My uncle swore by a $30 blood pressure monitor from CVS

He told me it was just as accurate as the $150 ones and called me out for overspending. I brought both to my doctor's appointment last month in Nashville and the nurse checked them side by side. Turns out the cheap one was off by 15 points on systolic every single reading. Has anyone else had a home gadget fail that bad when put to the test?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_claire1d ago

Wow, that is wild. Fifteen points off is a huge difference, basically useless at that point. My dad had one of those fancy wrist ones that was always screaming at him about his heart rate being too high, turned out he just had to hold his arm at heart level and breathe normal. He took it to the doctor and the nurse laughed because the thing was flashing a fake panic warning every time he took his blood pressure. Made him rent a video about how to use it properly from the library back in 2009. Now he just uses the manual one with the squeeze bulb and stethoscope, swears by it even though it takes him three tries to get a reading. Sometimes the old basic stuff is the most reliable, I guess.

max_cooper211d ago

Yeah, I had the same problem with those wrist cuffs, just switched to the arm band kind and never looked back.

simon_carr1d ago

Brought my friend Dave's cheapo thermometer from Walgreens along to test on our kids when they both had fevers last winter. His $8 one said 99.2 while my oral one said 102.8, so we had no idea who to believe. Took them both to urgent care and the nurse rolled her eyes so hard I thought they'd get stuck. She said those forehead scanners are basically toys, especially if you don't hold them exactly right or if the kid is sweaty. Dave's thermometer ended up in the trash that same afternoon, which was a shame because he'd already used it to check the temperature of his coffee every morning for a week.