Most home blood pressure monitors show the same small family of symbols: a heart that blinks while the pulse is detected, an irregular-heartbeat icon, a movement or cuff-fit warning, a battery indicator, a memory or user marker, and a coloured bar showing which category the reading falls into. Error codes are the exception: their letters and numbers are decided by each manufacturer, so an E2 on one brand and an E2 on another can mean entirely different things, and only the manual for your model settles it.
What does the heart symbol mean?
On almost every monitor the heart flashes while the device is detecting your pulse during the measurement, and it is simply a sign that the reading is in progress. It is not a warning and not a heart-rate assessment. Once the measurement finishes, a steady heart next to the third number usually just labels that number as your pulse rather than part of the blood pressure.
What does the irregular heartbeat symbol mean?
It means the monitor detected an uneven interval between beats while it was measuring, and it appears on many devices from time to time. It is a signal about the measurement, not a diagnosis: movement, talking or a single early beat can trigger it. Manufacturers generally advise that if the symbol appears repeatedly across many readings, it is worth mentioning to a clinician, who can decide whether it means anything.
What does the coloured bar on the side of the screen mean?
It is the monitor's built-in classification indicator, placing the reading you just took into a band from normal to high. The bands follow a published guideline, but not always the same one your clinician uses, and the US and European category tables differ in the range between 130/80 and 140/90. Treat the bar as a rough cue rather than a verdict, and compare your averages against the threshold your own clinician works to.
Why does my monitor show a letter A or B?
Those are user memories, letting two people store readings on the same device without mixing them. The letter tells you which memory the reading is being saved into, and getting it wrong is a common and quiet source of confusion in shared households, because it means one person's averages silently include another person's readings. Check the letter before you measure if you share the monitor.
What do the error codes E1, E2, E3 or Err mean?
They vary by manufacturer, and that is the honest answer: there is no universal code table. Broadly, error codes on home monitors cluster into a few causes — the cuff was not fitted or inflated properly, the arm moved during the measurement, the device could not detect a stable pulse, or the batteries are too low. Your model's manual maps its specific codes, and our monitor display guides describe what several common models show on screen and in which order.
Do the symbols belong in my log?
The irregular-heartbeat icon is worth noting when it appears, and so is any reading that produced an error and had to be repeated, because both explain otherwise puzzling gaps and outliers in a record. The rest — the battery, the progress heart, the user letter — do not need recording. If you photograph your monitor into the Monitor2Log diary, the numbers are read from the display and you can add the icon as a note on that row before saving it.
Sources
- American Heart Association, understanding blood pressure readings and home monitoring.
- European Society of Cardiology, 2024 guidelines for elevated blood pressure and hypertension.
- STRIDE BP, independently validated home blood pressure monitors.
- Your monitor's own manual, which is the only authority on its specific error codes.
General information only, not medical advice. A symbol that keeps appearing is something to raise with your clinician rather than interpret at home.