Amidst what might end up being one of the more ‘robust’ weeks of the year in terms of new product announcements, I wanted to briefly mention/cover two items I thought were interesting.
Let’s get right into it, cause I’ve gotta get back outside capturing data!
Withings Adds $100/year Apple Health Fee:
I’m putting this solidly in the category of ‘Wait…what?’. In short, Withings, the maker of the original WiFi weigh scale, and generally speaking one of the best bets for a mainstream weight scale, has decided that if you want to update your weight in Apple Health, it’s gonna cost you $99/year going forward. This ‘feature’ will now be rolled into their Withings+, which offers a bunch of other features that most weight scale purchasers simply don’t need.
In response to the backlash, Withings noted that:
A) This won’t apply to existing users, only new users from Oct 13th, 2026
B) That you can export your data to CSV or PDF, for free, as well as other 3rd party sync integrations are free
The problem with CSV/PDF, is that’s virtually useless to end users. There is no standard ‘weight data format’. For the most part, anytime a company skips using an industry standard fitness format and instead says “Oh, we can export as CSV”, that’s as solid red flag for me. Sure, on the surface it sounds good. But in practice it’s just annoying AF.
The kicker is, Withings probably thought they were being clever here by announcing this before the holiday purchasing period, to capture new revenue there. And there’s no product in the sports tech landscape that seems more predictable in sales/discounts than Withings connectd scales. Like clockwork around Black Friday, every…single…year.
Except the thing is, they screwed up and announced this annoying change too close to Black Friday. Now, it wouldn’t surprise me to see many tech sites out there that will caveat their Withings Black Friday deals. I certainly will. Which will drive users to the boatloads of even cheaper random connected scales that do nothing more than measure weight.
And as I’ve proven many times over, when it comes to basic weight measurement, even the cheapest scales on the market get it correct. Inversely, when it comes to body fat and BMI measurement, virtually no fancy scales are getting that right. Thus, if you just want weight, Withings is saying: “buy the cheaper competitor scales”.
After all, this connected scale here costs $20, has an astonishing 40,000 units per month sold on Amazon (I don’t think I’ve ever seen any electronic product that high before), and has 4.7/5.0 ratings. And of course, Apple Health integration is free (along with Google, Fitbit, etc…).
The same goes for this $34 travel weight scale that I use. It’s tiny, fits easily in the bottom of my suitcase without weighing much (~2 pounds/1kg), but still syncs to Apple Health and everything else on the planet. And the accuracy is spot-on with all the expensive scales I’ve tested.
Point being, Withings has long been the premium-priced scale with a few more bells and whistles, but moves like this will quickly alienate future buyers.
Omata is Back?
Silca has announced the acquisition of Omata and, with it, resumed sales of an updated Omata bike computer.
For those not familiar, nearly a decade ago I unboxed the Omata bike computer (photo above). It never ended up having a full review, as there was delay after delay in getting the software ready. And eventually, it fell by the wayside.
The gist of the Omata is that it’s a watch/gauge style bike commuter that simplifies things to just what you see on the display. Behind the scenes, it’s still recording extra data to review later and/or upload to Strava. Internally, it’s got GPS as well as Bluetooth & ANT+. So it can connect to power meters and heart rate sensors.
But in terms of what you see during the ride? Just three metrics:
– Distance
– Speed
– Ascent
– Time
It uses analog hands to do this, which are made in partnership with Seiko. Oh, they’ve upgraded the charging to be USB-C, which gets it about 17 hours of battery life.
The company says, though, that this batch is a “limited re-release” of the unit, though they don’t really say how limited that is. Unlike Withings above though, they do support industry-standardFIT files, and can sync to various platforms/apps like most other bike computers. Note, though, that they are iOS-only, however, and don’t have an Android app.
The price is $800, which is obviously the most expensive bike computer on the market. You choose between two versions of it, seen below (Imperial and Metric):
You can head over to Silca’s site to enter your credit card.
While I think it looks really pretty on a shelf with other bike-themed things, it’s just not super practical out on the road for me. I want details like power and other metrics. But of course, there are plenty of people who prefer a more ‘minimalist’ experience – yet still want at least the core/basic metrics seen above.
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With that – thanks for reading!
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