Tanita BC554 Ironman Glass InnerScan Body Composition Monitor Elite Series
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List Price: Our Price: $129.99 Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: Health Care See more product details |
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Customer Reviews of Tanita BC554 Ironman Glass InnerScan Body Composition Monitor Elite Series
Customer Review: I would call this scale "the motivator"
Summary: 5 Stars
OK... This scale is expensive. In this case, you get what you pay for. Why did I buy a scale that is so expensive? Because I did the research and this scale gives the most details and is super easy to use. You simply pick what button you want to be. (1-4) and you enter your weight, height, and age. Also you can select if you are an athlete...this makes the measurements accurate for people who work out 10+ hours a week. This scale is a must for athletic people because the other scales out there will say that you are fat and out of shape...even though you are looking in the mirror at your finely sculpted six pack abs and rock hard biceps.
So how do you use it? You push the number you set up for yourself and stand on it. It gives you your weight and then does the other test. It is absolutely painless, in case you are wondering. Also, it takes between 5-10 seconds to do the measurements. I haven't timed it with a stop watch but it is quick.
Then it gives you all this info. Weight, Body Fat%, Body Water%, Muscle Mass (nice), Physical Rating, BMR (This is the calories you need to survive through a day.), Metabolic Age (sweet), Bone Mass, and Visceral Fat (This is the fat you have around your stomach and organs.)
Also when you don't need all this info and you just want your weight. There is a quick weigh option that just measures your weight. Very simple, quick and easy.
Can you hit these buttons with your big toe to work them? Yes you can.
So what do you do with the info? Well I made an excel spreadsheat with charts so that I can keep track of the data and also keep notes on what I did. For example one week I did cardio for an hour every night, in addition to my regular weight training and my body fat% went down, and my muscle weight increased. (awesome) Then another week we had a hurricane, so I didn't do any work out for 5 days straight. I measured myself after this and I was the same weight. Woo hoo, I lucked out right? Wrong...Even though I weighed the same...my fat% was up and my muscle mass was down. (bummer) So this of course motivated me to work out like crazy the next week to get my numbers back in line and even drop some weight. Can your scale do that? Or would you just look at the weight, see that it's the same and say, great I'll take another week off. This scale tells you the truth while other scales don't give you the complete picture of what is going on with your body.
I am the type of person that likes to buy the very best and I am very happy with this scale.
Bottom line is that this is the best scale...period.
Customer Review: Very good within the constraints of bioelectric impedance analysis
Summary: 5 Stars
Sometimes you don't know what your missing until you see a better product. The batteries in my previous scale died, and they were odd-sized coin batteries loosely positioned on top of delicate circuitry. I damaged the electronics in my old scale while replacing the batteries, and although I probably should have been more careful during that process, the result was that I needed a new scale. It may sound trivial, but one of the things I like about this Tanita scale is it uses common AA batteries, located in a normal battery housing.
Next up on my priotity list for a replacement scale was accurate body fat measurements. As I understand it, bioelectric impedance measurements (i.e. the method used by scales) are not very accurate for measuring body fat, and the inaccuracy can be pretty high for people with excessive body fat, or with very little body fat. But, Tanita has improved the body fat measurement accuracy of this scale by adding an "athletic" mode to increase accuracy for people with low body fat. And, Tanita also provides a somewhat quantitative standard based on resting heart rate and weekly exercise level to help you determine if you should be using this mode. My experience so far indicates this mode is probably a few percentage points more accurate for athletic people. But, I have not yet compared it to a measurement made with hydrostatic weighing, so I can't confirm that with numerical data.
This scale also measures weight to the nearest 0.2 pounds, which is an improvement over my previous scale, which rounded to the nearest 0.5 pounds.
When you first get this scale, you program it with your gender, age, and height. To measure yourself with the scale, you press a button with your toe and wait about 2 or 3 seconds for a short beep, telling you the scale is ready. Then you step on the scale, and wait 3 or 4 seconds for the scale to take it's measurements. The scale then sequentially displays nine measurements, staring with weight, then body fat %, etc. Some of the measurements have the same untis, so at first I wasn't completely sure how to interpret some of the numbers displayed by the scale. Tanita thought of this, and provided small back-lit icons on the scale to help you identify each measurement as it's displayed. But, the icons are too small to see when you're standing, so you really need to memorize the order in which the measurements are displayed.
Overall, this is a great product, and if you fall into the athletic category, the athletic mode makes it better than any other scale I saw for measuring body fat.
Customer Review: Great scale--shows real changes in physique over time
Summary: 5 Stars
This was the top of the line consumer Tanita scale when I bought it ($115 US), and I'm glad I chose this model. I'm sure I won't use it as much as time goes on, but currently I am using it 3 times a day for the last month and plotting all the readouts in excel. I know you don't care, but just to prove that it does work, I have been constantly adding reps to my workout, and I am seeing results only a scale like this could tell me. My weight is staying constant, but my body fat is dropping by 0.06% per day and my muscle mass is increasing by 0.1 lbs per day. That's 3 lbs of muscle and almost 2% body fat in only a month! I only regret I didnt get this scale sooner. Oh, and it only stores your last measurement, so don't expect to track your changes with just the scale.
Their instructions say to take your reading just before your last meal of the day. I also take mine right when I wake up and just before bed, but the afternoon reading seems to be the most reliable (smallest standard deviation from the trend for those math majors out there).
If you are what Tanita considers to be an athlete (10 or more hours of workout per week or resting pulse of 60 beats or less), then you definitely need a scale with an athlete mode, bc otherwise your body fat % will be discouragingly high. I have had a few other people take their measurements using this scale (different heights, ages, body types, and genders), and the consensus is that it is pretty accurate for them as well.
Yes, it does use electrical resistance for the readings, but you could chew the two AA batteries it uses and not feel anything. (I disclaim any liability for injuries resulting from chewing batteries)
The instructions and reading material that come with it are informative and gives you explanations of all the extras (like BMR and visceral fat) along with the healthy ranges for both male and female.
If you are serious about getting in better shape, I encourage you to get this scale or one like it. It will motivate you to keep going and think twice about that fourth doughnut. If you just want to lose weight, don't waste your money, any scale can tell you that.
Customer Review: Careful in choosing a Tanita model to fit your needs
Summary: 3 Stars
Great looking scale, just wish they hadn't put stickers on the glass part that leave residue which is close to impossible to remove. There are several types of Tanita scales out for choices in functionality. This "high end" model only really gives you an expanded recall function over most of the others, that recall function is horribly engineered by the way. It only recalls the LAST measurements, shows no statistics and is pretty much useless in my opinion. I use a pad and pen, it works ten times better. The manual that comes with the scale is essentially non-existant, it has a five sentence explanation of what most of the measurements are looking at. It never explains how it comes to these conclusions, mostly for the reason that to explain the calculations, would invariably reveal how innacurate the result set would be. The other issue with this scale is that the icons backlight by LEDs are about a 1/4 inch big, making it impossible to see them when standing on the scale. The only way to recognize the setting that you are currently looking at is by memory or getting off the scale and down on your knees. The accuracy of the weight function seems dead on, however, I have had four people step on this scale and the body fat, muscle mass and other "features" are ridiculously off. One of the people to step on the scale was a nutritionalist who was very familiar with her measurements and it was way off, by at least 20% in fat measurements. The biological age feature is a joke, I change ages daily according to the scale. The thing that I will say is that the fluctuations are registered so that you can see if the measurements are either decreasing or increasing. My suggestion is that if you are interested in these scales, and they do have their merits, go with a much lower end model than this one as it is really not worth the extra fifty or so dollars from much similar models. Go out to Tanita's website and compare them to see what you would like to have as far as options are concerned. For myself, it does give me some record to set goals against and I like that, I just wish I had gone with a more reasonable model that a $100 selection.Customer Review: Great Scale, Lots of Features
Summary: 4 Stars
The one "gotcha" I want to make clear to folks looking for the panacea of body-fat-testing is that it's inherently inaccurate. The nice thing about these scales is that you can use them to "ballpark" your BF. For example, you get on the scale at the same time every day and it always says "30%". That doesn't mean you are 30%, but it means you are likely in the ballpark of 30%.
Then let's say you workout for a month really hard, and the scale is now reading "25%". Again it doesn't mean hard-and-fast that you are 25% BF, it means you have likely lost 5% bodyfat though, which is great.
This scale tries to compensate for the fact that really-fit people can electronically seem to have more body fat because of the muscle they are carrying around by offering an "Athlete" setting for your profile. Unfortunately *I* don't need that setting, but for runners, lifters, etc. you will want to use that setting.
The scale offers I think 10 different stats that it gives you after being weighed which is awesome. The ones I pay the most attention to are:
* Weight
* Body Fat
* Athletic Age
* Visceral Fat
* Muscle Weight
Overall an excellent purchase and excellent scale, especially when compared to other simpler/crappier "BF scales".
The one "ding" I would give it is that the feet on it are set in from the 3 corners of the scale by about a 1/2" or so. What this means is that if you stand on the edge of the scale as you are putting your 2nd foot on it, it's possible to tip the scale down on that side. One time I stepped on the scale on the edge, and picked my other foot off the ground to put it on the scale and it popped up on me. Now I'm more careful about it, but I think if you are a big person with huge feet, this might be a little cumbersome.