Got a Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 or later? You'll be able to 'monitor your blood pressure right from the wrist' very soon

• Samsung Galaxy Watches are getting true blood pressure monitoring
• Starting tomorrow, users of Galaxy Watch 4 and up can access and use the feature
• It still requires a cuff for calibration every 28 days

The best Samsung watches are finally going to be able to monitor blood pressure, one of the most sought-after health features in smartwatches today.

Available from 1 April via a software update for Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 and later models, owners of these select Galaxy Watches can monitor their blood pressure right from the wrist using the watch's optical heart rate sensor.

True blood pressure readings are fiendishly difficult to engineer with LEDs, and something smartwatch manufacturers have been trying to get right for a long time. An inflatable blood pressure cuff is really the only medically accurate way to measure blood pressure — and that still seems to be the case, as the Samsung feature requires calibration with a cuff every 28 days.

So, to use this feature, you'll need to own or buy an inflatable blood pressure cuff, update your Samsung software, and download the Samsung Health Monitor app. Once you've input your readings into Samsung Health, the watch will log biomarkers like your heart rate and make predictions about your blood pressure based on how they change. Too many outliers will signal that a user's blood pressure is higher than normal.

True blood pressure tech remains elusive

Measuring a person's blood pressure without a cuff is a technology that remains elusive. The specialist medical watch from Huawei, the Huawei Watch D2 series, incorporates an inflatable wrist cuff into the watch's band and takes its readings from there. Why that hasn't taken off as an additional accessory for smartwatches, I don't know.

Apart from Huawei's innovative watch band, Apple seems to have gotten the closest with its Hypertension feature, which uses heart rate and other biomarkers to detect likely hypertension over 30 days of wearing the watch. Once you get the notification, you're advised to confirm it with regular measurements using an inflatable blood pressure cuff, as usual.

Samsung's blood pressure feature is a nice-to-have, and for those already keeping an eye on their blood pressure using a cuff, it's great that you only have to measure once a month now, and the watch will theoretically do the rest.

I believe that once Samsung and others start analysing the calibrated data, 'true' cuffless blood pressure monitoring won't be far away.

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