What you need to know
- The Withings U-Scan Nutrio is the “first toilet plug-in urine scanner,” measuring your body’s health via urinary biomarkers.
- Tracked stats include Urinary pH to judge your diet, HydroStatus, fat metabolism, and Vitamin C levels.
- An alternate version called U-Scan Calci will focus on calcium levels to detect kidney stones, as well as other stats.
- The U-Scan starts at $379, requires cartridge replacements every three months, and only works for one user at a time.
Withings is continuing its quest to turn your home into a DIY doctor’s office. On top of its Body Smart scales, ScanWatch 2 smartwatch, blood pressure monitors, and BeamO check-up wand, it’s launching the U-Scan Nutrio and Calci in the U.S. and Europe starting on October 29, tracking new stats you can’t get from a smartwatch.
The Withings U-Scan “embeds laboratory science directly into your toilet” and syncs to your Android or iOS Withings app. Tell the app that you’re taking a measurement beforehand, and it’ll collect your urine and analyze it using “miniaturized biomechanical sensors.”
Depending on whether you choose the cartridge focused on nutrition (Nutrio) or calcium for kidney health (Calci), the U-Scan will measure different data. Nutrio, for example, will measure Vitamin C levels to determine “dietary adequacy” and antioxidant levels, something the Galaxy Watch 8 tries to estimate with its antioxidant index.
Both U-Scan lab units will measure your ketone levels, or how often your body burns fat instead of glucose, as well as HydroStatus, or whether your “fluid intake sufficiently meets metabolic and performance needs.”
Withings’ current devices focus heavily on health and weight loss, but the U-Scan unit helps give more context on how your body is adjusting to a changed diet or increased exercise — particularly for anyone taking appetite suppression drugs like GLP-1.
The U-Scan Calci, meanwhile, focuses on detecting excess calcium in urine and calcium excretion trends over time, so you have data warning of possible “crystal nucleation” before you’re inflicted with painful kidney stones.
As promising as U-Scan Nutrio and Calci sound for health monitoring, the steep price — $379 for the device, first cartridge, and charging station, plus $99 for every new cartridge with 22 new tests — may be too high for many, unless they already have a documented issue with kidney stones or dehydration that needs frequent monitoring.
Withings is sweetening the pot by including a Withings Plus subscription, so you’ll see AI-based analysis of your trends and consultations with a cardiologist and dietician for personalized advice. But you’ll probably need a Withings scale and/ or watch to get the most out of it, making U-Scan best suited for people who’ve already bought into the Withings ecosystem.
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