The HumeHealth Body Pod ($299.95) calculates a wide range of metrics when you step up for your morning weigh-in, including body fat percentage, bone mass, muscle weight, protein mass, and, of course, weight. The Body Pod takes these measurements both through your feet like a typical smart scale and also from an attached handheld scanner. This scanner allows it to gather more detailed body composition metrics than most competing devices, including a breakdown of the amount of fat and muscle in each of your arms, legs, and torso, similar to that of a DEXA scan. Some will find the Body Pod's unique insights worth the premium despite its lack of a few features we expect in this price range, such as Wi-Fi connectivity. Most buyers are better off with the Etekcity HR Smart Fitness Scale ($79.99), which accurately measures and tracks all the key metrics most people will be interested in for a much more reasonable price, remaining our Editors’ Choice.
Design and Features: A Handle for Additional Data
The HumeHealth Body Pod houses four high-precision weight sensors, a medical-grade measurement chip, and eight frequency sensors in its relatively compact 12.7-by-12.7-by-1.1-inch (LWH) frame. It has a rechargeable lithium-ion battery that promises to last up to a year between charges.
The silver and black handlebar resting on top immediately distinguishes the Body Pod from most other smart scales. To take a reading, you grab the handle, step on the tempered glass platform with bare feet, pull the handle to waist level, and stand up straight. Grip the handle with both hands, holding it away from your body with your arms straight and angled down. It’s attached to a retractable cable that will pull it back into place once you’re done.
The handle has sensors along its length that allow the Body Pod to measure the amount of fat and muscle contained in each of your arms, legs, and torso.
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Beyond those details, the Body Pod gathers information on 17 metrics. These include basal metabolic rate (BMR, the minimum necessary energy needed in an inactive state), body fat mass, body fat percentage, body mass index (BMI, a measure of your body weight in relation to your height), body water, bone mass, fat-free body weight, heart rate, metabolic age, muscle mass, muscle mass percentage, protein mass, protein percent, subcutaneous fat (the fat just under your skin), visceral fat (the deeper fat by your organs), weight (in pounds, kilograms, or stone), and weight control (or how much you need to gain or lose to hit the ideal weight for your age, sex, and height). The Body Pod can measure weight from 9 to 440 pounds (5 to 200 kilograms), with a listed precision within 0.1lbs (50g).
Collected data syncs with the Hume by FitTrack app (for Android and iOS) over Bluetooth. The Body Pod doesn’t have Wi-Fi or any onboard memory, so you’ll need to make sure your phone is nearby, the app is open, and the scale is awake and synced for your metrics to be saved. If you take a reading without your phone at the ready, you’ll see your weight and heart rate pop up on the scale’s 2.8-inch graphical display, and that’s it. None of the measurements will be synced to the app, and you won’t be able to check the rest of the collected metrics for that weigh-in.
Like other smart scales, the Body Pod uses a process called bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) to measure your body composition. Unlike many other more affordable options, you can’t turn off the BIA feature and its associated electrical current for a weight-only reading safe for pregnant women and those with pacemakers and other implanted medical devices.
The even more expensive Withings Body Scan ($399.95) has a similar design and body scan feature. It also uses its handle to take a six-lead ECG to detect atrial fibrillation (irregular heartbeat) and measures electrodermal (sweat gland) activity through your feet, metrics the Body Pod does not offer. It otherwise only measures eight common BIA metrics compared with 17 from the Body Pod, but the Withings Body Scan has Wi-Fi, onboard storage, and a safe mode.
To be clear, if you’re primarily interested in tracking your weight, body fat percentage, and BMI, you do not need to pay hundreds of dollars for a smart scale, as these are relatively ordinary metrics among models that cost far less. The $79.99 Etekcity HR Smart Fitness Scale tracks 14 metrics with a high degree of accuracy, plus it has W-Fi, a weight-only mode, a colorful, customizable display on the scale itself, and an informative and useful app.
Setup and App: Goal Setting and Tracking
The Body Pod's Hume by FitTrack app offers lots of helpful information and works with a variety of third-party services such as Apple, Fitbit, and Garmin. The free version of the app gives you access to all of the readings from the scale, explanations of every metric, and charts documenting each metric over time. Some app features are locked behind a $9.99 monthly subscription fee, including nutrition plans, food tracking, personalized coaching, and a weekly full-body health report. I tested the free version of the app as the paid add-ons relate more to lifestyle management than the scale itself.
To set up the Body Pod, download the Hume by FitTrack app and create an account. Then, fill out your name, gender (male or female), birth date, and height. Then, tap Add Device, put the scale on a hard, flat surface, and tap it with your foot to wake it up. The app will ask permission to access your location and find nearby devices. It uses the latter to find and sync to your scale.
When your scale is synced, the app will ask you to step on and take your first reading and show you the proper form for holding the handle. During setup, the app also walks you through its various features and how to discern the data it collects. Metrics are color-coded, making it easy to compare your data with a scientific benchmark. Orange means the metric needs improvement, yellow is standard, green is good, and blue is excellent.
Next, the app asks permission to access other health data on your phone to better understand your activity and populate a generalized health score. You then set a goal to lose weight, gain weight, or get healthier, and a time frame to reach your target. It then populates weekly benchmarks for you based on that time frame.
Before completing the setup, the app pitches the benefits of a premium subscription and offers a free trial. I declined, and it did not keep asking. However, it did ask me to rate the app nearly every other time I opened it during the course of my testing, with a five-star rating already filled in.
The main page of the app shows your weight, BMR, fat, and muscle in a simple bar chart. You can swipe left on this chart for an overall health score in the premium version. Scroll down for milestones and other information it gathers from your phone or synced services, such as steps and sleep.
The tabs at the bottom navigate through rest of the app. The Plans tab offers access to programs and classes for premium subscribers. The Me tab shows your goals, connected devices, and connected apps. This is also where you can edit your profile or access device settings to change units or set an Active Mode for improved accuracy in your metric calculations if you regularly work out.
The plus icon between the tabs lets you manually enter a weight or heart rate reading, log an exercise, or use the app to live track an exercise. The latter option kept crashing the app for me. Given that it’s not related to the scale’s functionality, I was able to look past this bug easily, but it’s something to be aware of if you're interested in the premium subscription and lifestyle features of the app.
Data from the scale and associated trend charts are available in the Measures tab. Atop this tab is a chart of your data over time. By default, it shows your weight change over the past week, but you can change the metric to any measured by the scale and the time frame to the last month or year.
Note that the chart will be blank when you first start using the scale. It won’t show any data points until you’ve used the scale for a few days. At this point, a week into my testing, the week time frame shows charted data, but the month and year time frames are still blank, likely until I’ve been using the scale for longer.
Scroll down from the chart for a personalized insight. Mine noted that since my body water percentage is low, I’m reducing my potential for fat loss. Tapping Learn More tells me the ideal range and amount of water to consume daily to correct the issue.
Below that, you can find every measured metric broken down into categories like Fit Focus and Body Muscle & Fat. You can tap any metric for an explanation, and to see how your measurement compares with an ideal range. Oddly, these numbers show up in simple white text and do not use the color code of the home page chart.
Body Composition Breakdown Details and Accuracy
Within the app's Measures tab, you can tap the Body view for a graphic showing where the fat and muscle of your arms, legs, and torso lie on a percentile scale compared with other Hume users. The full-body diagram and color coding look cool, but I didn’t find the percentages all that helpful or revealing.
Additional details are available in a section called Body Breakdown within the main Data view. Here, it shows the muscle and fat mass of your arms, legs, and torso as well as a ratio (called Left Arm Fat Rate, for example) of your proportional distribution of that weight compared with the rest of the population. Since my goal is just to lose weight generally, I didn’t find these fat distribution details particularly helpful, but they're interesting. On the muscle side, it did confirm that I might need to put more priority on my arms during strength training, as their muscle mass sits below the average whereas my leg muscle mass is rated as excellent.
Hume claims its Body Breakdown results sit within 3% of a dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, which is essentially a medical imagery test to gauge these same attributes. According to WebMD, the average cost of a single DEXA scan paid out of pocket is roughly $160 to $175, but other sites put the average closer to $300 per scan.
I could not verify these numbers since Hume's Body Breakdown metrics are relatively unique for an at-home measuring device, but they did look anecdotally correct. The Withings Body Scan offers similar metrics, but I couldn't directly compare them with the Body Pod since their respective companion apps don't format them the same. The Hume by FitTrack app does a better job of showing this information than the Withings app, which simply tracks your body composition changes over time.
The Body Pod's more commonplace measurements did hold up well under scrutiny. Its weight readings matched those from both the Withings Body Scan and the Etekcity Scale within a few tenths of a pound. The Body Pod was not precise enough to show a different number when I stepped on the scale with and without my 6.8-ounce Google Pixel 7a, but it did change based on my current state of dress. Over the course of my testing, it also accurately ebbed and flowed to match my anecdotal expectations based on my activity and diet from the night before. The rest of the metrics, including both body fat and BMI, also matched those from Etekcity, and they were within a couple of tenths of the reading of the handheld Omron HBF-306C body fat monitoring device used at many gyms.
HumeHealth suggests that the Body Pod's sensor handles make it more accurate than a smart scale with fewer BIA frequencies, but for common metrics like weight, body fat, and BMI, we found the difference to be negligible compared with results from the much less expensive Etekcity scale that just measures through your feet. Both devices track your gains and losses for these metrics with a reasonable degree of accuracy and can give you a solid understanding of your health.
The Verdict: Unique and Pricey Insights
Because the HumeHealth Body Pod offers a similar body breakdown to a DEXA scan, it makes sense that it costs much more than most smart scales. If you're looking to track your progress toward a specific body composition goal, like gaining muscle mass in your arms or legs or toning your midsection, its unique insights make it easy to look past shortcomings like the lack of Wi-Fi connectivity and onboard storage. If you're mostly interested in tracking more common metrics like BMI, fat, and weight, however, you can save a lot of money with our Editors' Choice winner, the well-rounded Etekcity HR Smart Fitness Scale.
Despite missing some basic usability features, the HumeHealth Body Pod smart scale offers a wealth of body composition metrics and insights that help justify its lofty price.
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