Withings thinks of its latest smart scale as a ‘longevity station’

Withings is back at CES 2026 with another smart scale: the $599.95 Body Scan 2. This time, I focused more strictly on cardiovascular and metabolic health.

The Body Scan 2 has eight electrodes on the scale itself, plus four additional electrodes inside a retractable handle. This is similar to the original Body Scan design. The addition of the handle makes the Body Scan lineup more accurate than most smart scales because it includes upper body data. Typical smart scales have electrodes for the feet only, and only use lower body data to extrapolate overall body composition.

The main difference with Body Scan 2 is that it increases the number of vital signs tracked. In addition to weight, heart rate and general body composition, the scale now adds a 90-second “longevity assessment.” The assessment consists of more than 60 biomarkers divided into approximately five categories: heart pumping performance and electrical activity of the heart, high blood pressure risk, arterial health, cellular health and metabolic efficiency, and blood sugar regulation.

“We built on this vision of adding a lot of powerful biomarkers that can be measured every day when you step on the scale,” says Antoine Goossen, director of product and device management at Withings.

Since tracking more than 60 metrics can be unwieldy, users will also receive a more digestible health track score that depicts their health span — or the number of years of good health a person can expect.

“We want to keep it simple at a high level, so you have clear indicators that you can track daily, weekly or monthly,” says Gossen. “The rest of the 60 biomarkers, you can of course review them, but we’ll do all the interpretation for you.”

This is not a completely new concept. Whoop provided a similar result in 2025 with its Whoop 5.0 tracker, which uses cardiovascular, sleep and activity metrics to estimate how much a person is aging. Oura also launched metrics to compare cardiovascular and chronological age in 2024. The two companies also added the ability to run blood tests to track metabolic health metrics last year.

But one of the interesting things about Withings’ approach to Body Scan 2 is that it tracks metabolic health non-invasively. Instead of blood tests, the scale uses something called bioimpedance spectroscopy (BIS) and foot sweat. Yes, foot sweat.

“The goal is to stimulate the sweat glands inside your feet with a safe, small current. We measure the maximum activity response from these sweat glands. If the activity is high, to simplify a bit, it means the glands are healthy, and if not, they’re not healthy,” Gossen explains. He points out that diabetes can cause foot complications, and that Withings has seen correlative evidence from its users with diabetes that is not well controlled.

As for BIS, the meter sends currents at different frequencies to assess how well cell membranes are functioning as another indicator of metabolic health. The benefit of these non-surgical methods, he says, is that they can be administered more frequently and easily than blood tests. However, these metabolic features are not intended to be diagnostic, but rather are viewed as early warning signals.

The benefit of collecting all this data on a smart band is that it’s a convenient device that many people already own and are used to using regularly, Gossen says. This makes it the ideal tool for taking many long-term health measurements at once, he says. But while there is logic to this approach, there are also challenges. Scales can be emotionally laden tools that some people avoid to prevent body dysmorphia or an eating disorder when setting out to improve their overall health.

It’s a problem Withings is aware of. To that end, Gossen points to the eyes-closed mode, where all measurements are replaced by emojis on the scale but still recorded in the Withings app. In the long term, he says the hope is to rethink the scale as a “longevity station” that measures overall health — not just weight.

Another obstacle is regulatory oversight. For the Body Scan 2, there are two features that require FDA approval: high blood pressure risk notifications and an electrocardiogram (ECG) to detect atrial fibrillation. Compared to other health tech companies, Withings has generally chosen to seek FDA approval when possible, with mixed results. For example, its ScanWatch smartwatch took nearly two years to pass the FDA approval process. To launch the U-Scan urinalysis lab, Withings chose to launch the device as a health tool rather than obtain a permit. The Move ECG smartwatch was announced in 2019, but it has not yet reached the US market.

Here Goossen seems more optimistic. He says Withings is pursuing a “new type of certification” that would allow the company to get its devices on shelves more quickly without sacrificing scientific research. The scale will also be GDPR and HIPAA compliant, and includes ISO 27001 and ISO 27701 privacy and security certifications. If all goes according to plan, the Body Scan 2 should be available sometime in the second quarter of 2026.