You can go into much greater detail on these measurements via the Garmin Connect App. The app also gives you access to extra health/fitness tools like workout plans, guided fitness goals, menstrual tracking and even some safety tools to let family members track your location.
You’ll also get a lot more out of these scales if you’re already part of the Garmin ecosystem with a fitness watch.
Design/Hardware and Setup
You’ll need your smartphone and the Garmin Connect app to set up your scales out of the box. The Index S2 will immediately be in pair mode, so open the Garmin Connect App and go to the side bar menu > Garmin devices > and add device. From there, you will be given a PIN to enter the app, which will be displayed on the scale. After that, it will pair with your home Wi-Fi.
*The reset button is on the back of this device, and the switch to change between stone, kilograms and pounds
This scale has quite a sleek design and is very responsive. As with all scales, it is sensitive to how it sits on the floor, so make sure it’s on a flat surface. When you’re first starting, I recommend trying in different house areas to ensure a consistent result. My scales were overreading heavily in one area of my house due to a slight gradient in the floor. I cannot stress this enough, most people set scales up in the bathroom, myself included and due to the decline on the floor for drainage, this can muck up your results! Do yourself a favour, ensure you’re getting consistent results first, then set the scale up there.
Once all that’s done, you can start using the scales. You can have up to 16 different users on this one scale; this feature is designed more for a sports team, but hats off to you if you’ve got that many in your brood. This scale gets its various weight data by running an electric current through your feet (which is why you need to be barefoot). Based on your Garmin connect profile, the scale will attempt to guess who just weighed in; if it’s wrong, you can tap right with your foot to change the name.
*You can discard a weigh-in by tapping right until you get the question mark. Alternately you can delete the data point in Garmin Connect.
Weight Metrics and Garmin Connect
Once you’ve set the scale up and it’s done the initial update it’s time to use it. When you first start, the weight trend will be pretty useless, but that will get more valuable as it fills up data and tracks towards your ‘goal’ weight if you’ve chosen one.
The other metrics will be immediately valuable; each weigh-in will display: BMI, Body Fat%, Skeletal Muscle Mass, Bone Mass, Body Water %, Weight Trend and finally, Weather. The weather display operates under the assumption you do your weigh-in during the morning while you’re getting ready, and knowing the weather may influence your clothing decision.
All this data gets sent to your Garmin connect account and you can then use the app to deep dive into your historical information to find out what direction your measurements are trending. You can do this over the following time periods displays: 1 day, 7 days, 4 weeks, and 1 year. This is also where you can delete a weigh-in.
Is this a valuable purchase for you?
If you’re already in the Garmin ecosystem with a watch or some other fitness device, then that will hold an additional benefit and potentially offset a little of the ‘premium’ cost for this smart scale. Additionally, if you can see yourself getting use out of the extra benefits from Garmin Connect’s free tools (workouts, goal planning, etc.), then there’s also that. Even without those benefits, this Smart scale is still an excellent option if a little expensive.
