Bluntness

I've also been told I have little tact, so if this offends you simply ride on.

Thursday, April 13, 2017

Withngs Fail

In what seems to be a long time ago, I used to be in shape.  I had a fixed schedule, a fixed shift, I worked out with free weights, rode my bicycle, and then International Paper decided to send my job to Krakow, Poland.  Life changed.  With my new job I lost everything that had been fixed.  Back then I used an Tanita Ironman analyzer to track my body fat, muscle, water, bone, but with needing to have a fully flexible schedule that stopped.  Well, now I have a fixed shift which works well for me, however the Ironman is a little old, the algorithms outdated, so I decided to update.  My first inclination was to go with Garmin since I've always found their products to be extremely reliable... however, there was a lot of positive feedback about the Withings Body Analyzer, and and it was $30 cheaper.
Right off the bat there were some accuracy issues, one day I'd gain 4 pounds and the next day lose 5.  I actually did a week and a half comparative study between the Withings and the old Ironman and the only consistent thing between the 2 was bone density.  Still, at my age my Ironman days are over and I told myself  "I can work with this."  Well, on April 9 the Withings stopped syncing with the App I use to track my stats.  Of course I did all the initial fix-it routines, rebooting, disconnecting and reconnecting it from my wifi, and nothing.  So I contacted Withings, whose parent company is Nokia.  Yesterday they escalated my problem to a Tier 3 complaint.  And I'm waiting.


And I'm also thinking that maybe I shouldn't have been so cheap.
Looking back over some of the glowing reviews, I suspect most of those opinions were from individuals who were not seriously looking for an actual analyzer, but rather something they can step on once a week.  I used mine daily.  Right now the data I get needs to be manually keyed into the App, which is a total fail of what this scale, this analyzer, is supposed to be doing.    

3 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. I use a Garmin Fenix HR 3 (pronounced phoenix) that tracks everything.

      Delete
  2. I'll say that the Withings blood pressure monitor is amazing - the most accurate and consistent and very easy. I started getting a bad taste for Withings with their a ActivePop watch. It looks great but once you replace the battery it losses its water resistance (every watch will unless the company takes it back - now jeweler can reseal it. Their scale is a complete fail! Like you I have the up 3 down 5 up 4 down 3. I can live with that BUT for some stupid they made weight measurement a manual selection on the bottom of the scale. This changes randomly almost daily except when I want to change it back to imperial. Never again Withings never again.

    ReplyDelete