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by chrisseaton 3283 days ago
Even if you use a pencil you still have one more step that on a smart scale! You said the advantage was it's faster and it isn't.
1 comments

You'd think, but the setup and configuration on these things can take forever. And nevermind the things that can and occasionally do go wrong and need fixing.
It took literally 5 minutes to set up my scale to connect to Wifi and I've had to change the battery once in 3 years.

You're vastly overestimating the friction here.

Yes I don't think connected devices are always the best, but the person I was replying to was doing the classic informercial black-and-white video impression of someone pretending something is more difficult than it actually is.
No, that's not what I did at all. The GP of my comment was looking for an alternative recommendation. Spending >$100 for a fancy pants scale as a convenient alternative is incredibly wasteful and encourages activity (daily or mulime times daily) that is counter productive.
A high quality regular scale (of similar build quality, design, and construction) to a Withings scale is $40-60

The Withings is $100. So it’s up to the consumer of the simplicity, ease of use, lack of friction in monitoring, and saving of time is worth $40-60 extra.

If I save 30-45 mins of my time over the life of the scale: yes it is. Just from time alone (not taking other benefits into account yet) That’s not wasteful - that’s economical long term.

You’re promoting such short term thinking.

Not at all. I live a digital life where I automate a ridiculous amount of activity.

This is just an exercise in false progress. The average scale has an error range of 10-20 oz for a 200lb load. Automating something of little value (i.e. Daily or more frequent body measurements) doesn't make it more valuable.

And my Withings scale needs its 4xAA batteries replaced a couple of times a year. Wifi power, I guess.