Review method
How WearScore rates a wearable
Three 0–100 scores. Clinical and empowerment carry the patient-first thesis and define the map; everyday value is kept separate so a good battery can't paper over a weak clinical signal. Scores describe direction and degree — not buying advice.
Clinical value
Can a patient and clinician trust and act on it?
- Regulatory standing 30%
PMA → De Novo → 510(k) → OTC → wellness-only. - Validation evidence 25%
Independent accuracy — MARD, ECG sensitivity/specificity, skin-tone bias. - Actionability 25%
Does the output change care? A readable ECG scores high; a "readiness score" low. - Clinical integration 20%
Can data reach the care team — PDF, dashboard, EHR?
Empowerment value
Once it's on the body, who is in control?
- Data access & portability 30%
Raw export, open formats, API, shareable PDF — or trapped in an app. - Freedom from lock-in 30%
Subscription to function? Bricks unpaid? One phone brand? A prescription? - Transparency & honest claims 20%
Clear about AI, data use, and claims consistent with regulators. - Affordability & equity 20%
Cost, insurance, geography, phone brand, skin-tone fairness.
Everyday value
How well does it fit into an actual life? Descriptive, not a verdict.
- Battery & charging 30%
Time between charges and how disruptive charging is. - Comfort & wearability 25%
Form factor and all-day, all-night comfort. - Breadth of daily use 25%
How much it does beyond its core job. Single-purpose sensors score low here by design. - Ease of setup & use 20%
Pairing, app clarity, sensor changes, calibration.
The map and the quadrants
Each device is plotted with clinical value on the horizontal axis and empowerment value on the vertical, with the lines crossing at 60 — the point where a device becomes clinically meaningful, or genuinely patient-controlled. Everyday value is encoded as the size of each dot, so a glance shows all three numbers at once. The quadrants: Clinical & free (top-right, the goal), Clinical but closed (bottom-right — powerful, but the patient is the subject, not the owner), Open but thin (top-left — respects your data, measures little a clinician would treat), and Thin & locked (bottom-left).
Health domains
Separate from the scores, each device is tagged by the domains it covers — Cardiovascular, Sleep & apnea, Metabolic / glucose, Respiratory, Recovery / stress, Activity / fitness, Reproductive / hormonal — so you can filter by what you actually want to track. Tags are multi-select and do not affect the scores.
Two data-access fields, broken out
Because they are the practical core of the empowerment axis, two fields appear explicitly on every profile. API access is open (a documented developer/Health API anyone can build on — Garmin, Withings, Dexcom), restricted (gated by membership, account, or platform — Oura's member-only API, Apple's app-mediated HealthKit), or No (KardiaMobile, iRhythm Zio). Raw data access uses the same scale for getting your own underlying data out: open (a usable export), restricted (clunky, throttled, or paywalled — Fitbit's full-archive Takeout, Whoop's one-export-per-day), or No (the patient never receives raw data, as with the Zio patch).
Strengths, weaknesses, and freshness
Each profile carries a product image, a launch date with a lifecycle-freshness meter, a latest-news feed surfacing regulatory and recall developments, links to independent reviews, manuals and support, and a Strengths / Weaknesses summary so the trade-offs behind the three scores are legible at a glance.
What this is and isn't
These are public-source, draft ratings built from manufacturer pages, FDA records, and published studies as of June 2026 — not device teardowns, vendor interviews, or independent lab testing. The market moves fast, and several devices here are in active legal or regulatory disputes. Every rating is meant to be challenged with evidence. The approach borrows the public-review spirit of HugoScore, swapping its single patient-agency axis for two patient-first axes plus a descriptive everyday axis. Not medical, legal, or buying advice.