Commercial, Medical Device, or Open Source
Often one of the most important features of a device is its license because this often determines many other properties of the device.
Commercial
The most commonly known and popular type. Sold for profit, to the average consumer and with absolutely on guarantees. Usually easy to set up and understand. Unfortunately exporting (access to your own data) is not guaranteed[1][2] and therefore comparing and predicting with data from other sources is hard, though workarounds can be found on github. No guarantees also means that the information the device pretends to measure could be completely made up. For an example, buy an off-brand smart watch from any big online marketplace or look up the history of fitness trackers and distance. More commonly, the devices that really measure something often do not warn the user if the signal the device is getting is really bad and therefor obscure any signal with junk data. Perhaps some guarantees of quality of a device can be made through word of mouth, scientific studies and brand name. You can find alot of this information on this wiki's Category:Tools and Open humans data imports.
Medical Devices
Like commercial device but with an FDA guarantee[3] of sensor quality. Avoiding FDA classification may be a fear of the legal consequences of layman misusing a device labeled as medical but also could be because the device really is only meant to encourage healthiness. To market to people with medical conditions product must be FDA approved medical. Usually more expensive. No guarantee of data export and if none then no workarounds.[4] DG (talk) I think devices for doctors to use will export the data to an app and a service for patients will not. Honestly my only sources of info are ZIO and Contec.
Open Source
Cheapest category. Requires some DIY even if that is just understanding how to use an accompanying analysis program. Sometimes much more. Always exports data. Never hides bad signals from user. Nightscout was originally an open source project from which was made an FDA approved medical device.[5]
References
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