Customer Rating:  
Summary: Omron HEM 650 Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor
Comment: I can only have my blood pressure taken in my right arm, and I don't get good readings with the traditional BP monitors. This works great, is easy to use, and has fantastic memory functions. My only complaint is that you have to move your arm around to find the right position for the monitor to work, and sometimes that takes a little time. We gave one of these monitors to my elderly father-in-law, and he kept saying it didn't work. He didn't have the patience to move his arm around, and we don't live close enough to teach him how to do it. So it may not be the right monitor for someone who doesn't have patience, or for someone that you can't sit down and teach how to use it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Omron HEM-650 Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor
Comment: Great product with consistent readings. I did turn the Advanced Positioning Sensor off though. The APS detects if your wrist is in the correct position but I found at times that I would have to have my wrist up in the middle of the air to get the alarm to shut off and I felt that was incorrect in order to correctly take your blood pressure. I found that at times it would take 4+ tries to get the alarm to shut off. I want to wrap the monitor around my wrist, set my wrist to a correct position that most who take thier blood pressure on a normal basis are aware of, turn the thing on and forget about it. Alarms? Forget it.
Other than the APS, I would recommend buying this monitor. Great price and all in a small package.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A great source -- of frustration
Comment: The Omron HEM-650 is a blood pressure monitor that is placed on the wrist, to measure your blood pressure. It has a liquid crystal display (LCD) to show your diastolic and systolic blood pressures, plus your pulse.
Why did I buy this device? After years of having routinely low blood pressure, something happened and, in January 2008, I was found to have high blood pressure. My mother, who also has high blood pressure, had a doctor-recommended machine from AMD, and I began using that one, too, to monitor my pressure. It is the kind that has a cuff to go on the arm, and you manually pump it up.
In October 2008, I ended up on intravenous antibiotics for two weeks at home, with a nurse coming weekly to monitor my progress. He had a neat blood pressure monitor, that went on the wrist, inflated itself, and was both easy to use and accurate (he had tested it against a manual arm-cuff one for a month, with very high agreement). He had bought his, several years ago, at Radio Shack. I checked, and they no longer carried them, and the company they had used no longer made them. I searched on-line and in stores, and ended up choosing the Omron HEM-650 with Advanced Positioning Sensor.
This monitor fits snugly on either wrist. It has a big LCD monitor, and measurement reading is very easy. It gives you all three readings -- diastolic, systolic, and pulse -- all at once. Measurement time is fairly quick, although not as quick as that one from Radio Shack.
I have now said several nice things about the device, but rated it one star? Why?
Two big reasons. First of all, the stupid Advanced Positioning Sensor (APS) makes the device almost unworkable. The instructions say that positioning of the cuff, and of the arm, are critical, during measurement. I think this is a gimmick, as nobody worries about where your arm is when you get your blood pressure measured in the hospital or at your doctor's office, as long as you are relaxed and unmoving during the process. The instructions say that the cuff must be held right over your heart, with one hand holding your arm-of-measurement stationary during the procedure. The APS ensures that the cuff is in the right location during measurement.
However, if the APS is to be believed, there simply is no right location, most of the time. Apply cuff, hit "Start," and put arm in the right position. Nothing happens. You shift position slightly. Nothing. Try again. Nothing. Ten minutes later, after numerous attempts to find the correct location, you're thinking about where you left your rubber mallet, so that you can beat the monitor into submission.
Secondly, on the few occasions we were able to actually get this thing to work, I found the accuracy to be highly questionable. The first time it worked for me, it gave me a high reading (145/97) and I immediately double-checked that. First, I finally got this monitor to measure me again, and the result was 116/78, less than ten minutes after that first reading. Another monitor, my old one, yielded 119/82. Where did that first reading come from? This weird-reading phenomenon repeated itself today, with my father getting 151/77 and 127/81 within ten minutes (of frustrating attempts) of each other, with the other monitor giving 121/78.
I received this as a present from my parents, and we all agreed today that go back, it must do. I tend to be a stubborn buyer; I buy cautiously, then really try to stick with my purchase. I am the same way with gifts. But, at over 63 dollars, this one was definitely not a keeper.
-- Chris McCallister, author of Coming Full Circle
Customer Rating:
Summary: The best blood pressure monitor
Comment: I have other Omron blood pressure monitor (old version) but the HEM-650 is the best. Easy to use and the APS system (Advanced Positioning Sensor) is really fantastic....now finished the fear to have done the wrong measurement. The relation cost benefit is the best possible one. I recommend to the all this model of the Omron.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great product
Comment: This product came highly recommended so I did not hesitate to purchase it. It is very easy to use and I love the memory feature.
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