ESF00+ Smart Fitness Scale review: Track the good, bad, & BMI

The ESF00+ scale is what we’d call sleek. The white scale with its rounded edges features 8mm tempered glass on top for a polished look. It would fit right into any high-end modern bathroom with ease. Measuring 1-inch by 14.8-inches by 11.8-inches, it’s a bit wider than a standard scale. It’s also fairly lightweight, so it’s easy to move around the house. At the base of the scale, off to the right a bit, is a MicroUSB port used for charging the scale. A MicroUSB to USB conversion cable is included in the box. There’s also a tape measure, so you can track the inches as they fall away.

The real showstopper is the black middle panel on the scale. Once you step on the scale, you can view all sorts of data, including the percentage of fat, muscle, water, and bone. There’s also data on your weight (tracked down to 0.1 pounds), basal metabolic rate (BMR), and body mass index (BMI data). At the bottom of the black panel are BMI ToolTips — these are essentially bars that light up red and green to alert you if you’re in the right zones. If you see some red bars, that means some of your body’s composition is in “Excess.” The app will show a detailed breakdown of what areas are in excess, high, low, or standard.

The Etekcity scale uses the VeSync app to record and track data. VeSync is a hub where you can add smart home devices from Etekcity, Cosori, and Levoit. You can even set up rooms and multiple users.

Setting up the Etekcity Smart Fitness Scale couldn’t be easier: Take it out of the box, peel the instructions off the face of the scale, and charge. It charges completely in about three hours. I went through that process about a month ago, and still haven’t had to charge it again even with daily use.

Connecting it to the app is a breeze. It synced immediately, then requested that we assign it a room and customize the scale icon (we didn’t, we like the generic scale picture.) The app asks a few general questions about age, height, and gender, and then you’ re ready to go. The unit activates the moment you step on it. You can see the scale’s smarts at work as it takes a moment to register the weight and other data mentioned above.

The scale uses bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) technology to estimate your body’s composition. Basically, when you step on the scale, it sends tiny electronic currents through the body to analyze key biometric measurements. Don’t worry, you don’t feel a thing. What that does is provide the app with some general information about you, including:

• weight
• BMI
• body fat
• Fat-free body weight
• subcutaneous fat
• Visceral fat
• Body water
• Bone Mass
• muscles
• protein
• BMR
• Metabolic age

You can track this data with the app on the phone and see your progress in those categories. You can also send the data to a friend or medical professional via email. If your phone isn’t nearby and the app isn’t open when you step on the scale, it won’t track the data. That’s the only real bummer, but you can still look down at the scale and see some of that data if you have decent eyesight — though those red bars at the base of the display are hard to miss.

Overall, we like the Etekcity scale and the massive amounts of data it provides, though you definitely need real medical equipment to accurately measure all the data it collects. Still, having some kind of a baseline is useful — especially if you’re trying to get into shape and see no real progress initially. In that vein, we absolutely loved the 0.1-pound increments and the composition of our weight. After a couple of weeks of working out, we could see that the muscle mass number increased.

Is there a better alternative?