If you’re deciding which Withings smart scale to buy, we’ve got the lowdown on models in the new range so you can compare
and choose the right one
If you want to improve your fitness, a smart scale is a solid investment. It’ll provide you with measurements apart from weight to focus on, and a reliable and data-rich way to track your progress.
Smart scales use bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to determine body composition. The scale itself is embedded with electrodes – as is the retractable handle in the case of the Body Scan.
The electrodes send a mild, painless electrical current up through your feet and the scale measures your body’s resistance to it. Lean tissue is a better conductor than fat, bone or skin, so the scale can build up a picture of your body by the speed and strength of the returning current. It tells you much more than an ordinary weighing scale.
In this article, we’ll be discussing the latest range of Withings smart scales: the Body Smart, the Body Comp and the Body Scan.
But you can still buy older Withings models, including the Body Cardio (Amazon US, $179.95; Withings UK, £149.95). Although older lines are being phased out and replaced by the new range, we still rate the Body Cardio as one of the best smart scales we’ve tested. You can find out more about it in our review.
Withings’ smart scales are not cheap but they are among the best available, promising weighing accuracy to 50g, delivering a wide range of metrics and accompanied by a free to use, high-quality app.
You can also export your data to a wide range of other health apps, or for more fitness help, opt to join the paid Withings+ subscription service which costs $/£/€9.95 per month or $/£/€99.50 per year, after an initial three-month free trial.
But if you want one, which one should you buy? Below, we give you a rundown on the prices and features of each.What does a Withings smart scale measure?
All three scales – the Body Smart, the Body Comp and the Body Scan – will provide these measurements:
Fat mass, muscle mass, bone mass
Lean mass %, water %
Visceral fat index – visceral fat is the more worrying fat that wraps around your organs and is distinct from subcutaneous fat
Body mass index – your BMI is based on your body fat percentage. It’s a slightly controversial measurement but, in conjunction with other metrics, can provide useful information to many users
Standing heart rate – an indicator of cardiovascular fitness
Basal metabolic rate – your BMR is the number of calories your body burns at rest (this measurement is coming via a software update later this year)
Metabolic age – based on the number of calories your body burns at rest and compared to others in the same age range (available when BMR arrives)
In the app, you’ll also get a choice of specialist modes: athlete, baby (weight only) and soon, a dedicated pregnancy mode. This will arrive via a software update in the coming months.Body Smart
Price: $99.95/ £99.95
Availability: Buy from Withings US now/ Available from Withings UK Q3 2023
Colour options: Black or white
Power: AAA batteries (Withings estimates one set will last up to 15 months)
Additional features: As well as the measurements shown above, the Body Smart features Eyes Closed Mode. Turn on this feature and your weight won’t be displayed on the scale’s screen. Instead it can show step tracking, encouraging messages or even just air quality or the weather in your location.Body Comp
Price: $199.95/ £189.95
Availability: Buy from Withings US now/ Buy from Withings UK now
Colour options: Black or white
Power: AAA batteries (Withings estimates one set will last for up to 15 months)
Additional features: As well as the measurements shown above, the Body Comp will provide a vascular age, to give more insight into heart health, and a nerve health score. Body Scan
Price: $399.95 (expected)/ £399.95
Availability: US release date TBC (see it at Withings US)/ Buy it from Withings UK now
Colour options: Black
Power: Rechargeable battery with a life of up to one year
Additional features: Like the Body Comp, the Body Scan will provide a vascular age, to give more insight into heart health, and a nerve health score. It’ll also, of course, provide the measurements shown above. But there’s more.
While there are minor differences between the hardware of the Body Smart and the Body Plus, the Body Scan has an additional element: a retractable handle. In addition to the electrodes in the scale itself, there are four more stainless steel electrodes in the handle, which allow for segmental body composition analysis.
What does this mean? Well, smart scales can tell you your body fat percentage to a reasonably accurate degree but only overall. The Body Scan will break this down further to give you the fat and muscle percentage in your arms, legs and torso. It’ll also let you know how you compare to other Withings’ users.
It also contains a 6-lead ECG, which allows for tracking and analysis of the user’s heart rhythm and which can detect worrying heart patterns.
We tested the Body Scan. Find out what we thought in our full review.Which Withings scale should you buy?
For people who are concerned with their fitness, rather than their health, we think that the Body Smart will do everything you want a smart scale to do.
If you want a little more health feedback, the Body Comp is a good option.
And for the smaller number of people who want as much health feedback as possible – with an emphasis on heart health – the Body Scan is undoubtedly the leading product in the market.
But smart scales don’t have to be pricey. If you’re looking for a simpler and much more budget-friendly option, have a look at our round-up of the best smart scales we’ve tested, which features reliable smart scales for as little as $25/ £25.

If there’s one thing that Apple got spot on, it’s the quasi obsessive approach to the stack.
Microsoft wants to launch an AI chip as it looks to establish itself as the Apple of AI, offering a vertically integrated solution for scale-out artificial intelligence. According to the Information (opens in new tab), Microsoft has been working on the chip, codenamed Athena, since 2019 and engineering samples are already available to some Microsoft and OpenAI employees. 2019 was the year when the former invested $1 billion in the latter; so there’s a likely link between the plan for the chip and this first investment.
Other US based companies (Amazon, Google, Facebook) and non-US entities (Tencent, Alibaba) have launched their own custom-built chips for AI with the aim to get a hardware solution that performs better than what is commercially available off the shelf. These processors are essential for inference and large-language model training and right now, Nvidia corners the market with the A100 and the H100. 
In doing so, they are mimicking Apple’s uber-successful vertically integrated, hardware-and-software stack, that’s deployed across billions of devices worldwide. Microsoft unsuccessfully attempted to follow Apple’s footsteps in the consumer market with the ill-fated Windows RT on Arm almost a decade ago but this time around, Microsoft seems to be more in control, and most importantly, not a laggard.Saving billions 
Microsoft has, to put it mildly, embraced artificial intelligence at scale with enthusiasm. It has baked ChatGPT across all its flagship products and services (Bing, Microsoft 365, Github) and it’s only a matter of time before it gets deployed across its entire Azure stack. The biggest obstacle to the rollout is the hardware cost which, according to experts, could reach tens of billions of dollars per year. Microsoft is already collaborating with Nvidia to build a next-generation supercomputer and it is likely that the world’s largest software company may leverage Athena to get better rates or priority from Nvidia in the future.
Other than the fact that about 300 people are working on Athena at Microsoft, the Information also claims that the roadmap for the chip includes “multiple generations” and the first generation will be fabbed using TSMC’s 5nm manufacturing process. Ex-Apple CPU architect, Mike Filippo, is likely to have a hand in that project although his expertise lies more with CPU.
To some extent, Project Athena is a follow up to Project Brainwave, the FPGA-powered system that Microsoft has been using since 2017 when it started dabbling with AI. Back then, Intel Stratix 10 FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) cards were used to produce what now looks like the first draft of Microsoft AI strategy. Should Microsoft follow Google’s step with a TPU-like product, we can expect a lot of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), a relatively low TDP and a laser-focus on peak FLOPs per dollar.
Also check out our list of the best dedicated server and best bare metal hosting

Despite publicly opposing advanced AI development, Musk has an AI project of his own in the works. Here’s what we know.
Despite Elon Musk’s public opposition to advanced AI development due to its potential risks to society, he has taken several steps recently which have caused people to speculate that Musk is working on his own AI project. 
On Monday, in an interview with Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, Musk confirmed those speculations, revealing that he is creating his own AI model called TruthGPT. 
‘An AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans.’@elonmusk tells @TuckerCarlson why he’s creating ‘Truth GPT’ pic.twitter.com/ZylwsfkZfq
Musk defines TruthGPT as a “maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe” in the interview. He later adds that “an AI that cares about understanding the universe is unlikely to annihilate humans.”
Musk opined that ChatGPT is trained to be “politically correct,” which is “simply another way of saying untruthful things,” hence the truth component of his AI model’s name. 
This interview came only a few days after reports of Musk starting his own AI company. 
As first reported by The Wall Street Journal, a Nevada state filing made last month reveals that Musk created a company called X.AI Corp. Musk is listed as the sole director of the company, which has authorized the sale of 100 million shares. 
The name of this AI company relates to Twitter’s new company name, X Corp. Both of the X references in the AI company’s name and Twitter’s new name trace back to Elon’s longtime plan for “X, the everything app,” a multi-faceted app that would serve as a one-stop shop for most users’ needs. 
Musk has recently purchased 10,000 graphic processing units (GPUs) for Twitter, which are crucial for machine learning models, a sign of a potential generative AI project on the horizon, such as his TruthGPT project. 
To further confirm the existence of an AI project in the works, Musk hired new AI talent — engineers Igor Babuschkin and Manuel Kroiss — in early March. 
Musk has previous experience in the AI space as one of the co-founders of OpenAI — the AI research company behind ChatGPT — before pulling out in 2018.