Personal Weight Scale Recommendations?

[Palladio]

I'm looking to get a person body weight scale. I would love one that gives me more information, like body fat %, BMI, etc. There are several on eBay that have many of these features.

1. Do these work? Are the extra measurements (body fat, BMI, etc.) accurate?

2. Do they last for any length of time, or should I plan on buying a new one every year?

3. What are your brand recommendations?

Thank you for your help!!

 

[catfishhorn]

I don't own one, but my BootCamp instructor does that he uses to measure our stats every two weeks to track our progress, his is an Omicron brand and it seems to be pretty good. Don't know about longevity or anything.

 

[NickDanger]

Take this for what it is worth, which is probably very little, but the notion that you can stand on something and have it tell you much more than how much you weigh is ludicrous. Will it tell your future or if you are 7' tall? Put a dumbbell (not meant as an insult or anything-just an experiment with a piece of iron) on one and see what it says. After that, put a chevy truck on one

 

[catfishhorn]

Here is a link to the one our bootcamp instructor uses. I misspoke above, the brand is OMRON.
Omron scale

So the way this thing works (as I understand it) is that you stand on the metal plates and hold the handlebar (metal also), it then sends an electric current (you can't feel it) through your feet to your hands and measures the resistance in Ohms, fat and muscle have different resistances and it can tell the difference then outputs a fat and muscle % when factored in with your weight and height.

I can tell you that after having been on it every 2 weeks for the past year, that it seems to be accurate, especially when you look at the original baseline measurements from a year ago to now.