Blood Pressure Monitor 

The business end of the product consists of a cuff suitable for a 9 to 13 inch upper arm and a device that provides the air to inflate the cuff and measure the pressures as well as your pulse. These are stored in the unit. Of course after a while seeing three sets of figures on an LCD screen become only a mess of figures. A USB lead and a software CD is provided and once you have downloaded a USB to serial driver from the link given on a label on the box then you can store or graph these figure on the PC and start to see if your condition is improving or dare I say worsening.

As someone who once had to wear a monitor for 24 hours as part of some tests this is a far more simple procedure.

The ?brains' of the system is 16x11x7cm maximum dimension box that runs of 4xAA batteries. The 32 page manual says it can be run on rechargeable batteries but during my tests I ran it on the four normal AA batteries supplied. Once you have inserted the batteries you have to set the time and date, all well described in the manual.

See also: Health and Fitness

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That's about it. fit the lead from the cuff into the left side of the unit and you are ready to go. It is important to be in the correct position when taking your pressure or you are likely to get some strange results. I am quite a large person and the cuff was just in the useable range for me, I would suggest that a child would need a smaller cuff and certainly anyone into fitness (large muscles) would need a larger cuff.

The date and time are shown on the unit all the time, once you have fitted the cuff according to the instruction manual press the start button and the cuff inflates causing the arm to feel compressed, once the upper pressure has been reached and the air is gradually released you start to feel your pulse. Once the air is exhausted the display shows the Systolic and Diastoric pressures and also your pulse rate on the display. There are two buttons marked M1 and M2 and press one of these to store the reading.

By having two buttons enable two separate sets of readings and this could enable a couple to store their readings in the system. A carrying case is supplied to facilitate easy transportation of the unit.

Installing the software on a PC is easy however as soon as you attach the USB lead it wants a driver and for some reason - unknown to me - it was not supplied on the CD and you need to download it from a link shown on box, it would have made more sense to me to put a sticker on the manual as when something does not work I tend to look at the manual not the box.

While I am not a huge fan of home diagnostics for anyone worried about their health something like this used in conjunction to your doctor or nurse could be helpful and may even diagnose a problem in the early - easier to treat - stages.

A friend asked me ?are they accurate' well the readings I got were close to those I get during my regular check ups that I have with the nurse at my surgery. Price from the link below £34.95 I have seen other units advertised for less but I do not know if they have similar functionality or the ability to store and graph readings, or even if they are as accurate.