Huawei Watch 4 claims to help track high blood sugar without ever drawing blood [U]

The recently launched Huawei Watch 4 series claims to come with a newly unlocked ability to dive into the user’s blood sugar health, all without ever drawing a single drop. The Chinese company proudly claims this as an industry first.

Update: This post has been updated to clarify that the Huawei Watch 4 cannot track blood sugar levels, but is (somehow) claimed to be used to help track high blood sugar. We apologize for the error.

Smartwatch health really only goes so far – at least for right now. We’re used to seeing heart rate, sleep, and blood oxygen monitoring in most smartwatches on the market today. More recently, the Galaxy Watch series has finally started utilizing body temperature sensing. Those metrics generally have one thing in common – they can be measured topically.

One thing that hasn’t historically been accessible non-invasively is blood sugar monitoring. According to Huawei, that’s changed the Huawei Watch 4 series, which has a new suite of features dedicated to assessing high blood sugar in those with diabetes or pre-diabetes.

One such feature is Huawei’s hyperglycemic risk assessment, which aims to detect abnormal blood sugar levels to give off a warning of whether or not you’re in the danger zone. Executive director at Huawei, Yu Chengdong, posted on Weibo (via Huawei Central) and detailed the Watch 4 in general, though the process of collecting blood sugar data seems to be veiled, with few details given.

According to Huawei – and machine translated– the Huawei Watch 4 series utilizes a “micro-physical examination function,” which can measure 10 vital signs within 60 seconds. That said, that doesn’t directly have much to do with the blood sugar monitoring itself. It’s not clearly explained how, or even really what Huawei is actually pulling off here.

Promo images posted by the company show off the feature in use, with the Watch 4 displaying a notification reading – translated with Google Lens (via Artem Russakovskii) – “You may have short-term blood sugar fluctuations. A diet high in sugar, oil, and fat may increase the risk of high blood sugar. Please continue to wear it.”

Beyond the mystery of its health suite, the rest of the Huawei Watch 4 specs are pretty cut-and-dry. The wearable sports HarmonyOS 3.1 and a 1.5-inch AMOLED display hidden under sapphire glass with a rotating crown on the side. The Chinese company has also equipped the Watch 4 with an almost 5-day battery life, though we can’t find details on the technical battery size.

The Huawei Watch 4 stepped into pre-order status yesterday, coming in at around $410 for the base version and up to $570 for the Pro model. It looks as though both models come with Huawei’s blood glucose tracking feature suite.

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