home and spring for a quarterly scan.

I don't trust them. It's fun to use, but I can't imagine they're very accurate. I use InBody at my gym. My BF% fluctuates wildly. Just looking back, I went from 17% body fat to 14.5% while also gaining 3 pounds. And I'm positive that wasn't 3 pounds of pure muscle while I also lost fat.

I think over the course of time, if you do a rolling average, and can control for level of body hydration, muscle water, even electrolytes in your blood, you'd get a pretty good trend. But For me it's just too far off to trust for anything other than a vague idea of what may be going on.

Agree with spending on a BodPod analysis, or even DXA once or twice a year. The rest of the time, just use the mirror and a scale.

How do the places with a Dexa scan work? Can you just pay for the scan or do they try to upsell you on their products or services.

Not cheap but my wife bought an InBody scale. The fancy ones at the gym or Dr give the same results, they just track more details. The home one has all you need. Weight, muscle mass and upper/lower allocation, fat and visceral fat, etc.

Thanks for the replies. I figured this was kind of a crap shoot for accurate results. I guess it's good to know I can probably get the same performance out of a $50 one vs spending $200.

BubbaLu said:

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How do the places with a Dexa scan work? Can you just pay for the scan or do they try to upsell you on their products or services.

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Good question, as I'm not sure how it works either, but I would like to get it done.

You can get a DEXA scan at the Huffines Institute for $85 if you're in B/CS. Takes about 30 minutes for the scan and review. They have all sorts of testing available.

https://huffines-institute.tamu.edu/physical-readiness-testing-facility/

Thanks dave99 that helped me figure out what I was looking for. I was searching around San Antonio and the closest places are up in the Austin area. They all looked like medspas. So, a basic scan runs $100-$300 depending on place and add-ons.

I have one of the more advanced Withings scales because I also wanted vascular age / cardio checkup features. Doesn't work at all for that.

I "splurged" for the Garmin scale just to have something that easily syncs to Garmin Connect without having to download third party apps to bridge a connection.

I've been happy with it. I look at the trends for body fat, muscle, etc., but really completely ignore that data. Mainly just use it to weight in every morning after waking up and see weekly, monthly, etc. trends.

Pretty sure most of these are only useful for weight tracking.

I just did a 6 month 23ish pound bulk and InBody said I gained zero muscle mass and 3.5% more body fat in that time period. The math just doesn't math. Seems highly dependent on hydration, time of day, how much food you've eaten recently etc...., need to replicate conditions which is super hard to do.

I have been using the InBody that my gym has. Between early January till today, my weight fluctated as high as 184 and most recently as low as 177. My bf% fluctuated as well, both up and down during this time, as low as 13.6 to as high as 17.3, average during this time was about 15%.

Today, I did it again, but got a DXA scan right after. It said I was at 13.6% bodyfat, at 182 lbs. However, the DXA machine recorded me as 17.7% at 183lbs. I'm sure if I did repeat DXA scans at the same time as this InBody test, I could come up with a correlation between the two. But to me, the mirror and a regular scale is mostly what I need. Calipers might actually be better too - not for calculation of bf%, but just tracking how much I can pinch.

I have lost a lot of interest in using BF scales. Honestly, the mirror and how your clothes fit is still the best way to know you're BF% is where you want it. Almost all scales are inaccurate or inconsistent. Heck, Dexa can be inconsistent. But the key is to try to use them under the same conditions each time to get an overall general idea. I just wouldn't waste money on one. As has been mentioned already, find somewhere with a Dexa and get one occasionally. If your gym has an InBody or equivalent, just use that under the same conditions every few weeks or each month or whatever, with the knowledge its likely not accurate but at least you can get an idea if you are going up or down over time and if you want a general idea of your lean body mass. But don't fret too much over a single reading. Again, clothes and mirror....

My inexpensive one is very consistent and at least fairly accurate. It's just become a habit to check it daily. I've cross-checked it by doing 3 DEXA scans over the last 5 years and it's always surprisingly close to what I get at home. Also used to do the Navy BF test on myself and it correlates well.

I have an Arboleaf one from amazon and I think it stinks.

Today I got a Dexa scan and it pretty much matched what my scale said BF percentage (within 0.5%) and lean body mass. I don't know if the scale got lucky or if it might be somewhat accurate.

I just had a DEXA scan done on Monday and results from that were about 3 points lower for BF than what my Garmin Index scale shows, so I'm at least going the right direction with the more accurate tool.

Dad said:

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I have an Arboleaf one from amazon and I think it stinks.

Today I got a Dexa scan and it pretty much matched what my scale said BF percentage (within 0.5%) and lean body mass. I don't know if the scale got lucky or if it might be somewhat accurate.

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Are you saying that even though you think the Arboleaf stinks, it actually did pretty well?

That was my takeaway, but maybe it stinks from stepping on it barefoot or something. I've never smelled mine.

Aggietaco said:

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They're all garbage. Keep a scale at home and spring for a quarterly scan.

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any insight as to where can you get a cheap cash-pay DEXA in CS without having to go to the doctor?

AgEng06 said:

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Dad said:

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I have an Arboleaf one from amazon and I think it stinks.

Today I got a Dexa scan and it pretty much matched what my scale said BF percentage (within 0.5%) and lean body mass. I don't know if the scale got lucky or if it might be somewhat accurate.

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Are you saying that even though you think the Arboleaf stinks, it actually did pretty well?

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Yes. I decided it was no good because it kept saying my lean body mass was getting lower and lower even though I was putting on lots of muscle and getting stronger, but I didn't know that even when growing muscle it goes down due to weight loss due to loss of water weight as you get smaller. The second thing was I saw a review on youtube where a guy got a few Dexa scans some period of time apart and tested them against several brands and the Arboleaf was the worst rated in his little test.

I am going for to get another Dexa scan after losing another 20 pounds and see how it compares next time. If it is close again I will feel better about it.

Cool. Thanks for the info.

gunan01 said:

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Aggietaco said:

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They're all garbage. Keep a scale at home and spring for a quarterly scan.

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any insight as to where can you get a cheap cash-pay DEXA in CS without having to go to the doctor?

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Sorry, I'm not in BCS.

See my earlier post. You can get one done on campus for $85.

I think it's been well covered, but anything less than a DEXA is wildly inaccurate (sometimes up to 20%). A body comp scale at home is okay if you want to track trends, just so long as you recognize you're measuring a pattern (hopefully in the "healthier" direction) but the ACTUAL values are way different.

For the person who asked: DEXA uses low-dose X-rays to scan your whole body. You may flat and motionless on a table while an overhead X-ray source passes up and down over your whole body. Takes about 10 minutes. The sensors in the "bed" your laying on interpret the X-rays and correlate them into densities for fat, muscle, bone, and miscellaneous. In my experience, the computer that controls the machine compiles the results within minutes of the scan completing. The operator went over what all the values meant. I did mine at a a yoga studio that allows me to sign up via the web. I'm in DFW so cost was about $150. The studio didn't try to up-charge me, which is nice. Accuracy is within 5% and it's recommended you go back to very 4-6 months so track progress over time.

I paid around d $105 from some place called Dexafit that has multiple locations in the Houston area.

Full disclosure, I asked for more info because I had just ordered the Arboleaf from Amazon and was waiting for it to arrive.

I got it yesterday, and I have to say I'm impressed. I had a DEXA scan last week that put me at 19.2% BF, whereas this morning the Arboleaf said I was 18.5%. The segmental analysis (muscle/fat in each arm, leg, torso) was also very comparable to the DEXA, as were the other measurements. For $85ish, I'm happy with that.

I'm having another DEXA in 5 weeks, so I'll continue to track with the scale and see how it trends and compares soon.