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Time For A Wi-Fi Bathroom Scale?

I used to be a prodigious diet soda drinker. To the point that people noticed. To other people, diet soda consumption was my "thing". Really.

But those days are over - my 2013 resolution was to cut artificial sweeteners entirely out of my diet.

Now, I don't know if there's anything wrong with diet soda. I don't know if artificial sweeteners are in any way unhealthy, or if diet soda is associated with weight gain, or anything. I doubt that any of that is true, actually. 

But I do believe in moderation, and I figured it was time to stop compulsively pounding Diet Mountain Dew and Coke Zero.

Two months in, and I really barely miss diet soda anymore. But it's time to dial the resolution thing up a bit, and drop some weight. 

Also, this gives me an excuse to add a new gadget! My 6-year-old and I were at the Apple Store yesterday, and I noticed that they're selling wi-fi scales - that track your weight and BMI every day. 

There are two that we're considering - discussion after the jump. 

The Withings Wifi Body Scale (above right) and the FitBit Aria (left) are the two wifi-connected scales you read the most about. 

They're both available in white and black. Both have LCD readouts. Both use an electric current to test your body mass index. 

The Withings costs about $20-30 more (About $150 for the Withings, $130 for the Aria), and both have iOS apps. While people generally like the FitBit Aria's online tools better, those FitBit tools can function with either scale. 

The scales work the same way - you weigh yourself, and it automatically logs the time/date, your weight and BMI - and makes that data available on the web, with pretty graphs and goals. Both will even publish your stats to Twitter or Facebook. (I will do neither... at least not for a while.)

While there are a lot of side-by-side reviews of the scales online, I'm not going to buy both of them for review purposes. 

In fact, I'm going to cut to the chase - we're going with the Withings, based on the fact that I like its squares-instead-of-circles design a little bit more (Ooh... like standing on an iPad!) and because it's universally regarded as having a somewhat higher build quality and being easier to read.  

I don't have any other FitBit items and don't intend to get any at this point, so the Aria's primary selling point - its ability to integrate into the larger FitBit ecosystem - doesn't really resonate with me at all. 

I'll have a review for the Withings Wifi Body Scale up when it arrives in a week or so. For today, though, it's off to pick up a Craigslist AirPort Extreme! (I'll have a full review up for THAT item, shortly.) 

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