Fitbit Aria 2 Review – Best Smart Scale for 2018?

Fitbit Aria 2 Review

The Fitbit Aria 2 is a great way to keep track of your weight and monitor your progress toward your goal.

You can set it up with your smartphone and it can recognize up to 8 different users.

It’s the best-in-class for weight accuracy and the one you should most likely buy if you already use the Fitbit app.

What is a Smart Scale?

Smart Scale

A smart scale differs from a typical bathroom scale by being able to connect to your home’s Wi-Fi network and record your weight and body fat percentage to an app.

So, instead of having to manually write down your measurements or input them into a spreadsheet to track your progress, you just have to step on your scale and open your app.

What Can Aria 2 Track?

What can Fitbit Aria 2 Track?

Fitbit Aria 2 can track weight, body fat percentage, BMI (body mass index), and lean mass for up to 8 different users, keeping their data private.

Weight and body fat percentage are measured by the scale itself, while BMI and lean mass are calculated using your weight and body fat percentage measurements.

Your BMI also depends on your height, so make sure your height is correct in your Fitbit profile if you want to see an accurate value for your BMI.

Don’t Use Aria 2 if…

Don't use Fitbit Aria 2 If

  • You have a pacemaker or other implanted medical device
  • You want to track your weight during your pregnancy
  • You want to track the weight of someone who is under the age of 13
  • You weigh over 400 lbs (Aria 2 can only measure weights between 10 and 400 lbs)

Unboxing

Wondering what you’ll get if you buy the Fitbit Aria 2? Watch my unboxing video:

Style and Display

Fitbit Aria 2

Fitbit Aria 2 is a good-looking scale that comes in two colors, black and white.

The polished glass surface is a rounded square, 12.28″ long by 12.28″ wide, and it stands 1.22″ above the ground. Aria 2 has a beautiful backlit LCD display, uses 3 AA batteries (included), and weighs 4 lbs, 10.9 oz (including batteries).

See all the Fitbit Aria 2 options, Amazon prices, and review ratings at a glance

How to Setup

You can set up your Aria 2 with just your smartphone in a matter of minutes.

Watch this video if you want to know what setting up the Fitbit Aria 2 is like:

Customizations

Fitbit offers several customizations of the Aria 2, including your choice of a personal icon that will be shown after your stats are displayed during a weigh-in.

Fitbit Aria 2 Customizations 1

Nearly half of the 16 available icons are animals, while some of the others seem to have a more practical use: an apple (to remind you to eat a healthy breakfast?), a camera (to remind you to take a photo to document your weight journey?), a coffee mug (not that you’d need a reminder to drink coffee, right?), and a diamond (to remind you of your wedding weight loss goal perhaps?).

An even more practical customization is the ability to choose whether to show or hide your body fat percentage and your BMI on the display during your weigh-in (the measurements are still taken and the values can be viewed on the charts within the app).

Watch this video to see how you can customize what is displayed on your Aria 2 during a weigh-in:

Additionally, if you have low body fat compared to your muscle mass, and you think (or know) your Aria 2 body fat percentage estimate is too high, you can enable “Lean Mode” as an attempt to get a more accurate body fat percentage estimate.

Aria 2 can also be localized in a few ways:

Fitbit Aria 2 Customizations 2

You can customize the language of your Aria 2 to be English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, or Chinese.

Your weight units can be kilograms (kg), pounds (lbs), or stone (st), and you can customize the decimal separator to be a dot (.) or a comma (,).

Weighing In

The weighing in process is simple and only takes a few seconds.

After stepping on the scale, the display will show your weight as it measures your weight and estimates your body fat percentage, and calculates your BMI. Unless you disable it in the app, Aria 2 will then show your body fat percentage (if you weighed barefoot) and your BMI (unless you disabled it in the app). Lean mass is only viewable in the app (not on the scale itself).

Weight Accuracy

Fitbit Aria 2 has been approved as an FDA regulated medical device in the United States and is the “best in class” wi-fi smart scale for accurate weight measurements.

To test the weight accuracy, I put two dumbbells on the Aria 2 and weighed them 3 times in a row.

Using another scale that is accurate to the 0.01 of a pound, one dumbbell weighed 14.8 lbs, while the other weighed 15.7 lbs. So, together they weighed 30.5 lbs.

Did Aria 2 measure weight accurately? Watch this short video (less than 1 minute), to find out:

We all want an accurate scale, but we also want one that gives consistent readings.

To test Aria 2’s consistency in measuring weight and body fat percentage, I had someone step on the scale three times in a row.

Did Aria 2 measure weight and estimate body fat percentage consistently? Watch this short video (less than 1 minute), to find out:

The Bottom Line: Fitbit Aria 2 seems to measure weight accurately (to the 0.2 of a pound) and is able to give consistent measurements of both weight and body fat percentage.

Is the Aria 2 more accurate than the original Aria? Find out in my Fitbit Aria vs Aria 2 comparison

Body Fat Percentage Accuracy

As seen in the video above, Aria 2 does seem to be able to provide consistent body fat percentage values over back-to-back weigh-ins.

However, to estimate your body fat percentage, Fitbit Aria 2 (and every other scale that “measures” body fat percentage) uses Bioelectrical Impedance Analysis, which is inherently inaccurate. This is not Fitbit’s “fault” but rather a limitation of our ability to accurately measure a person’s body fat percentage in an easy, quick, and automated way.

The takeaway here is that you shouldn’t take your body fat numbers too seriously and to instead look for trends over long periods of time (e.g. months).

Tips for Getting the Most Accurate Measurements

Fitbit Aria 2 Accuracy Tips

  1. Store Aria 2 on a flat, hard surface (not carpet) and don’t move the scale between weigh-ins
  2. Always weigh yourself barefoot (you can’t get a body fat reading with socks or shoes on)
  3. Try to weigh yourself at the same time of day, ideally first thing in the morning after using the bathroom and before eating or drinking anything

Charts, Goals, and Badges

One of the best things about the Fitbit Aria 2 wi-fi smart scale is it’s companion app.

Fitbit Aria 2 Charts, Goals, and Badges

The Fitbit app is available for Android, iPhone, and Windows smartphones, and it allows you to view trends (for your weight, body fat percentage, BMI, and lean mass) with automatically created charts, set weight goals, and earn weight loss badges.

Even if you don’t own or use a Fitbit fitness tracker, you can use the Fitbit app’s MobileTrack feature to track your steps via your phone and see how your activity affects your weight.

Inviditing Additional Users

Fitbit Aria 2 can support up to 8 different users.

Watch this video to see how to invite others in your household to use your Aria 2:

3rd Party Integrations

Fitbit Aria 2 3rd Party Integrations
If you have a MyFitnessPal account, you’ll be happy to know that you can set up automatic syncing of your Aria 2 weight and body fat percentage measurements to MyFitnessPal.

You can then allow MyFitnessPal to write your weight data to the Apple Health app. This is convenient because Fitbit does not provide any way to share data directly to Apple. Unfortunately, MyFitnessPal does not currently have the option to write body fat percentage data to Apple Health.

Once your weight data is in Apple Health, you can allow other apps like Garmin and Strava to read your weight data.

No Apple Health?: If you have an Android smartphone (or don’t want to use the Apple Health app) and you have (or are willing to create) a MyFitnessPal account, you can also share Aria 2 weight data to Garmin via MyFitnessPal, and then to Strava via Garmin (phew!).

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: Will it work with my Fitbit?
A: Yes, Aria 2 is compatible with all Fitbits, past, present, and future.

Best Fitbit Smart Scale

Fitbit Aria 2 Black

Fitbit Aria 2

If you’ve already got a Fitbit fitness tracker or smartwatch, the Fitbit Aria 2 is a great choice for effortlessly tracking your weight and body fat %.