We don't have any of the GE Pro Care units and only a few of the very old Critikon units.
The Welch Allyn Spot units are excellent. They're not entirely trouble free, but are fairly easy to sort out and the support from Welch Allyn is very good. We've had several instances of the mains lead failing just where it enters the power supply - the "strain relief" is too rigid to provide much relief ! - and on a couple of occasions the failure has been quite spectacular and frightened several nurses - a big bang and lots of smoke !
The Omron units are cheap and cheerful and surprisingly accurate. One of the models has been approved by the Hypertension Society and the comparative tests we did showed they were just as accurate as the Dynamaps. You can't buy them direct from Omron any more, but you can arrange for Omron to provide the technical support and carry out all repairs. They do a fixed price repair which is very good value and the service is quick. At around £90 they can be treated as a throw-away item if they get dropped (and let's face it, what doesn't get dropped
) but Omron will have a go at repairing almost anything - even if you send the bits back in a plastic bag ! !
The biggest expense is the cuffs - but the Omron ones used to be very good value (£12 per cuff, any size ?) and Henleys have just brought out a range of "disposable" cuffs which are a similar price and seem very good. You have to be careful to get the right size of cuff though, as we found that using a cuff which was too small significantly affected the readings.
