How accruate are the body composition analyzers?

Most of them are accurate enough to be useful if you use them consistently. I use an Omron body fat monitor and honestly I am less concerned about how accurate it is as long as it's consistent. If it's miscalibrated and off by 2% or 3%, I don't necessarily care, as long as it's consistently off by the same amount.

Then again, I'm not trying to get to minimal body fat where 2% is going to make a huge difference to me.
 
My Tanita scale is off by 3-6%, depending on what time of day I use it. Whether it's consistent or not, I'm not sure. I just use it for weight and ignore the body fat % feature.
 
They can be 'surprisingly' accurate. I believe it's + or - 3%. However, they actually measure your body density based on a small current passing through you, and then calculate your body fat based on that.

My understanding (although I haven't extensively researched it, so this could be wrong) is that muscle can hold more water than fat, and thus allows more current flow when you're fully hydrated. My scale also gives me hydration numbers, and higher hydration seems to correlate to lower BF %. This means that as your hydration level fluctuates throughout the day your reading may change even if your BF % doesn't. Sweating, eating lots of salt, alcohol, working out - all of these can alter the number you see.

So measuring at the same time, hopefully with the same general amount of water, you can at least see trends, but it's not something that will be as useful for day to day changes.
 
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