Performance device maker Polar is the latest company to join the party of connected scales with the new, $99 Polar Balance. At first look the Polar Balance seems to be just like the connected scales from Fitbit, Withings, and Under Armour: you weigh in and it wirelessly sends the data to a mobile app or its own trove of wearable devices. As I wrote yesterday, this basically means you can never escape your weight again, ever.
But after quickly demoing the Polar scale today at CES, there are some differentiators. For one, at $99 it's less expensive than some of its competitors. The Withings Smart Body Analyzer costs $150, and the Under Armour scale costs a whopping $180.
The Polar Balance scale is also really light, and has a practical square design (unlike Under Armour's giant round scale) so it's easy to pick up, move around, and store. And Polar does offer one particular software feature in its Polar Flow app that seems interesting: after you weigh in, something called the Weight Speedometer will tell you how hard you need to work out that day and how many calories you need to burn in order to keep on pace with whatever weight goal you've set.
The video below will give you a closer look. Also, in the interest of full disclosure and transparent journalism, I feel it's super important to tell readers that the feet in the video above are, in fact, mine.
