I’ve got high blood pressure at the moment. My doctor wanted to keep an eye on it. It’s tricky as one blood pressure reading isn’t particularly useful. You need a whole bunch of readings over time, and that’s pretty hard to do unless you’re taking the measurements at home.
So, I got a home blood pressure monitor.
The first one I got was the QardioArm 2. I got it because we already had the Qardio BaseX Smart Scale. We just wanted a scale at home that was digital and could track weight over time as well as connect the information to Apple Health and it fit the bill. The QardioArm 2 does the same with blood pressure, tracking it over time.
There is a bigger problem with the QardioArm 2 though: it gives shit readings.
It’s literally always high. I was so worried using it before I went on my blood pressure medications because it was reading typically always in the Grade 2 (or 3) – Hypertension zones. I felt like I was a good candidate to die from a heart attack in the middle of the night. Then I started the blood pressure medications and… the readings stayed exactly the same. Was I on the wrong meds? Do these meds just not work on me? Is my blood pressure just so bad that the meds can’t pull it back down into a normal range? Who knows, but worrying.
My doctor had another theory: the Qardio blood pressure cuff just sucks and gives wrong readings.
The one they recommend is (in lieu of another person actually doing it for real) is the OMRON Silver.
The OMRON device also has an app that syncs with Apple Health, so no loss of functionality there, but the cuff is far nicer and has a little dedicated machine so you don’t have to use the app if you don’t want to, that’s just an optional extra.
The OMRON was ~$50 and the Qardio was ~$100.
So TLDR:
- OMROM Silver: Nicer, Cheaper
- QardioArm 2: Worse, More Expensive