Beurer BF700 Diagnostic Bathroom Scale with App | Detailed full body analysis including BMI calculation | 8 user profiles with 30 memory spaces each | App compatible for full health monitoring

I wanted to add some balance to the reviews here. I bought these scales after getting a Beurer wristband. Of the blue tooth scales these were quite competitively priced and I knew from the wristband it would be attractively designed. I was not disappointed, the scales are smooth and black with a glass top and do look really good in our bathroom. A sort of high tech sleek and simplistic look.Beurer have a general connection software, so the same app is used for all of their kit. The software found the scales easily and it does not take long to connect to them and register yourself as a user. I also installed the software on my wife's phone and registered her as a user.In use, you stand on the scales in bare feet and it instantly tells you weight, body fat%, muscle % and water content %. A while later if you walk near the scales with your phone running the app it will download all of your data to the app, It will download several days worth if you haven't been near them with your phone for a while. It always recognises which are my measurements and which belong to my wife. We weigh different amounts but there are only 10lbs or so in it. Measurement to measurement seems repeatable and there is no bring to life calibration process. I don't know how accurate they are in all the measurements but they are consistent, weight wise they are in agreement with other scales I have used.So all in all if you link with your smart phone these are really excellent. Maybe the software has been updated since the first reviewer but we have had no issues. I am running iPhone 5 and my wife 5S.

I really wanted to like these scales and to overcome all the difficulties that people had been experiencing (reading the reviews on here and on Which? magazine's member website - Which? had them as a best buy!).I saw that there was now an Android app available so thought that Beurer must have got their act together at last or, perhaps, that other reviewers weren't as persistent or tech savvy a I am. I really wanted them to work for me as I was attracted to the claim by Which? that they are very good a measuring small changes in weight.And here's the crux of this review... despite my abject desire for them to be okay, they really are absolute rubbish. All I can assume is that when Which? tested them, they used a perfect stack of weights, lowered perfectly onto the exact same point of the scales EVERY time: i.e. not real-world usage. When I stood on them (being sure to have them level, and on a hard floor) and taking great care to try and stand with my feet in the same place on them each time (as much as is humanly possible), their performance was simply woeful. They would record my weight as differing by as much as 1.2kg from one minute to the next. Now, I can go up and down by 1.2kg over a whole day depending on how I eat and exercise (or don't) but not in a single minute - the evaporating water off my body out of the shower couldn't account for more than a few grams. And I was careful to be sure I had wet feet like many of the reviewers have suggested is necessary to make all the functions work. Anyway, the claim that they are accurate for small changes in weight is a total nonsense. They can't even record NO changes in weight accurately.So that was the biggest thing that I wanted them for blown out of the water. What else?..Well, the app and connectivity. OK, so my smartphone (Galaxy Note 4) is not actually on the approved list Beurer put out. But it is a top-of-the-range high end smartphone with all the same whistles and bells connectivity-wise as any of the models that they say do work (and I bought it to replace a Galaxy S4 which is two years older but listed as compatible). Anyway, I thought it was almost certainly laziness or indolence on Beurer's part in not testing many phones rather than a problem with the phone itself. And the jury's out on whether it's that the Galaxy Note 4 doesn't work with the software or whether the software is just rubbish (as many people with listed compatible phones have stated).I did manage to make it connect. But it was hit and miss and incredibly time consuming and clunky to set up in the first place. There was no consistency and it failed more often than it connected. The binding didn't work either. Overall it was rubbish but I might have lived with that had the scales actually been able to record my weight accurately (their prime task); I could easily put the figures into a spreadsheet.So, after a week of trying REALLY hard with them (you've got to believe me here, I don't give up easily), they simply had to go back to Amazon for a refund (which they did without hesitation and credited my account as soon as I'd left the scales at the Collect Plus station).I then decided, given the lack of trust in Which?'s testing methodology, that the only way to see if any scales were accurate would be to try them out personally. Off to a department store at Bluewater to try some out...They only had Salter scales opened on display which all displayed exactly the same weight from one attempt to the next but none of them had connectivity.Luckily, the sales assistant was brilliant (aren't they always in John Lewis?) and actually opened a box with a new set of TERRAILLON WEBCOACH PRIME scales in and sourced some batteries (not included) for me to try them out. Alas, Amazon don't seem to stock this model.And they worked. Same weight showed every time. Even when placing them in slightly different locations. And they were just £50, the same as the useless Beurer BF700s, so I bought them.And they do the job. Yes, the app is still pretty clunky (is it really so hard to design a decent app these days? - there are thousands of apps out there that work beautifully) and it won't remember the user binding, requiring that to be 're-bound' on each synchronisation session but, apart from that, they measure my weight accurately (I think, but I don't have my own testing lab), measure small changes in weight accurately (my prime concern) and actually DO manage to upload the information to my smartphone without too much trouble. The sync process works every time once you get used to the way it does things.So that's it... really don't buy the Beurer BF700s under any circumstances because they DON'T measure accurately. Okay maybe mine were faulty, but given all the other poor reviews...?Instead go for the TERRAILLON WEBCOACH PRIME. £49.99 at John Lewis. They do everything I was hoping to get from the Beurers and at the same price too. The difference is they actually work and so does the app.I really think Which? needs to tell us how they do the testing. I bet it doesn't involve a real person standing on them again and again. I hope future tests are changed to reflect the way bathroom scales are used in the real world rather than in a lab under test conditions.And maybe Which? should test some Terraillon and Salter scales in future too?Sorry for the really long review, but it all needed saying and I believe that other readers who were interested in the Beurers and wanted a best buy but were limited in choice by the few brands reviewed by Which? could really do worse than get the Terraillon Webcoach Prime which I stumbled on by accident (although I went looking) and actually do the job quite well.PS. I'll get round to contacting Terraillon's support one day and see if I can get the lack of binding fixed.

Which? magazine gave the BF700 scales a "Superb" rating in 2015, yet when I look at Amazon reviews and reviews of the App in the Apple and Google Play Stores I see a lot of people seem dissatisfied - especially with Bluetooth connectivity. So what did I find?Background research showed the scales are German made, there is a range of Beurer devices and scale models, the App does seem to be receiving updates, I think Beurer and Sanitas have substantial commonality (probably the same company), and there is an opensource OpenScale Pro app in the Google Play store that I can fall back on if the Beurer App is too troublesome. As I think I am smart and fairly technically capable I figured I could probably get the scales working well and so could score a bargain by buying them at their current fairly low price.The App is a bit more complex to use than it need be because it is designed to support multiple different types of devices, such as blood pressure monitors. The graphing initially shows the last few measurements but you can switch it to display a week at a time, a month at a time etc. and swipe left or right to change time ranges.I enabled the optional web site connection. For one reason, although you can export measurements by emailing a .CSV file from the App, if you want to get both dates and times in the spreadsheet you need to export from the website.There are three places you can set the units. For the scales in the App in Settings - Devices - BF700. For the App display in the user profile. Online for the optional online displays.You can set the units to Imperial or metric… but note that Imperial is in lbs (as in the US) and does not display Stones and Pounds as many older folk in the UK may expect. (Stop Press: I see other user's comments say it can display stones and pounds - so maybe I didn't dig deep enough into the settings)I did run into communication problems when I tried to add a second user to the App (as the App lured me into doing). Check the FAQ - you should not do this. Each user should use their own phone or tablet (at least for the BF700 model of scales). If you stick to this you probably will not encounter any communication problems. I have now been using the scales for several months. I weigh myself daily on them, launch the App (the scales do not have to be visibly on for the App to connect to them and download your measurements, if you are lazy you do not have to download the measurements every time you weigh yourself).If you make the same mistake as me and get communication problems because you created multiple users in the app on the same phone/tablet then the best thing to do is:1. On the phone or tablet (I was using iPad), delete the App and re-install it.2. Sign into your user account in the App3. Use the reset button on the scales to reset them. (press the reset button on the bottom of the scales for 3 seconds until "del" is shown in the display)4. When reconnecting to the scales do so as a 'new user'. This won't create a new user account in the App... just the matching account on the scales.DevicesIn addition to an iPad and iPhones, I got the scales working with an Android Doro 8035, running Android 7.1.2, (which is not listed as a compatible device but it does work). There was one problem in that when initially doing the Bluetooth Pairing the screen to enter the PIN on the phone did not appear. I managed to solve this problem by swiping down from the top of the screen and trying to switch to the Bluetooth pairing part of the OS. Had to try several times. Not quite sure if I ended up entering the PIN in the system panel or whether swiping down from the top of the screen just made it possible for the PIN entry screen to appear while the App was running.(In general all pairing should be managed through the App and not using the IOS/Android Bluetooth Settings)AccuracyIf you live in an old Victorian house with floorboards, the floor may not be as flat and level as you think. Even with hardboard and lino ontop of the floorboards, there may be unevenness. My advice is move the scales around and test by pressing down with your fingers on opposing corners to detect any rocking and move the scales if they rock. This is the best way to ensure all the measurements are accurate. I suspect this is a common issue with all scales of this type. As per other reviews - don't even think of using them on a carpeted floor.I received advice from a friend to look for scales which measure to the second decimal place (in kg). I happily ignored that advice. I weighed my clothes and they vary from about 0.5-1.5 kg without shoes, phone, or jacket. Add other factors and you really don't need better than 0.1kg precision.[We had two sets of old mechanical scales in the house which I had come to distrust because they disagreed with each other and measurements at the Doctor's… I calibrated them using the Beurer scale and found the better of the two was under-reading by 3%... Though I won't be using them anymore given the problems of needing to manually zero them, and reading errors due to parallax]Overall - I am very happy with my purchase. I gave 4 stars because they are working well for me after a bit of experimentation, and as a result they are good value, even though they could be made more user friendly.