The Apple Watch missed my hypertension – but this blood pressure wearable caught it immediately

Hilo wearable blood pressure monitor

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Also: This smartwatch can monitor your blood pressure, but it’s not for everyone – here’s why

The wearable in question is called Hilo, and it’s yet another device competing for space on our bodies. This one fits on the wrist and looks like a Fitbit without a display. It is a Class IIa medical device that’s gone through the testing needed to be FDA cleared, and it’s also ISO 81060-2 certified, a standard that covers the accuracy of sphygmomanometers (blood pressure monitors). 

So, it’s definitely a legitimate piece of equipment and not snake oil. It takes blood pressure readings throughout the day and charts them on graphs in an app.

And it does all this without that cuff squeezing your arm like a starving boa constrictor and without the racket of that air pump, both of which can trigger an alarm reaction in some people and cause their blood pressure to spike (a phenomenon called white coat hypertension).

I hate cuffs (and proprietary cables)

Imagine my surprise when I found out the first thing I had to do was take a standard blood pressure reading using the included cuff.

The next thing I noticed, which I’m sure caused my blood pressure to spike, was how I was supposed to charge the bits and pieces. The band has a cable with a proprietary two-pin connector, while the cuff charges using micro USB.

Also: 10 useful cables and connectors I use everyday (and they’re affordably priced)

It does monitor blood pressure well

But, all this said, once the calibrations are done, the Hilo band does work very well when it comes to monitoring blood pressure. It seems to be very accurate and matches the supplied cuff and other third-party cuffs I’ve tried (yes, I’m slowly getting used to the cuffs). It’s also good as a step tracker and is only ever a few steps off from what my Apple Watch measures.

One place where it falls down badly is sleep tracking. I sleep around 6 to 7 hours a day, but the band thinks I live on much less. Every morning when I sync my data, the app asks me if the time I went to sleep and the time I woke up were correct, and every day it’s wrong (I’ve stopped bothering with correcting it). My Apple Watch is infinitely more accurate when it comes to sleep tracking than the Hilo.