I like data. I spend a lot of time looking at analytics from my YouTube channel, telemetry from devices around my house, and usage stats from the services I rely on every day. What I don’t usually have access to is real-time data about what’s going on inside my own body. But at CES this year, I ran into Abbott and was provided with a two-week trial of their over the counter Lingo continuous glucose monitor for non-diabetics.
Check it out in my latest review!
The sensor sits on the back of my arm and sends blood sugar readings to my phone every few minutes. Abbott has long made glucose monitors for people managing diabetes, but Lingo is positioned differently. It’s aimed at people without a diabetes diagnosis who want more insight into how food, exercise, and daily habits affect their blood sugar.
The hardware itself was easier to live with than I expected. The applicator looks intimidating at first glance, but the actual installation was painless for me. I didn’t feel a prick or sting—just a click, and it was done. One small omission in my box was an alcohol wipe, so you’ll want to have one handy before applying it. Once attached, the sensor stayed firmly in place through showers and daily activity, to the point where I mostly forgot it was there.
After pairing it with my phone over Bluetooth, it took about an hour for the first reading to appear. From there, the app updates roughly every five minutes. The real value comes from seeing how those numbers change in response to everyday choices. Eat lunch, and you can watch the curve start to rise. Go for a walk, and you can see how even light exercise affects the slope and duration of that spike.
Lingo tries to make this approachable by translating glucose spikes into what it calls a “Lingo score.” The score reflects how high your blood sugar rises and how long it stays elevated. One evening, I had leftover sausage and pepper pizza. The resulting spike was sharp, dipped, then rose again as digestion continued, earning me a high score for that meal. Earlier in the day, a healthier and more protein-heavy turkey sandwich produced a much smaller, shorter-lived rise.
What surprised me most was how quickly this started influencing my behavior. Knowing that a certain food would likely generate a bigger spike made me think about timing—whether I could follow it with a walk—or whether it made more sense to choose something else. The app reinforces this by suggesting simple mitigations, like light exercise after eating, and by offering challenges focused on habits rather than calorie counting.
Logging matters too. The app isn’t asking you to obsess over nutrition labels, but it does want you to note when you eat, when you exercise, and even when you’re feeling stressed. If you use a smartwatch, some of that happens automatically. In my case, dog walks detected by my watch showed up in the app without any extra effort on my part.
There’s also an educational side, with recipes, short videos, and explanations designed to help you interpret what you’re seeing. The content feels more like guidance than instruction, which fits the overall tone of the product. This isn’t positioned as a medical device for diagnosis, but rather as a feedback tool. If you did see readings that looked concerning, that would be a conversation to have with a doctor.
Abbott sells Lingo as a two week kit along with options for longer durations. I found that you can get enough data out of the device in two weeks making a longer duration purchase unnecessary. The data doesn’t disappear when the sensor comes off, and you can export it or keep it in your health app for reference later.
After a few days of use, I had a much clearer picture of how my body responds to foods I already thought I understood. That awareness alone was enough to start nudging my choices in a different direction. For something that measures just one variable, it ended up saying a lot about daily habits I don’t usually think twice about.