I am reviewing these scales retrospectively because it was an impulse buy. The night before I had decided that I was going to get fitter in my fifties and that I needed two thing to get started. The first was a set of digital scales, I hadn’t given it any though I just marched into Argos and bought a set. It happened to be the Ronpho Elis smart body scale digital.
No research, no customer journey as probably most people do. Heck I didn’t even know if it was going to be compatible with my second purchase. Here is a affiliate link to the Renpho Digital Scales.
What Do The Scales Measure
Taken from Ronpho website:
13 Body Composition Measurements
Use Bio-electrical Impedance Analysis (BIA) technology, this digital weight scale not only shows body weight, but also syncs data to your App including body fat, water, muscle mass, BMI, BMR, bone mass, protein, visceral fat, skeletal muscle and other data. It provides data reference and makes you know more data clearly about health conditions.
Cool right, but actually what are all those measurements and what is the ideal measurements? I guess the clues are in the colour of the measurements, on my first weigh in I got green, blue, yellow and red. One of yellow ones was for my BMI, one of the measurements I understood, Body Mass Index. It was 25.6 which just put me over into the overweight category, one month later I am now a healthy 24.3BMI.
Below
Normal
To High
Obese
The other yellow stat is subcutaneous fat at 23.3% which is far too much. Basically subcutaneous fat is the spare tyre around our waist, but that also includes visceral fat. Subcutaneous fat is the fat that we store just under our skin. The fat we may be able to feel on our arms and legs is subcutaneous fat. We have written a basic guide to loosing stubborn belly fat and links will be at the bottom of the page to more detailed explanations.
Skeletal Muscle
This measurement was blue, meaning my muscles are poor. It’s not surprising after sitting at a computer desk for the last 5 years and no proper exercise. My skeletal muscle is just 47.8%, so pair that with my body fat percentage that makes me proper skinny fat.
If you look at the guidelines below I am well below the average for my age.
The normal ranges for muscle mass are as follows: Data from Withings
| Age | Women | Men |
| 20-39 | 63% – 75,5% | 75% – 89% |
| 40-59 | 62% – 73,5% | 73% – 86% |
| 60-79 | 60% – 72,5% | 70% – 84% |
Body Fat Percentage
This is my red measurement, the one that shocked me the most, it started at 26.7% body fat. After my food sensitivity test I had to change the way I ate and opted for an intermittent fasting lifestyle. After a month with my changed eating habits I am now down to 25.8% body fat percentage. Still a long way to go, the other measurements the scales record are further down the page.
Ease Of Use
It was pretty simple, straight out of the box, stand on the scales and there is your weight in an instant. Then I decided to look at the literature that came with it. next stage was to download the App onto the phone. Registered for an account to save data, you can have unlimited users on the app so you can track all the family.
The next stage was to pair it with my second purchase an Apple Watch and then to Health on the iPhone. Well it turns out I didn’t need to do anything because I opened the Health App and it had already discovered and paired by bluetooth the digital scales. It really was as simple as that, the great thing is that you can see the measurements trending down, and hopefully not upwards.
I try to weigh myself at the same time every day, usually in the morning after my one and only black coffee.
Value For Money
I paid around £18 in Argos but listed online they are £25, you can also get them at Amazon for £17.59. Looking at the Renpho range they do more expensive scales but they all monitor the same 13 Body Composition Measurements. So unless its style you’re looking for I cant see why you would pay more for the same technology. Looking at other brands of digital bathroom scales (there are many) they all have the same measurements so in hindsight the Renpho are great value for Money.
Work in Progress
The BMI Stat are then from the NHS website here