OMRHBF516B - OMRON HBF-516B Full-Body Sensor Body Composition Monitor amp; Scale (Black)

Hard to use. But after learning it gives quite a bit of information.

Buen material

I bought this as a gift for my son He is like to keep track of body composition muscle to fat ratio

I had used a Tanita scale that did body fat percentage, but in various moves it got lost. I'm 68yo now, but I continue to get to the gym 6 days a week to do HIIT, HIRT, and some pretty serious weight training. I wanted to get some objective measures of my progress; and so I bought one of these about 6 months ago or so. I'm just over 6', weigh about 195#, and am reasonably muscular. I also have a set of inexpensive skin calipers that tell me I'm about 15% body fat based on my age. The tables would have me closer to 10% if I was 20-30 yo. I'm assuming that the adjustment would be because your typical 68yo guy doesn't pack much muscle; so the same amount of fat (caliper reading) would represent a higher body fat percentage on the average 68yo than on a 25yo. Then, for example, yesterday I killed off about 700 Calories over 80 minutes doing stuff like 7 rounds of 8 reps of 165# deadlifts and 6 rounds of 8 reps of 205# glute bridges, and etc.The Omron is easy enough to set up to enter your vital stats: age, height, sex; the parameters it needs to help work out BMI and effective age. Getting a measurement is also easy. My problem with this device is the high degree of variability in the readings for body fat, muscle, and visceral fat.Take yesterday for example. My weight was about 195. In the evening, just before bed, my BF% was 11.2%. In the morning, after breakfast, it came in at 19.4%. My weight was the same to within a pound or so. This is a fairly typical span in readings. If it were true, it would have meant I'd put on 18 pounds of fat and shed the same amount of muscle overnight. Of course, it's not true. The probable cause is variability in my level of hydration.My old Tanita scale never showed such variability. I was around 7.5% BF back when I was using it and doing a lot of distance running. These days, I'm more into weight training. My readings from the Tanita never varied more than +/-0.2%. With this Omron, there's a nearly 10% span with readings in the morning always being high on body fat and low on muscle. My temptation is to take the lowest readings as being the most accurate; but I'll admit that there's some ego in that assumption. The average Omron BF measure is close to what the skin caliper tests say for me, given assumptions about my age and typical muscle decline. The lowest Omron BF measure would be about right for an average younger individual with a higher proportion of muscle. TBH, just from looking at myself in a mirror, I'd accept a BF at 10-12% as accurate.Why post all of this here? People that are interested in one of these are looking for a realistic measure of their body composition and an ability to track progress. They should be aware that body hydration is a dominating factor in the accuracy of this unit. That is, drink a lot of water through the day and your BF% reading will drop. Eliminate that water by morning and your BF% reading will shoot up. Also be careful of these readings if you are older or significantly different than the average body type for your age group.Still, you can track progress if you establish a consistent baseline time of day for readings. From what I wrote above, I prefer the end of day, two or three hours after dinner. Don't be surprised if you appear to gain 10 pounds or more of body fat overnight. It's fake news.

Not bad.