Choosing the right blood pressure monitor is not necessarily an easy task, particularly if you’re in the market for your very first one. Modern blood pressure monitors can boast a significant number of features, which makes understanding which are right for you not the easiest choice, particularly when price factors into it. In this article, we take a look at what a few of the most popular blood pressure monitor features are to give you a better idea of what you should be looking for in your next purchase.
Blood pressure cuff types
If you’ve been looking through Omron medical equipment and have felt overwhelmed for choice, you’re certainly not the only one. To get started, let’s take a quick look first at the varieties of cuff monitors out there – for the most part, there are both upper-arm cuff monitors and wrist cuff monitors, with the former being the more traditional approach to blood pressure monitors (and the form you’re more likely used to). Upper arm cuff models are more difficult to put on if you’re planning on regularly testing your own blood pressure without anyone else around, but they are considered by the medical community to be much more accurate. Wrist cuff models, on the other hand, are much easier to put on yourself but it is sometimes difficult to keep them in place to achieve the most accurate reading possible. In the case of arm cuff monitors, you’ll also need to consider cuff size – while there are standard sizes that can be applied to most people, those with larger of smaller arms than normal might find they need to get a larger or smaller cuff. If you do opt for the wrist monitor, you won’t have to worry about sizing your pressure monitor.
Features you might consider
There are several features, that while not completely necessary, can make the process a lot easier for you. The first of these is a display, as the display you opt for can often depend on how well you can see – if you have particularly poor eyesight, then you can even find blood pressure monitors that vocalise your reading. Memory storage is another commonly found feature on modern blood pressure monitors – this memory allows for the storage of readings, with some even allow multiple users per monitor, which can be a great option if you plan on sharing your blood pressure monitor with someone else. Finally, modern blood pressure monitors have made a read move to incorporate apps in their readings. Apps allow for far superior data logging capabilities, and can also offer a lot of excellent supporting material such as graphs and data manipulation. As monitors that incorporate an app don’t have a display of their own, this will be another consideration that some users will need to make while shopping around.
What blood pressure monitor suits you?
There are a lot of features out there now on blood pressure monitors that allow for the needs of users to really come into play, so with this in mind there are actually no right or wrong features when it comes to blood pressure monitors (with the exception of the core blood pressure features, of course). Shopping around and asking questions can be very useful for your health in this regard for helping you learn what might be best for your situation.