- Germany’s Federal Network Agency investigated suspicious lists of tech products, including smartwatches
- Many of these products advertise glucose monitoring features
- There is no reliable non-invasive way to monitor glucose and some watches were found to simply estimate or tally readings
Unfortunately, any poor recipient of watches like these will be cheated, as no smartwatch can measure blood sugar levels accurately – or even ‘gluoose’, as the listing above spells it – with LEDs alone. Continuous glucose monitors like Abbott’s Lingo, which involve an invasive needle attached to a Bluetooth-enabled chip, are the only commercially available smart technology capable of accurately doing that.
The Federal Network Agency, a German regulator, examined a lot of online listings in 2025 and found serious flaws in 7.7 million different products, and smartwatches were the worst offenders. These flaws, discovered via NotebookCheck, ranged from missing CE markings to listing features like blood sugar monitoring that were actually “simulated” — as in, the device wasn’t actually reading the user’s blood sugar at all, but just looked like it was.
One such smartwatch that made these claims, the Kospet iHeal 6, was actually taken off the market in 2024, but was still sold in German territories after the order to remove it was made.
Smartwatches provide information about your health, but not legally protected health information, and as such their functions are not subject to legislation such as HIPAA in the United States or required to be classified as suitable for use in a medical setting. Most serious smartwatch manufacturers such as Apple is seeking US FDA approval for features such as registration of hypertension.
If you simply want to flood the market with cheap smartwatch clones, such strict legislation need not apply. Simply make an app that looks like it does what it’s actually supposed to do and bang the device on Amazon for $50 / £40 / AU$65 or less.
When I reviewed the cheap Viido fitness tracker against the Garmin watch linked above, everything was wrong, from its pedometer and heart rate monitor being wildly fluctuating, to its app looking like a dodgy piece of malware. These devices are not reliable and there is no point in buying them.
If platforms like Amazon won’t stop their sales, it’s up to us to be diligent, responsible consumers and do a bit of research before pulling the trigger. May I refer you to our best guide to cheap smartwatches to get you started?
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