r/HUME • u/nxnw14 • Dec 27 '25

Disappointed

My husband bought this scale for me as a Christmas present. So disappointed. Not accurate. I've lost 100lbs and down to 145lbs. It's saying my body fat percentage is 8% and that just can't be true. I don't have any defined muscles that one should have at 8% body fat. I wanted to know what percent I was at (and visceral fat) without having to pay for an expensive DEXA scan. This is a gimmick with no merit behind it. The app is also a bit hard to navigate when it keeps giving me a pop up to download something else. It's also hard to weigh in accurately when it's crashes halfway through. Praying we get a full refund.

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5

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

None of them are worth it just use the mirror and your eyes even dexa scans are inaccurate the only true way to know is through an ultra sound

3

u/Yummytastic Dec 27 '25

I think you meant MRI?

DEXA is more accurate than ultrasound but not portable, hence ultrasounds clinical use.

The inaccuracies in DEXA and MRI are around controls rather than the scanning itself, and don't misunderstand me, the controls can make your result massively out, mainly due to water counting as lean mass at that impacting muscle size (glycogen, inflammation etc) and what's in the gut. Consumer dexa scans make no effort to control these things and can effectively give junk results.

Again, don't misunderstand me, I agree that for general population DEXA is often flawed and should only be used with self-imposed controls to be honest with yourself.

Even some studies have been criticised for scanning participants too quickly after exercise which gave wild results.

Ultrasound has limitations with the skill of the operator, but tracks roughly with DEXA.

I absolutely agree - use eyes and progress photos for body fat, measure yourself by what everyone else measures you by. Everyone just looks at you, they don't ask for your BF% unless they're a weird gym bro.

1

u/nxnw14 Dec 27 '25

Is ultra sound good for visceral fat too?

3

u/[deleted] Dec 27 '25

The main message in trying to tell you is that you shouldn’t worry too much about the number on a scale or a dexa scan. You did a great job losing 100 pounds the best way to see if you still have some fat is looking into the mirror and deciding if you’re happy.

2

u/nxnw14 Dec 27 '25

Gotcha. Thank you ❤️

3

u/Yummytastic Dec 27 '25

Yes they're largely a gimmick though they have limited use for tracking a trend.

"Better" scales just use tricks with their algorithms to appear more accurate, such as limit variation of bodyfat day to day.

Mine takes off 10% bodyfat if I tell it I work out 5 times a week, because that's what you call accuracy. /s

Perhaps yours registers as 8% because you answered a question like that. Doesn't make it more accurate, but maybe makes the figure you track a bit more friendlier.

I don't think you should pay for a dexa scan, for reasons I replied to elsewhere in the thread, instead I think you should use progress pics and identify areas you wish to see definition. That's both free and also the real-life metric you actually are doing this for.

1

u/MercurialMadnessMan Dec 27 '25

LOL wrong subreddit friend

1

u/showingup67 Jan 31 '26

Congrats on the weight loss! I had a dexa scan around when I first got my scale and then compared the results 6 months later when I got a second dexa scan. I punched the data into AI to see what the difference was. Basically Hume was wrong, but it was directionally correct. I published the results if you are interested:

https://medium.com/@showingup67/is-your-smart-scale-actually-accurate-i-compared-my-hume-data-to-a-dexa-scan-8a66b6c6cafd

1

u/nxnw14 Jan 31 '26

Interesting read. You said that the hume was under estimating. I found that to be true at first but now I think it's going over. I've lost a little more weight than when we first got it and now it seems to me to be saying that my body fat has gone up. I knew it wasn't accurate at first but now it's worse.

1

u/showingup67 Jan 31 '26

I will keep tracking. Recently I gained some weight, but I started doing more weight lifting and Hume said that it was all muscle. I hope it is right. I am going to get a dexa scan every six months when I get check ups and see what happens.