One of the most popular gadgets at CES 2023 isn’t a wild new TV or some slick electric car. It’s a small device that sits in your toilet and analyzes your urine to track your health.
Yes, the Withings U-Scan is a small puck that attaches to the inside of your toilet and scans your urine to determine things like women’s menstrual cycles or whether you’re getting enough protein or vegetables in your diet and sends the data to your Withings Health Mate app.
The U-Scan clips to the inside front of your toilet bowl to help catch your urine stream. It then pulls in the urine testing via the replaceable test cartridge. Each cartridge includes 100 tests, which Withings says will last about 3 months.
The company is offering 3 different cartridges for the U-Scan. The U-Scan Cycle measures biomarkers for the Luteinizing Hormone; specific gravity for water balance; and pH for protein-vegetable balance. The idea is to help women better track their cycle and understand their ovulation window without having to use any additional apps.
The U-Scan Nutri Balance measures biomarkers for specific gravity, protein-vegetable balance, ketones, and Vitamin C. Finally, the U-Scan for professionals is for, well, professionals working in health care settings for research purposes.
You’ve probably still got a few questions about U-Scan, so let me fill you in. The battery is supposed to last roughly 3 months and can be charged when you swap in your test cartridge. You can sign up for a $30 per month subscription for new cartridges so you can continuously track your health.
Withings says that the U-Scan is specifically designed only to pull in urine, so nothing else in your toilet can alter your tests. The company further says you can clean the U-Scan with the same disinfectant you already use to clean your bathroom. So you can go ahead and spray it down without worrying you’ll destroy it.
At this point, you’re likely wondering how the U-Scan can tell the difference between you and anyone else in your home. Well, Withings says that it has developed technology that can help identify users based on the speed and distance of their, err, spray.
Jokes aside, Withings says the U-Scan should help users get a better sense of their overall health by allowing them to establish a baseline for the biomarkers the puck measures. That said, the U-Scan isn’t a medical device. Withings says as much in its literature for the product. Pricing for a U.S. model is still up in the air, as the company is waiting for approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Instead, the U-Scan will make its debut in Europe for 499 Euros (about $525)
It’s best to instead think of it as another health-focused gadget like your fitness tracker or connected scale. So yes, among the litany of tech lining the halls of CES 2023, this diminutive white puck may be the most inventive if not useful gadget out there. If you can get past the whole toilet aspect that is.
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