Omron BP785 10 Series

Options: 10

36 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of five stars Omron 785 Add ons are hard to use, February 2, 2011
By Chris Zee Shutterbug (Baton Rouge La) See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) This review is from: Omron BP785 ten Series Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor, Black/white, big (Health and Beauty)
Buyer review from the Vine™ Program () Omron Series ten blood pressure monitor. Three stars

Not as useful/cost efficient as the older/simpler models in spite of the wiz bang improvements. I have been an Omron user for about ten years (7 series)from the time that buyer magazines rated their units as tops in accuracy. Arrhythmia or any pulse irregularity will cause problems with many other units, but not the Omron, either the older or the newer models. So what changed? The display size and the white on black digits are indeed more readable, but the old plain LCD weren’t much worse. The comfort cuff at 1st I thought it could be more easy to put on. Its not. The thumb “guide” panel is located all wrong, if you put your thumb on the panel, the air tube winds up closer to the outside of the elbow as opposed to the inside where its supposed to be. The air tube length is short, but it’s exactly the same length as the old units used to have. The preformed round form firstly makes you think that putting it on with just one hand could be easier than in the past. Its not. The old style cuff you could leave in a loose position and slip it on as a sleeve. Do not think about using the old cuff with the new base unit either. Omron changed the diameter of the fitting. The old cuff tube flops around in the new size base opening. The unit design is quirky also. The on/off and the start/stop are now on one button. Unless you use the three reading averaging function (pain to use as you must set it up throughout the turning on period), every time you want to redo the pressure test, you must turn off the unit. The improvements in general are counterintuitive, the buttons have icons only and don’t seem to make any sense. Whoever intended the user interface didn’t run many real world tests. There are user A and user B functions, but unless you figure out how to use the “memo icon/averaging” and the day/night button and the left/right = up/down combo button, you won’t be able to access the seven weeks worth of averaging data for each person and for every time of day. Granted this is a useful function, but with the user manual in hand you’ll have to scratch your head a bit to figure it out. I recommend that you don’t use the badly implemented statistical functions in the unit itself and map the daily readings in a spreadsheet or on a part of paper. Caution I lost the fitted averaging data when I unplugged and moved the unit without having batteries in it. The power adapter now comes with the units, and it does work in the older models if you want to do a comparison. In real use I found the unit to be consistent, getting reading in about 30 seconds. The inflation pressure monitors the pulse and only inflates about 20 30 mm Hg above what the highest projected reading will be. This behavior is about exactly the same as on older units. I have gotten some E1 errors, about 20 of the time I use the unit. This is a cuff problem error, the new cuff or error checking doesn’t seem to be as fault tolerant as the older units. Putting the cuff over clothes, starting with the cuff overly loose, or the air tube too far away from the artery looks to produce more errors than before.
So in summary the new and the greatest and costly model gets you many of gadgets that aren’t user friendly. Keep the manual glued to the bottom of the unit, or better still plot the results on a computer. The display is nice, the cuff is comfy, but not as easy to change, or as fault tolerant as older models.

Update: The E1 error is annoying. I get it up to 33 (1 out of three measurements). The unit won’t work with rechargable batteries (voltage is lower). Starts to inflate, then at about 20 30mm pressure the battery symbol flashes and the unit stops with a E2 error.
Update#2: I ran down my second set of batteries (good for about 75 measurements). Knowing that I lost data before, this time I plugged the unit into the AC adapter before changing the batteries. But I lost ALL the data, averages and individual readings, but not the clock interestingly enough. So it looks that if you run the batteries down to the point where the cuff only inflates part way, you have already lost data. My suggestion is to change the batteries once the battery symbol starts to flash, which precludes using the rechargable batteries.

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35 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of five stars Excellent Blood Pressure Monitor (Physician Review), January 30, 2011
By O. Brown “Ms. O. Khannah Brown” (Twopeas, WA) See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (TOP ten REVIEWER) (REAL NAME) This review is from: Omron BP785 ten Series Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor, Black/white, big (Health and Beauty)
Buyer review from the Vine™ Program ()
I got this blood pressure monitor for my husband’s use he is a physician with high blood pressure. He wasn’t interested in using it to monitor his own blood pressure, but was interested in using it in his clinic, as he had the manual type (called a sphygmomanometer) and his nurse showed signs of carpal tunnel syndrome from manually pumping it up for each patient. So I agreed that he could use it there if he could write a review for me. Though this won’t give feedback on the use of this monitor for individual use, I think that the review by a physician will be useful and add something to the many reviews already published here. Here is his review:

“We just started using the Omron BP785, Series 10, blood pressure monitor in our medical clinic. We tried other auto blood pressure monitors before and weren’t pleased as the readings were erratic at times. We have been impressed with the accuracy and easy use of the Omron device.

The device is small, light, and has an easy to read face that measures 4.75 inches by six inches. The back of the device is elevated off the flat surface 3.5 inches, the front is elevated only .75 inches so the device is made to rest on a flat surface and the face is tilted forward towards the user for easy reading. The readings are in big size numbers also for easy reading.

The Omron, Series ten has many distinctive features as well as an auto calibration check system with dual sensors that automatically check each reading to insure accuracy. Other features are a cuff wrap guide to be sure the cuff is properly applied. The pre formed cuff provided makes the cuff easy to apply and fits all size upper arms. In the “True Read Mode” the device takes three separate consecutive readings, one minute separately and displays the average of the three readings following the terms of the American Heart affiliation. The device also has an Irregular Heartbeat Detector that alerts the user of any irregular beats which is useful in a busy clinic. This lets my nurse to inform me of any patients with a earlier not known irregular heartbeat so I can refer them to a cardiologist ASAP. The device also has a 200 reading memory storage with date and time stamp for easy research of the last 200 readings.

We checked the Omron’s accuracy against our standard sphygmomanometer and it appears to be correct for all three parameters of Systolic BP, Diastolic BP, and Pulse.

I could recommend this monitor for home use and for medical office use without any reservations.”

He said that he totally could give this product five stars. He’s only been using it for about a week, so I’ll update this review after some number of months of his using it to see about a hundred patients a week. This could be useful in assessing its lasting durability.

Highly suggested.

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16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of five stars Nice BP monitor for the right user, but a poor manual, January 24, 2011
By K. Bunker “KBunker” (Boston, MA USA) See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME) This review is from: Omron BP785 ten Series Upper Arm Blood Pressure Monitor, Black/white, big (Health and Beauty)
Buyer review from the Vine™ Program () This monitor appears to be a high quality device. The device’s memory potential let it to store 100 sets of measurement values for each of two users, plus eight weeks worth of weekly averages for morning and evening readings for each of two users.

As one may expect of a device with pretty elaborate alternatives like those, it has a somewhat complex and non intuitive user interface. This monitor could be overkill for someone who’s only interested in making an sporadic spot check of his or her blood pressure, and will probably be a supply of frustration for anybody who’s not comfy with high tech gadgets.

Beyond that, my only complaint with the unit is its user manual. This is a 50 page booklet, and you will want to keep it on hand if you intend to use any of the monitor’s alternatives beyond the most basic. Unfortunately, it is quite badly written. In no specific order, here are many of my peeves with the manual:

The user is instructed to press the SET button for different functions. Unfortunately, there’s no button on the device marked “SET”, and at no point is it clarified what this button seems. (By reference to one of the illustrations, I deduced that it is the button with a clock face on it.)

There are separate information for taking a reading in “single mode” and in “Truread(TM) mode”. As far as steps the user takes, these “modes” are same, so the copy information are confusing and a waste of space. To learn what the differences are between these modes and how you decide one or the other, you must refer to another part of the manual, “Setting the date/time and TruRead”.

Throughout the manual, the button with a right facing arrow is called the “up” button, and the button with a left facing arrow is the “down” button. Agreeing the name to the real direction of the arrows or vice versa would have been nice.

Some sentences that are simply bad English appear: “The 1st measurement is complete, waiting to begin the second measurement.” and “While holding the Memory button and the Start/Stop button at the same time for more than two seconds all values will be deleted.”

Aside from those complaints, this appears to be a device of respectable quality, as I noted. One can hope that the manual will be updated and improved, just as one hopes that its currently useless and error riddled page will be fixed and fleshed out.

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