Medical Guardian, Premium Guardian: Review

The product arrived in about a week without unexpected incident. It is packed in a typical brown cardboard box. Not exciting but not off putting.

Because this is a go-anywhere system, it is fairly simple in terms of the things in the box. There is the pendant, a charging cradle, a lanyard and a nice belt clip option, and a small instruction manual and the contract.

The pendant itself is fairly large (similar to the Splash from Great Call, which has similar functionality). It is reasonably OK looking. It does have a quite nice flashing light that periodically glows green. I found it disappointing however that it was the usual white-beige color of boring computers and other clinical electronics. Inoffensive: Yes. A fashion accessory: No.

The pendant is shown in the image below. One feature I really liked is that it comes with a rather convenient belt clip that can be attached to the back, thus making it possible to wear on your belt instead of around your neck. Not sure how well the automatic fall detection works in that mode, but it seems quite a bit more convenient for me. Our female explorers pointed out they would not like that because they dont typically wear a belt.

I wore it around for a few days and here are a few observations.

• The very first time I wore it, I left the house, jumped in my car and it started talking to me. It told me that I had set off an "alert". By this time I was driving and when I got to it, it was too late to cancel the "alert", but the responder came on the line through the pendant and asked if I was OK, and when I said it was a false alarm she pleasantly told me that was quite OK and that she would cancel the alert. Not sure if I had it on the wrong part of my belt where I pressed it on sitting down. I moved it to the side of my belt and continued my day.
• I still like the belt clip, but it is actually designed for a rather narrow belt and does not work quite right on the belt I normally wear.

Here you can see it in action.