Body Fat Monitor Reviews

Tanita Innerscan BC-545 Segmental Body Composition Monitor

Tanita has announced in the US its new BC-545 "segmental" body fat monitor. However, late in 2007 no details were available from the company's own website, nor was it available at online sites like Amazon.com.

British sites, however, feature it extensively. Here is a product description from the John Lewis site:

The Tanita BC-545 is designed to assess the impact of your training routine on different parts of your body. It is able to give individual body composition readings for 5 body segments (each arm, each leg and the trunk area).

...These scales will also measure:

- Body fat % (excess fat and health)
- Total body water % (hydration)
- Muscle mass (lean weight)
- Physique (balance between fat and muscle)
- Visceral (central fat or 'bad' fat rating)
- Bone mineral mass (bone health)
- Basal Metabolic Rate (min. calorie needs)
- Metabolic age (how old is your body?)
- Children's healthy range (fat/health check)

You can read more detail at Tanita's British website.

Gizmag wrote a glowing review:

We’ve written about Tanita’s Innerscan previously, but the newly released Tanita BC-545 is such a leap forward in technology that it deserves more than just a mention. The BC-545 is designed to assess the impact of your training routine on different parts of your body. It is able to give individual body composition readings for five body segments (each arm, each leg and the trunk area).

The measurements are taken quickly and accurately by standing on the 4 footplates and by pulling the hand electrodes that are housed in the base using retractable connecting cables. The monitor then sends a safe low signal from the hand and footplate electrodes through the body. The resistance to the measurement (known as Bio-electrical Impedance Analysis or BIA) is then fed into researched equations to provide your personalized body composition readings.

As the device includes a calendar function, it can track the changes over time for you, so you can create comparison graphs showing a history for each segment of the body and for each of the body composition readings, so that you can see your progress, day by day, week by week and month by month over a three year period. The backlit buttons and animated illustrations are clear and user-friendly, and the scales come with batteries included and a three year guarantee.
 

 Gizmodo wrote:

Tanita scales are so cool. But this Tanita Innerscan BC-545 measures a whole lot more than your weight, so much so that the company calls it a Segmental Body Composition Monitor. It can give you readings of how much fat is in each arm, each leg, and of course, that potentially ample repository of adipose tissue (that's blubber in doctor talk), the trunk area.

...One thing that will be much lighter right away is your wallet—the BC-545 costs $390.
 

Ubergizmo said:

The Tanita BC-545 Innerscan ought to be part of your fitness equipment if you're extremely serious in charting your progress. This device was designed especially to assess the impact of your training routine across different parts of your body, taking note of individual body composition readings for each individual arm and leg as well as the trunk area....Overall, the Tanita BC-545 is more or less a Brain Age game for the body.

March 3rd, 2007
Updated: November 8th, 2007