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body composition monitoring scale

I would like to apologize because this thread has probably been already posted but, to be honest, the search function is hard to use for a noob like me...

So, I would like to buy a scale for christmas to monitor my body composition (weight, fat, maybe water mass ...) but I have a few questions:

-Are they accurate? precise?
-which one should i get? brand? any on sales?
-are there any alternative as easy as a scale where i can step on it?

Thanks!

Health/Nutrition

I have a Tanita body

Submitted by jsk85 on December 22, 2008 - 12:39

I have a Tanita body composition scale...(glass surface, got it as a wedding gift, so don't know the exact model off-hand). As far as my experiences go...

It seems to be consistent with weight and BF% readings as well as body water, etc...
It's accuracy is debatable in my mind. My BF% numbers seem high, especially since I also own a hand-held analyzer. Both seem to be consistent in themselves, but are about 5-8% different, so that gives you the idea of what kind of range of acuracy you're dealing with. I've never had a professional analysis, but I'm geussing I fall between the 2 analyses.

The Tanita one works well as a scale, allows you to save your age, height, sex profile (a few of them)....it's a little heavy as a unit, probably about 8lbs or so, but I like it.

the hand-held analyzer is definately cheaper (~30) and is also easy to use. It does however give you another piece of equipment lying around. Oddly enough, they used the hand-held unit I have at the gym I go to when doing initial training program meetings...I thought they'd have something a little more scientific. Let me look to see if I can get you a link to this

Edit: here's a link to the hand-held one [url]http://bigfitness.com/bofatan.html[/url] but either I have a scaled down model or they've been marked up significantly in the past couple years...still cheaper than a scale, but not as much

Akatsuki wrote:-Are they

Submitted by TriSooner on December 22, 2008 - 13:02

[quote=Akatsuki]-Are they accurate? precise?
-which one should i get? brand? any on sales?
-are there any alternative as easy as a scale where i can step on it? [/quote] "Accurate"? I guess so. Probably more so than skin calipers and the online "How tall are you/How much do you weigh?" formulae. Not as accurate as the dunk tank, but a bit more feasible. Tanita scales are everywhere online. I don't know of any alternative as convenient as stepping on a scale and it telling you how [s]much disgusting fat you are carrying around[/s] sexy you are.