Hilo wearable blood pressure monitor ZDNET's key takeaways Just attach it to your wrist and it collects blood pressure data throughout the day
This still requires regular calibration using a blood pressure cuff
The app costs $80 a year after the first year, and without this, it limits your access to your data. View now at Hilo
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When I was a kid, I was totally convinced that my demise would come as a result of either nuclear war, the Bermuda Triangle (after all, it was only about 4,000 miles away), quicksand -- or, if I was really unlucky, some strange and unfortunate combination of the three.
Now, while none of these things have got me yet (fingers crossed, the day is young), it turns out the real silent killer lurking in the shadows was... high blood pressure. Ah, the joys of getting older. Close to half of adults in the US suffer from high blood pressure, also known as hypertension, and it is a contributory factor in over 1,000 deaths every day.
Last year, Apple rolled out a new health feature for Apple Watch users in the form of hypertension notifications. This joined features such as AFib (atrial fibrillation) detection and low and high heart rate notifications. Apple Watch Series 9 or later and Apple Watch Ultra 2 or later use the data collected by the optical heart sensor to scan for patterns that might indicate hypertension over a 30-day period. If such patterns are identified, it sends a notification suggesting the user get a blood pressure cuff to measure and track blood pressure for seven days.
Also: Best blood pressure watches: I tested the top models that actually work
I wore my Apple Watch daily and never got any such notification. I'd always hated the cuff-style blood pressure monitors, so it wasn't something I kept an eye on much. Then, a while back, I was talking to a friend, and they mentioned that they had picked up a wearable that supposedly measured blood pressure for their father. However, he refused to wear it, and they wondered if I wanted to try it.
It told me almost immediately that I had hypertension. Great.
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