Customer Reviews

Taylor 5571 Breast Cancer Awareness Body Fat Scale

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

This is a great scale and an excellent value ! After calling Taylor directly with product questions - I was extremely impressed by the knowledge of the person I spoke to about this product and how it measures Body Fat %. Be sure you are fully hydrated when you take a Body Fat Reading to get your most accurate Body Fat measurement. How do you know when you are properly hydrated? The scale will tell you with the Body Water %. The best time to take the Body Fat reading is later in the day - before your last meal.

The weight measurements have been consistent. I think this product is just plain excellent!

I did quite a bit of research and these scales live up to the reviews I read (almost all of which were positive). They are very repeatable. I will add one negative note however. They are trying to control too many functions with too few buttons. Holding a button for the wrong length of time can cause you to enter the incorrect mode. I am not an unintelligent person, but it took me 4 to 5 tries with the instructions to finally set up the memory features correctly. They have been great since I finally got it done though.

So far, this scale is fairly good. It gave weights that are pretty close to what other electronic scales gave (and the .5lb increment on this scale is precise enough, for those of you wanting a .2lb increment). My Body Fat measurements were fairly consistent, with it not varying by more than 1% from day to day.

BUT!!! The main suspicion I have with this scale is that it seems to have a "lazy" weight measurement change. What do I mean by that? Let's say, for example, you weight yourself and the scale says 154lbs. If you step off, take off a jacket u know weights about 1.5lbs, and step on the scale again, the scale will show that you still weight 154lbs. BUT! And here is when it gets interesting, I suspected that the scale might have a 'short-term' memory built into its eletronics and will simply go back to the most recently measured weight if the difference in weight is small enough. SO, I weighted myself, at say, 154, then made the scale go to some other weight, say 130, and then take off my jacket and weight myself again, and guess what? I now get 152.5lbs.

So, in summary, a pretty precise and good scale, but for some reason, its designers decided to build in a 'cheat' like that just to give the illusion that it is even more precise.

So far I have found that the scale is very accurate and consistent regarding body weight. I can get on the scale 5 times and get the same weight each time. And it seems to be consistent with scales at the gym, doctor, etc. But I don't think the boby fat analyzer works well. I've lost 20 lbs, been working out at the gym lifting weights, etc, and haven't lost 1% in body fat. I had a body fat analysis done at the gym and the results were WAY off from what this scale does. The scale said 33%, the gym said 15%. Truth lies somewhere in between probably, but I don't buy the 33%. So in conclusion, good scale for weight. Not for boby fat calculation.

I bought this scale because I wanted to get a body fat scale first of all, but when I found out that they donate money to the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, it was even better! Having breast cancer effect my family was my strong reason to buy this scale and lend more support. The body fat feature is great, easy to use! Just a couple of buttons and I was ready. I may not like the results but it was easy. I also drink a lot of water so knowing my body water levels is also important. I must admit, I use the scale mostly for just the scale mode (I just step on it for that), but will do the body fat thing once a month to see if anything changes. I like this scale much better than my older one. My older one I had to press it first and wait before I stepped on it, which bugged me. I like just stepping on the scale to get my weight. I was researching scales in the stores and it seems that most Taylor models are like that. I saw Weight Watchers and Healthometer in the stores with a big red sticker to press on first and wait -- yuck, I didn't want that again. Amazon has such a good price on this scale, I had to buy it! And now, I am happy!

I've had my Taylor scale for several years now. I'd always felt it was a bit strange with its numbers and that it was "off" somehow. Sometimes the numbers would seem too high, sometimes too low. But, I figured I paid a pretty penny for it, so I'm not going to just toss it out. I thought that I could trust it to at least give me a "heads up" if things were changing significantly one way or the other.

I lost a significant amount of weight this year. How much? I'm not really sure. Why? Because I weighed myself on Saturday and saw 163.4. OK, that's about 2 pounds over my normal, but acceptable for the holiday season. Then I got on the scale again on Monday and it read 178.0 - a nearly 15 POUND weight gain!!! I got on and off the scale dozens of times while trying to hold back tears and every time it came up with 178.0. I was devastated. I had thought I'd lost about 45 pounds. Now I have no idea how much weight I actually lost and what my current weight might be. The scale at the gym told me 170 lbs last night... but even if that's correct, that's a 7 POUND weight gain!!! What gives?

This scale is a piece of crap. Any device that misses weight gain over a period of time sufficient for the user to gain between 7 and 15 pounds is really a piece of junk. And now I also have the great pleasure of feeling as though I was asleep at the wheel, letting 1/3 of my hard-earned weight loss creep back despite the fact that I weigh myself several times a week.

DO NOT PURCHASE THIS SCALE!!!

Unless you really want to know your body fat percentage on a daily (or weekly) basis, it's not worth the trouble to use that function on the scale. It will take programming for more than one person, and each user, even the primary one, has to go through a few steps to activate the body fat % feature. Too much trouble! It's also fairly lightweight, and moves around on the floor easily. I have a big dog, and when she bumps against the scale, which is in my bedroom, she turns it on. That will run the batteries down a little quicker.

This scale really is quite poor. I find myself taking an average of 3-4 weighings each time I use it as it varies by as much as 1 Kg. It is neither attractive in appearance, accurate, nor consistent; and for this price it has no redeeming factor whatsoever.

I would definitely recommend against this purchase. I am considering purchasing the Ozeri ZB13 scale to replace this one, as it has MUCH better reviews. Or if other stats beside weight are important to you, consider the Omron HBF500 series for a few bucks more. Note, that I haven't had experience with either of these, but they received excellent reviews on Amazon.

At first glance this scale looks fairly sophisticated. Looks can be deceiving. I'm fairly certain that the body fat sensor don't do anything at all. Why does a body fat measuring device need to know if you are an athlete or what your height is? If is truly measuring resistance through your body this info should be irrelevant! What it is actually doing is calculating your BMI. That is completely useless if you want to know your bodyfat percentage! Don't believe me? Change your height! Your body fat will go down if you say you are taller and will go up if you say you are shorter! In exact accordance with a BMI chart! Utterly useless!!!

I rated this a two because the scale works very well. People having trouble with the scale must be using their unit on carpet! That or their's is defective.

This scale seemed to work great at first. Then after a week it was saying I weighed 50 pounds more or less than I actually do. After a few days of that it quit working completely (not due to low battery). I have not contacted the company yet but I hope to get a full refund.