TANITA's BC-554 Ironman, FDA Cleared, World's Only Consumer Multi-Frequency, Full Body Composition Scale

OK... This scale is expensive. In this case, you get what you pay for. Why did I buy a scale that is so expensive? Because I did the research and this scale gives the most details and is super easy to use. You simply pick what button you want to be. (1-4) and you enter your weight, height, and age. Also you can select if you are an athlete...this makes the measurements accurate for people who work out 10+ hours a week. This scale is a must for athletic people because the other scales out there will say that you are fat and out of shape...even though you are looking in the mirror at your finely sculpted six pack abs and rock hard biceps. So how do you use it? You push the number you set up for yourself and stand on it. It gives you your weight and then does the other test. It is absolutely painless, in case you are wondering. Also, it takes between 5-10 seconds to do the measurements. I haven't timed it with a stop watch but it is quick. Then it gives you all this info. Weight, Body Fat%, Body Water%, Muscle Mass (nice), Physical Rating, BMR (This is the calories you need to survive through a day.), Metabolic Age (sweet), Bone Mass, and Visceral Fat (This is the fat you have around your stomach and organs.) Also when you don't need all this info and you just want your weight. There is a quick weigh option that just measures your weight. Very simple, quick and easy. Can you hit these buttons with your big toe to work them? Yes you can. So what do you do with the info? Well I made an excel spreadsheat with charts so that I can keep track of the data and also keep notes on what I did. For example one week I did cardio for an hour every night, in addition to my regular weight training and my body fat% went down, and my muscle weight increased. (awesome) Then another week we had a hurricane, so I didn't do any work out for 5 days straight. I measured myself after this and I was the same weight. Woo hoo, I lucked out right? Wrong...Even though I weighed the same...my fat% was up and my muscle mass was down. (bummer) So this of course motivated me to work out like crazy the next week to get my numbers back in line and even drop some weight. Can your scale do that? Or would you just look at the weight, see that it's the same and say, great I'll take another week off. This scale tells you the truth while other scales don't give you the complete picture of what is going on with your body. I am the type of person that likes to buy the very best and I am very happy with this scale. Bottom line is that this is the best scale...period.

This was the top of the line consumer Tanita scale when I bought it ($115 US), and I'm glad I chose this model. I'm sure I won't use it as much as time goes on, but currently I am using it 3 times a day for the last month and plotting all the readouts in excel. I know you don't care, but just to prove that it does work, I have been constantly adding reps to my workout, and I am seeing results only a scale like this could tell me. My weight is staying constant, but my body fat is dropping by 0.06% per day and my muscle mass is increasing by 0.1 lbs per day. That's 3 lbs of muscle and almost 2% body fat in only a month! I only regret I didnt get this scale sooner. Oh, and it only stores your last measurement, so don't expect to track your changes with just the scale. Their instructions say to take your reading just before your last meal of the day. I also take mine right when I wake up and just before bed, but the afternoon reading seems to be the most reliable (smallest standard deviation from the trend for those math majors out there). If you are what Tanita considers to be an athlete (10 or more hours of workout per week or resting pulse of 60 beats or less), then you definitely need a scale with an athlete mode, bc otherwise your body fat % will be discouragingly high. I have had a few other people take their measurements using this scale (different heights, ages, body types, and genders), and the consensus is that it is pretty accurate for them as well. Yes, it does use electrical resistance for the readings, but you could chew the two AA batteries it uses and not feel anything. (I disclaim any liability for injuries resulting from chewing batteries) The instructions and reading material that come with it are informative and gives you explanations of all the extras (like BMR and visceral fat) along with the healthy ranges for both male and female. If you are serious about getting in better shape, I encourage you to get this scale or one like it. It will motivate you to keep going and think twice about that fourth doughnut. If you just want to lose weight, don't waste your money, any scale can tell you that.

Sometimes you don't know what your missing until you see a better product. The batteries in my previous scale died, and they were odd-sized coin batteries loosely positioned on top of delicate circuitry. I damaged the electronics in my old scale while replacing the batteries, and although I probably should have been more careful during that process, the result was that I needed a new scale. It may sound trivial, but one of the things I like about this Tanita scale is it uses common AA batteries, located in a normal battery housing. Next up on my priotity list for a replacement scale was accurate body fat measurements. As I understand it, bioelectric impedance measurements (i.e. the method used by scales) are not very accurate for measuring body fat, and the inaccuracy can be pretty high for people with excessive body fat, or with very little body fat. But, Tanita has improved the body fat measurement accuracy of this scale by adding an "athletic" mode to increase accuracy for people with low body fat. And, Tanita also provides a somewhat quantitative standard based on resting heart rate and weekly exercise level to help you determine if you should be using this mode. My experience so far indicates this mode is probably a few percentage points more accurate for athletic people. But, I have not yet compared it to a measurement made with hydrostatic weighing, so I can't confirm that with numerical data. This scale also measures weight to the nearest 0.2 pounds, which is an improvement over my previous scale, which rounded to the nearest 0.5 pounds. When you first get this scale, you program it with your gender, age, and height. To measure yourself with the scale, you press a button with your toe and wait about 2 or 3 seconds for a short beep, telling you the scale is ready. Then you step on the scale, and wait 3 or 4 seconds for the scale to take it's measurements. The scale then sequentially displays nine measurements, staring with weight, then body fat %, etc. Some of the measurements have the same untis, so at first I wasn't completely sure how to interpret some of the numbers displayed by the scale. Tanita thought of this, and provided small back-lit icons on the scale to help you identify each measurement as it's displayed. But, the icons are too small to see when you're standing, so you really need to memorize the order in which the measurements are displayed. Overall, this is a great product, and if you fall into the athletic category, the athletic mode makes it better than any other scale I saw for measuring body fat.

I purchased this over 10 years ago, and it's still going strong. As a scale, it's 100% reliable and accurate. The whole family uses it, and it's used multiple times each day. Batteries seem to last forever, as in years. It beeps when its done measuring your weight if you use it as just a scale. This is handy for measuring how much your luggage or boxes weigh when you can't see the read-out (of course, it's not a legal scale for measuring weights for selling or shipping things). The low profile, big numbers, and glass surface make it attractive. It stopped working in its first few months, and it was promptly replaced under warranty by the manufacturer without any hassle. In the decade since it was replaced, it has performed flawlessly. It does not work on soft surfaces like carpets or rugs - it needs to rest on a hard surface. That's its only quirk. The body scan is only meaningful to track changes - I wouldn't trust it for actual measurements of body fat, hydration, BMR, biological age, etc. But you can see how those measurements change from day to day and over the years - and that is meaningful. More importantly, the scale is consistent so long as you use it under the same conditions. For example, it's sensitive to foot moisture (makes sense, skin conductivity), so before and after a shower will give slightly different results. I would purchase this again in a heartbeat, and hope Tanita has a comparable scale come the day this scale ever fails.

This scale has so many functions. It is really cool. As for consistant readings, I get almost the same readings day after day. But if I change how much I eat or exercise more I can see the change. This scale is almost the same as the Tanita top of the line. Except this one lets you view the readings you want, rather then wait for the scale to cycle through the readings. This scale will also cycle through the readins, but you can stop them and go to any reading or let it cycle then go back to any reading you want. Also this has nice big preset number buttons. Which is important since you may be hitting them first thing in the morning when you are not awake yet. This scale also remember more readign from the last time. It has BMR instead of the daily calories reading. I find this scale is very close to another much cheaper Tanita scale in weight and body fat. Of course the cheaper scale doesn't have all the extra readings. My wife finds the metabolic age reading to motivate her. She likes thinking she is younger then she is. (What ever helps...) I like the muscle mass wieght reading along with weight and body fat%. The scale looks really good being half glass. The glass is strong and won't break unless you tried hammering it, etc. It is easy to use and does a reading in about 10-15 seconds. It takes more time if you are moving around as it waits for a reasonably steady weight reading. I wish it had the daily calorie reading and it was more accurate. It would be nice if the body fat could show accuratly that I had burned off half an ounce of fat... But no scale today can do that, or any other method while you are alive. So I will live with the best that is out today, October 2005. Thumbs up.

I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this product. I had been trying to read up on accurate ways of measuring body fat %, and much of what I had read was inconclusive. I didn't want to spend too much, but at the same time wanted to get a quality product. I have had the scale for about 3 weeks now, and all of the readings have been consistant. It gives a lot of information, some of which I don't understand or care to understand, but it gives an accurate weight reading which is the most important. The body fat% may not be perfect, but it is extremely consistant and thus it serves its purpose. Those were the two main things I was looking for in a scale. The rest of the information is interesting and nice to keep in mind. Also, seems well built and not confusing to use. Have read some complaints that it is hard to setup/confusing to use. Read the directions. The icons are a little small to read when the numbers are rolling through, but after using it for a couple times, you know what numbers are coming up and don't even have to try to read the icons. Anyway, I would definitly recommend.

I orded this for my wife after she had gastric bypass surgery. This is the brand her doctors office uses. They told me it was the most accurate. I got it home and put in the battries. Now, it looks nice and has lots of pretty buttons, but that is all it has. The display would not work, no matter what I did accoriding to tech support (which was pain to deal with) I could not get the display to work. Then by pure chance, it worked. But, the weight was not right. I am not a huge guy, but it told me I weighted over 400 lbs. (I was at my doctors office the week before and I weighed 254 lbs). I sent it back and went with a Tanita, but a smaller model, works great. Don't waste your time on this.

This BC-554 Ironman scale is great and repeats well. It has high weight sensitivity at ± 0.2 lb and repeats. I now wish I had bought the even better and more expensive BC-568 that has hand and foot electrodes, for even better fat, muscle, and bone measurements. I use the weight measurement daily and the record the full set of values once per month. As expected, I actually Gained weight for the first month of diet and fairly intense exercise even though I lost fat, because of increased muscle mass. I like the "Metabolic Age" value on the BC-554. It says I was 93 years old before I started exercising and losing weight, lol! Now I am down to 73 years MA (actual age = 68), so I can track my overall physical fitness improvement.

Tanita es de las mejores marcas y está es una báscula super completa.

El producto llegó a tiempo, la caja de la bascula un poco maltratada, pero con instructivos completos. Bastante funcional

Muy buena, con muchas opciones que ayudan a mejorar su eficiencia

Es una porquería si te mides 20 veces seguidas en las mismas condiciones marca diferente cada vez y por mucho. Jamás la recomendaría. Voy a comprar el InBody casero y esta se va a la basura.

Estoy arrepentida debi invertir un poco más y comprar un modelo mejor de Tanita. Me pesé en la báscula de mi Nutrióloga y en esta mía al mismo tiempo y salieron datos muy diferentes. Ambas son Tanita