Finding the Best Blood Pressure Watch
Blood pressure is a barometer for your health condition. Too high or too low blood pressure is an indication of a bodily condition that requires a doctor’s attention. Unfortunately, you can’t know the state of your body’s blood pressure unless you take a test, the easiest which can be done using a wrist blood pressure watch.
What is a Blood Pressure Watch?
A blood pressure watch is a watch with a wrist cuff that monitors your blood pressure and displays it on a smart screen. Like any hypertension monitoring device, blood pressure watches use the Oscillometric method of measuring systolic and diastolic blood pressures.
Who should use a Blood Pressure Watch?
If you already have an irregular heartbeat condition, a blood pressure testing watch won’t be helpful. They are designed to prevent hypertension or any other blood pressure related ailments. For people with atrial fibrillation, find a watch for someone with high blood pressure.
Most people don’t learn about having hypertension until it’s very late. It does not have to be that way for you. High blood pressure is a silent killer with high fatality rates when not discovered early. It’s most common among overweight people but there have been cases of seemingly healthy people acquiring the disease.
Older people also tend to acquire hypertension more often than younger people. This is linked to changes in artery stiffness as people grow older. But irrespective of your age, a blood pressure watch could be useful in the prevention of hypertension. The disease doesn’t portray any symptoms after all.
Are Blood Pressure Watches Accurate?
While they all check your blood pressure in the same ways, blood pressure watches don't always produce the same results. Some watches are more accurate than others. The most accurate watches are certified and approved by the FDA.
Still, a blood pressure smart watch can be accurate or less accurate depending on how you use it. Doctors recommend that you place your heart in your heart area before measuring your blood's pressure. If not, the readings recorded by watches tend to be higher than those recorded by a doctor's blood pressure gauge.
If you are unsure of your blood pressure watch’s accuracy, visit your doctor. She will compare the results given by her blood pressure gauge with those given by your watch and help you make proper adjustments in the future.
Types of Blood Pressure Watch
Types of Blood Pressure Watches?
Blood pressure watches are similar in many ways. A smart screen and self-inflating and deflating straps are defining features of every hypertension watch. The straps inflate and press your arteries to detect your body’s blood pressure. Their basic purpose aside, blood pressure watches differ in the following ways:
Basic Blood Pressure Watch
Checks only the blood pressure. Most of them are cheap but have to be operated manually. They come in many colors and screen shapes but don’t offer any additional services.
If you choose a simple blood pressure watch, comfort and accuracy should be your most important concerns. Battery life should also be good and its cost should be lower than what advanced watches cost.
Standard Blood Pressure Watch
Connected to iOS and Android apps, standard blood pressure watches tend to be as accurate as your doctor’s gauge. The best watches check your blood pressure in real time and send the data to an app using Bluetooth.
Sports Fitness Watch
Sports fitness watches are the sleekest of health watches. They track your movements using GPS and your speed using an accelerometer. Some also track your calorie count and the amount of sleep you have. You can then link the data with your smartphone. It’s worth noting that fitness watches are much more expensive than blood pressure watches.
Important Features
What are the most Important Features of Blood Pressure Watches?
Before you order a Samsung watch or pick the lowest prices blood pressure device, check the following key features.
Design and Build
Apple clearly leads the pack when it comes to stellar designs for the watches. The Apple watch is stylish and sleek. It’s light and comes in a variety of beautiful colors. It’s not the only beautiful blood pressure watch though.
More pro's black LED blood pressure wearable with purple straps looks gorgeous while Besde’s blood pressure tracker is as stunning as they come. Check out different designs before you make a purchase. Also, read about the watches’ build qualities. Go for lightness and strong builds to deliver a comfortable experience and a long-lasting watch.
Accuracy
Having a beautiful design doesn’t mean a blood pressure watch is accurate. The Apple watch, for instance, didn’t have FDA approval and couldn’t read BP until late last year. Before style distracts you, read the watch’s description for clinical and FDA approvals.
Of course, there are many accurate BP watches without FDA approvals but it’s hard to recognize them. Having clinical and FDA approval makes your work easy since you are guaranteed they can read your blood pressure.
Compatibility with Smartphones
Monitoring your blood pressure over time is crucial, which is why you should pick a watch that helps you save regular readings. The best watches are compatible with both iOS and android devices. However, many brands only work with select android devices. Check that your ideal watch can transmit data to your smartphone using Wi-Fi or Bluetooth.
Battery Life
It’s not uncommon for blood pressure watches to keep battery charge for 4-7 days. So, if you hate devices that have to be charged constantly, take time to find BP watches with long battery lives. The average device holds charge for 1-2 days though.
Additional Features
As already mentioned, fitness watches tend to measure a lot of things in your body. From your speed while exercising to your sleep, blood pressure is only one of the many things they can monitor. They are expensive though, which is why most people only interested in BP buy blood pressure specific watches. However, consider buying a device with extra features if it’s affordable and the features are useful.
Best Blood Pressure Watch Brands
The best-rated blood pressure watches all come from a select number of brands. Some of them, like Apple and Samsung, make all kinds of products. Others specialize in healthcare products. Here is how they fair in designing blood pressure watches and their prices.
Omron
FDA cleared, sleek design and accurate results—what else do you want in a blood pressure watch? Omron knows. Their premium device also tracks your speed as you exercise. It counts your calories and number of miles run. It observes your sleep patterns and displays your records to a phone app in color-coded graphs. The premium fitness watch costs $499.
If you are only interested in blood pressure monitoring, skip Omron's watch and check the company's 7-series $69 arm blood pressure monitors. They are clinically approved and offer accurate results. Omron also offers other devices, most of which are rated on average 8/10.
Apple Watch
Apple first introduced this watch as a luxurious gadget for checking the time and listening to music. With time, the company realized the immense potential the watch held if it could offer fitness services. Apple finally made its promises come true through the Series 4 smart watch blood pressure device.
The watch is bold and beautiful. It has a large, cutting edge display with a bright display makes it easy to read messages even in broad daylight. To more important features, Apple watch is FDA approved to monitor irregular heartbeats. However, this feature only works for newer models than run OS5 and later.
Another useful health feature is fall detection. It even detects whether you fell forward or backward and won’t give you results if you fall intentionally. Not that we fell intentionally but the watch is pretty accurate at its job.
Besides health features, the watch hosts email apps, maps, has GPS trackers and has Siri enabled. Of course, Apple doesn’t provide its services cheaply. Be prepared to part with $399 or more depending on which version you choose.
Samsung Galaxy Watch
Samsung has always been a worth Apple alternative and this remains true when it comes to health watches. From its design to health specs, Samsung’s watch looks lavish and worth every penny they charge you.
Its face is circular shaped. It offers the normal time and date services but packs a wide range of additional services. Samsung offers you the choice of an LTE model or a Bluetooth connected device. Like Apple, Samsung’s fitness watch can monitor your heartbeat and six other activities. The watch is also cheaper, costing $244 on Amazon.
Heartisans Watch
If you would want all the features offered by Apple and Samsung for a better deal, consider Heartisans. This watch doesn’t tell you the time but it displays up to six activities related to health. From BP to ECG, your calorie count to speed, Heartisans is a complete fitness tracker. The watch costs $149.
Asus VivoWatch
Customized for iPhone users, Asus Vivowatch does not work on android devices. What it does, however, is track your heartbeat rate, your sleep patterns, and your happiness levels. Crazy, right? It doesn’t make you happy though but only measures your level of joy. The watch lacks the cutting edge screen offered by Apple but makes up for it with a battery that stores charge for up to 10 days.
To Conclude
Blood pressure watches are fast becoming popular around the world. If you care about your health, you should probably also get one. A good BP watch accurately records your BP levels. It monitors your exercising activities and transmits the data to your smartphone for great data storage.
