OMRON HBF-516B Full Body Sensor Body Composition Monitor and Scale

Pros: Used this to accompany my flux capacitor while building my proton excellerator which i plan to sell to the Russians

Cons: Out of the 8 that i had bought, 3 were DOA.....they caused a massive time rift in the multideminsional time matrix....causing a dual-quantum paradox causing me to lose a few family memebers.....dont buy this is you value your life and that of others....in case your wondering why i gave it 4 eggs....i hate my family

Pros: - All measurements are fairly consistent with in a short time frame.

- Only the scale give meaningful readings

Cons: When I got the scale, it put my body fat at 27 and body age at a (oh noes) 60. I'm only 23 and I'm only slightly out of shape so I doubt those readings are accurate. But I thought they would serve as a a bench mark to track progression.

after 3 weeks of cardio, the scale report my body fat at 29.5% with a body age of 61. It's basically saying starting gym has caused my health to decrease.

Never the less, I can now wear my belt 1 hole smaller. So I'm not really bothered by the readings.

Other Thoughts: It's just a scale. nothing more.

The other measures are not even good to track progression.

Pros: Gives lots of information, so of which is even useful. Body fat reading within 2% of a Bod Pod. An HBF-400 reported 4% higher than the Bod Pod and an HBF-300 reported 4% lower.

Cons: I can do 5 measurements and get 5 different answers for body fat %. In just 7 days I have seen readings as low as 24.5%, and as high as 25.6%, taken first thing in the morning every day. This does however match up closely with a Bod Pod test that put my body fat at 26.9%, so for me it's pretty accurate. An HBF-400 (feet only) said I was over 30%. An HBF-300 (hands only) put me at 23%, so the HBF-516B is in between those two extremes.

The Body Age feature is rather dubious. I'm 50 and it says I have a body age of 73. At least that's down from 74. :-|

Other Thoughts: The absolute accuracy of ANY of these BIA devices is going to be questionable. For populations of people they are pretty accurate, but for any one individual, they can be off by quite a bit. Their value is in reporting changes over time.

I take 3 readings every morning and average them, then I average the daily averages to get a number for the week. If you don't do that you are at the mercy of one reading, and depending on time of day and hydration level (among other things), that can vary by more than 3%. It will be highest in the morning because you are dehydrated (relatively speaking), so it's important to be consistent with when you take your readings.