Polar's new smart scale wants to help you lose a few pounds
The Polar Balance offers personalized feedback and advice to help you reach your weight-loss goals.
The $99 Polar Balance wants to give you a new way to manage your diet and exercise. The scale can do more than just measure your weight, and may actually be able to help you shed some of that holiday excess.
Here's how it works: You begin by setting a target weight in the Polar Flow mobile app on Android or iOS. The Balance scale will then help you reach this weight using data from Polar Flow and a compatible Polar fitness tracker.
Each time you weigh in with the Balance, the data will automatically be shared to your Polar fitness tracker. This will help keep you motivated to reaching your weight-loss goal. Each day the tracker will also display an activity goal that is tailored to you based on your desired weight loss.
The Balance's weight-loss speedometer (pictured above) is the secret behind the scale's weight loss aid. The graphic gives you an easy way to see if you're on track to reaching your goals. You can see if you're losing or gaining weight, whether you should be more active, or eating less.
In addition to keeping track of your activities and weight, the Balance will also provide motivational feedback and advice to help encourage you to increase your daily activity or decrease caloric intake.
The Balance is compatible with the Polar Loop, Loop 2, Loop Crystal, M400 and V800. Compatibility with the new A360 fitness tracker is said to be coming soon.
Polar isn't the first company to offer a connected scale. Withings first introduced a Wi-Fi smart scale in 2009, while the Fitbit Aria was released in 2012. The trend of connected scales continued to grow in 2015, with new additions from both Garmin and Xiaomi.
Smart scales tend to measure more than just weight. Common features include measuring body mass index, body fat percentage, water percentage and muscle mass. While the Balance will calculate your body mass index in the Flow app, it doesn't measure any other metrics.
The Polar Balance is available now in black and white. UK and Australian details aren't yet available, but the US price converts to about £70 or AU$135.
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