Wii Fit Plus with Balance Board

5 Comments

1. P. Yeager says:

   December 6, 2009 at 4:19 am

   We received the Wii Fit as a present last Christmas. It worked, as far as we could tell, for several weeks. Then the balance board would only work intermittently. We weren’t sure if the batteries were at fault, or if there was some flaw with the board. Within 90 days, the board stopped working altogether. The system “looks” for it, but can never connect with it. It’s a huge disappointment since the Wii Fit games require the board to work. When we checked with Nintendo about a repair or replacement, we found we were outside of the warranty period. Crazy. It’s a great idea, but the implementation is flawed and the company, while willing to sell millions of them, isn’t willing to make sure they work. Undoubtedly our last product from Nintendo.
2. David Salazar says:

   December 6, 2009 at 5:26 am

   Wish there were more options but it’s really fun and can be addictive.
   
   I barely use it but my wife does use it a log.
3. Rick P. Trebino says:

   December 6, 2009 at 7:27 am

   If your idea of fitness is being able to place equal weight on both feet and minimizing your muscle mass, Wii Fit Plus is the product for you.

   Wii Fit Plus is basically just a board with four scales and some primitive computer graphics. It begins by determining your ability to place equal weight on each foot. Unfortunately, this isn’t even a remotely important measure of fitness. And if you’re off by a small amount (or get bored doing this worthless test and start talking to someone while it’s measuring, as I did), it tells you that you’re badly out of shape and you must fall down a lot. It also accuses your body of being very old. It then proceeds to ask you your height and then to weigh you, computing your body mass index (BMI), a well-known discredited measure of fitness. The reason the BMI is worthless is that it doesn’t distinguish between muscle mass, which is obviously good, and fat mass, which is obviously bad, so someone like Arnold Schwarzenegger, one of the fittest men in the world, would be declared “obese” and told to lose his hard-earned muscles. Indeed, Wii Fit Plus does precisely this.

   Wii Fit Plus then proceeds, using extremely primitive graphics, to run through a series of not-so-aerobic exercises and pseudo muscle training (without weights!). It’s difficult to imagine how this product could help anyone to get into anything resembling good shape. Going through these motions on the board offers minimal exercise. Worse, if you do anything at all vigorous on it (which fortunately, Wii Fit Plus won’t ask you to do), it’d be dangerous, as it would be easy to fall off the small board even if you have perfect balance. There’s no reason to do such exercises on a board anyway.

   Almost any simple aerobics video would be much better for aerobics training and would provide much better graphics for a fifth the price. And a few inexpensive dumbbells would provide better weight training. And a simple look in the mirror would tell you if you’re too fat or too skinny—much more accurately than the BMI would.

   In my opinion, this product is a waste of money, and, worse, since Wii is mainly used by kids, it could easily mislead them about what constitutes actual fitness. So if you’re thinking of getting this for your kids, please consider instead something more appropriate, like a lower-fat diet and more real exercise. Or get them an aerobics video or just encourage them to do some simple running, biking, or even walking. In fact, the sports games that came for free with the Wii are more exercise, less misleading, less insulting, less dangerous, and certainly more fun.
4. Kyle L. Gershman says:

   December 6, 2009 at 10:02 am

   I have written a blog article that is contains my review. In addition to the comments in the blog, I’ll add one more learning since posting the blog:

   [...]

   It contains some pics and embedded video.

   One of the major benefits of the Wii Fit Plus over the original is the ability to build your own routines. The Wii Fit Plus allows for two basic options:

   1) Use one or a combination of many preset routines.

   While this is nice, the way it categorizes each routine is somewhat confusing and doesn’t really allow you to select based on true objective or muscle groups.

   However, a key advantage is that these preset routines do contain the various games as options instead of just yoga and strength training exercises.

   Unfortunately you can’t swap out the individual exercises if you really don’t like the one they offer.

   2) Build your own customized workout

   You can build your own workout, but you can only select from the yoga and strenght exercises. This makes no sense to me. Why do the pre-set routines have them, but you can’t select them for your own workout? If you want to do the basic step class for a warm-up followed by yoga and strength training, you can’t have them in the same workout. Perhaps you want to intersperse games in between the exercises. You can’t do that either.

   I might have given Wii Fit Plus a 5-star rating if the new feature of customizing your routine were as truly customized as possible.

   I can’t say I know exactly all the differences between the old and the new versions, but I have enjoyed this one so far.
5. Peggy Larisch says:

   December 6, 2009 at 10:53 am

   I bought 2 – one for my daughter and one for my daughter-in-law. It is the perfect Christmas gift.

   Delivery was fast and the price is right. It is the gift that will “take off” weight all year long.