- Germany’s Federal Network Agency has been investigating suspicious listings for tech products, including smart watches.
- Many of these products advertise blood sugar monitoring features.
- There is no reliable, non-invasive way to monitor blood sugar, and some watches simply estimate or make up readings.
Unfortunately, all the poor recipients of watches like these are going to get ripped off, as no smartwatch can accurately measure blood sugar – or even “glucose” as the list above states – 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 that can do this accurately.
The Federal Network Agency, a German regulator, investigated numerous online ads in 2025 and found serious defects in 7.7 million different products, with smartwatches being the worst offenders. Spotted via NotebookCheck, these flaws ranged from a lack of CE marking to features like blood sugar monitoring that were actually “simulated” – the device wasn’t reading the user’s blood sugar at all, it just appeared to be.
One of these smartwatches that made these claims, the Kospet iHeal 6, was actually removed from the market in 2024, but still sold in German territories, after the decision for its removal was made.
Smartwatches provide information about your health, but are not legally protected health information, and as such their features are not subject to legislation such as HIPAA in the United States, nor should they be classified as suitable for use in a medical environment. Most serious smartwatch makers, like Apple, seek US FDA approval for features like hypertension detection.
If you are simply looking to flood the market with cheap smartwatch clones, no such strict legislation should apply. Simply create an app that appears to do what it’s actually supposed to do and click the device on Amazon for $50 / £40 / AU$65 or less.
When I reviewed the cheap Viido fitness tracker versus the Garmin watch in the link above, everything was wrong, from its extremely oscillating step count and heart rate tracker, to its dodgy malware-like app. These devices are unreliable and there is no point in buying them.
If platforms like Amazon don’t stop their sales, it’s up to us to be diligent and responsible consumers and do some research before pulling the trigger. May I direct you to our guide to the best cheap smartwatches, for starters?
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