It’s all very well-made and compact enough to be easily portable. The fabric cuff is looped through a sturdy metal bar, and the main unit has a single button.

Withings BPM Connect has a white, six-inch-long, rounded main section attached to a gray fabric cuff that’s secured using hook-and-loop fastenings. Off to a rocky start … Andy Boxall/Digital Trends Plus, the less the design reminded me of a hospital, the better.Īfter a rocky start, it turned out the Withings BPM Connect would surpass my expectations, make my eventual check-in with the doctor stress-free and much smoother than it could have been, and it even added another dimension to the Apple Watch’s already comprehensive heart- and health-monitoring capabilities - all without looking like a “normal” blood pressure monitor hardly at all.

This was also an entirely new procedure for me, so I wanted the device I used to be friendly and simple. It’s an expensive piece of kit at $130, though (especially compared to non-connected or basic cuff-type blood pressure monitors), so it needed to not only be easy to use and reliable, but also not introduce barriers or different problems that you wouldn’t get with a monitor that wasn’t so tech-heavy. The BPM Connect synced with an app on my phone to collate results, so it was exactly what I wanted. It was fortuitous timing, plus I’ve always been impressed with Withings products, from the Sleep Analyzer to the ScanWatch smartwatch. Coincidentally, the month of May falls into a period of increased awareness around hypertension, and Withings happened to get in touch to see if I would like to test the BPM Connect electronic blood pressure monitoring cuff. Step forward, Withings Andy Boxall/Digital TrendsĪt the time of my health check, I didn’t even know connected blood pressure monitors existed - and it would later turn out I was not the only one.

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