- Today, I'm gonna share with you
some really important things to consider
when buying or upgrading a CPAP machine.
This is my CPAP buyer's guide,
and it's gonna help you make really good informed decisions,
so you can buy the best CPAP machine for your budget.
(upbeat music)
When you're first told that you have sleep apnea
and that you need to go and maybe investigate
buying a CPAP machine,
I know that it's really, really confusing for many of you,
it's just such an overload of information, isn't it?
You know, just with all the different manufacturers,
all the different models, the CPAP, the APAPs, the BiPAPs,
all the different prices and the features,
and it leaves you feeling a bit paralyzed
because you really just have no idea on what it all means,
and you're kind of just, yeah, in this state of confusion
and when there's just so many different choices out there,
it does really make it really hard
for you to sort of make a good informed decision,
when you are confused and a company knows
that you really have no idea,
it does leave you quite vulnerable
to sort of being manipulated in one way or another
to perhaps spending a little bit more money
than what you might need to get the same good night's sleep
and the same apnea control.
So that's what this video is all about today
to sort of cut through all the bullshit
and give you just the straight up information
that should help you make your life a bit easier
if you're going to buy or potentially upgrade
your existing machine.
The therapy in general in terms of positive airway pressure,
hasn't really changed a whole lot in 35 years,
and if you break it all down
and you take away the shell
and you take away all the marketing terms
and all the bits and pieces, and all the bells and whistles,
the machine itself is basically just an air pump,
all right, it brings air in through the back,
adds a little bit of moisture to it,
and then it pushes it down the tubing into your mask,
and that obviously forces air into your lungs,
so you're really just looking at a very expensive air pump.
The reason I'm trying to tell you this is because
across the board, no matter what machine you're gonna get,
actual therapy itself, isn't gonna change a whole lot,
and from one machine to the next,
they're really gonna do the same thing.
Now, the first thing to consider
is what mode of therapy you wanna have a look at,
so you've got your CPAP or your fixed pressure machines
set to one level, and then you have your auto
or your APAP machines,
you have variable pressure machines
that change the pressure automatically throughout the night,
and then you have your BiPAP machines or BiLevel machines,
which have a different pressure for inhalation
versus exhalation, and that all sounds a bit confusing,
so I'm gonna make it really simple for you,
I want you to forget about CPAP okay,
just forget about your fixed pressure machines altogether,
and you really wanna be starting
with your automatic machines,
which are gonna monitor your breathing,
they're gonna always adjust the therapy levels
automatically, so if you've got a cold
or you've had a night on the booze,
or you put on a bit of weight over winter,
it doesn't matter,
your automatic machine will monitor your breathing
every night, every minute and adjust accordingly,
and of course you can fine tune it a little bit
and watch some of the videos that I do on that,
but you wanna start with the auto
and then if you're really struggling
getting used to the therapy with the automatic,
and you'll find it very difficult to breathe out
against the pressure, then by all means,
go and speak to your consultant about trialing
a BiPAP machine, which is just a lot easier to breathe out
against the pressure, but very similar.
All right, so forget about your CPAP,
start with your auto and then if you're failing at auto,
try your Bi-PAP.
Now the next thing is obviously the brands
and there's probably 10 or so, maybe even more now brands
on the market, the big three are ResMed,
Philips Respironics, Fisher and Paykel Healthcare,
they have the market dominance,
and because of that market dominance,
they do charge a premium,
a little bit more dollar for that market dominance,
and below them, you've got brands like 3B Medical or BMC,
which make the luna range, your DeVilbiss machines,
which make, you know, your sleep cubes
and your IntelliPAPs, and your DeVilbiss blue machines,
and there's a few others now as well,
I won't go through them all,
but basically I like to pigeonhole them into, you know,
your really high-end ones,
and then sort of your more budget machines.
And so when it comes to that,
I think you look straightaway at your budget
and if you don't care too much about money
and you've got plenty of it,
it's probably worthwhile getting, you know,
one of those high-end machines,
but if you're a little bit more money conscious, you know,
you're a bit more of a budget then certainly, you know,
you'll look more at the sort of budget machines
that are still great guys,
and you're gonna say probably 30 to 50% off
compared to these machines, and at the same time,
you're not really missing out on a whole lot.
When you wake up in the morning, you know,
the budget machines are still gonna give you
really good control over your sleep apnea,
you still got plenty of good features,
they've got good humidification systems, good data features,
so you're not missing out on a whole lot,
once we have decided sort of where we are with our budget,
these are some other things to consider,
and the first one is the warranty on the machine,
warranties range from, you know, three years to five years,
but there's all sorts of types of warranties as well,
there's sort of repair warranties
where if something happens, maybe after three years,
gotta send it back for repair
or there's replacement warranties
where you don't have to get it repaired,
they just send you out a brand new one, if there's a fault,
and also you need to sort of have a look at whether or not,
if there is an issue with the device,
do you have to sort of post it back to the manufacturer
to have a look at it before they replace it?
Will they give you sort of a loan machine in the meantime?
will they cover the postal costs?
These are some things with the warranty,
but another really important thing is
you wanna know what happens after that warranty,
what happens if your motor blows up
and do they have fixed price servicing?
Is there just one price for no matter what the fixed
or is it sort of on a quote basis?
Just find out a little bit about the warranty,
but ideally you want like a five-year warranty
on these full size units,
you're probably not gonna get that on the travel size units,
and also you might wanna discuss with the manufacturer
or where you're buying it from,
is there an option to sort of pay, you know,
extra 100 dollars and get a few more years on top of that,
so warranty is certainly one to take a look at
when you're choosing your machine.
The next one is probably the size and weight
and the portability of it,
especially if you're someone who moves around a lot
for work, or, you know, you do a lot of holiday
and caravan and camping, all that sort of stuff,
if you're someone who's at home a lot of the time
and you just leave it on your bedside table,
doesn't matter so much,
but if you're, you know, going back and forth
between your partner's place,
probably size and weight and how it packs up in the bag
probably does make a difference, how easy it is to pack up,
that's something to be mindful of.
Now, after portability,
I'd be looking at how easy is the machine to operate,
how easy is it to maintain and clean,
change settings, that sort of stuff,
ease of operation is quite important,
especially if you're someone maybe with arthritis
in your hands, you'd be wanting to look at how easy is it
to sort of, you know, open and change the water
of the nighttime and the other buttons, nice and easy
to rotate and press.
Maybe if you've got, you know, a bit of an eyesight
or vision issues, you know,
have you got a nice big screen with nice big numbers
that you can easily see so that you can change the settings,
all those sorts of things, the ease of operation,
the ease of cleaning.
Then we're gonna be looking at
potentially the data capabilities,
now this might not be for everyone,
but I do feel it's important to have some data capabilities
on your machine, and most of them do,
and most of them have apps these days as well,
so that might be something you look into,
it's handy to have the data,
because you can use the data to
a, just check and make sure that the machine
is doing a good job of controlling your apnea,
and I do a lot of videos on this stuff
on how to use your data,
just to really fine tune your therapy levels,
to get them working at the lowest possible right
and it's gonna make life a lot easier for you.
So data is really good,
don't get too consumed by the data,
it's not the be-all, end-all
some people just look at it each day and every day,
it's something you wanna look at probably once a month,
and then you can just use it as a bit of a guide
to see how your therapy's going,
but by all means, if you loving it, that's fine as well.
And then the last thing is probably,
you know, the comfort features on the machines,
you wanna be having look at the humidification
on the machine, especially if it's got
an integrated heated tube, that's really good,
if it doesn't, you can get yourself an external heated tube,
it's not the end of the world, but you know,
an integrated heated tube,
which is one that the power supply
is actually from the machine itself,
and it's made by that brand is really handy,
especially in those colder climates.
Now, another thing you might like to consider
is just having a look when the machine model
was first released to the market,
what year it was first introduced,
so the different manufacturers
have different product cycles, but just generally speaking,
they normally supersede older models
every sort of four to six years,
so I think it's important just to sort of have a look
when those machines were first released
because you kind of don't really wanna be buying
right at the end of that product cycle,
it's sort of like buying, you know,
a new iPhone 10 when the iPhone 11
is gonna be released five months later.
Now the manufacturers will never let you know
when that's gonna happen,
but you can use it as a bit of a guide,
and I'll give you a little example here,
and I'm gonna use the top three machines on today's market,
so the market leaders as the example.
So we've currently got the ResMed AirSense10,
the Phillips Resperonics DreamStation,
and then we've got the Fisher and Paykel SleepStyle,
and if I was personally coming into the market,
looking at those three machines, I'd be going okay,
the ResMed was released 2014,
I think DreamStation around the same time,
and then we've got the SleepStyle by Fisher and Paykel,
that was only released a couple of years ago.
I'll be thinking about that seriously
and going with the SleepStyle,
because it's only a couple of years old
versus five or six years old,
and I know that when I buy that SleepStyle,
it's probably gonna be a longer time before it's, you know,
superseded by a new model,
whereas if I'm buying, you know,
the ResMed or the Phillips,
I'll be sort of holding my breath a little bit
that later on this year, or even next year
that there's gonna be, you know, the AirSense 11
or the DreamStation 2 released,
and I've spent all this money buying a machine
that's already sort of outdated.
It doesn't matter too much,
but I think it's just worthwhile just taking note
and just putting it down, jotting it down,
and it might just sort of influence your decision
one way or another.
All right, so here's where we're at,
now, we know we're getting the automatic machine
and we've zeroed in on a few different manufacturers
just based on our budget and sort of what we can afford,
and now we're gonna be sort of comparing
a few different models, looking at things like, you know,
some different reviews on what people have said about them
that already own them,
we're gonna be looking at perhaps at
when that model was first released
or what sort of warranties come with them,
maybe little things like, you know,
the portability and the size of the gear, you know,
how easy it is to operate and clean and maintain,
and then maybe just some of those other
little comfort features and the data capabilities
and things like that, but once we've decided sort of
what we wanna get,
and we've made that good informed decision,
this is where my advice is really important,
it's when it comes to actually buying the gear,
especially if you're gonna be buying online,
if you're going to be buying from a physical storefront,
less important, you know,
as long as they're nice people and they're giving you,
you know, a reasonably good deal
and they're gonna look after you, once you've bought it,
then you really only just sort of maybe need to ask them
how long they've been in business for,
and things like that,
and maybe just check out a few reviews online
of the actual business,
but if you're buying online
is when it gets really, really tricky, okay,
and you really need to be super careful,
there's just a whole bunch of what I call
CPAP cowboys kicking around online,
so you need to be super careful
and I've got a little checklist here that you can use
and just tick that off,
and that way you know you're not gonna you know, get stung.
And number one is, just ask the company or check out,
do you have any physical shopfront locations?
That is just the necessity number one,
not the granny flat, okay,
not the house, shopfront, a retail location.
Number two, are you an authorized reseller?
You can check with the manufacturers, that's fine as well,
if they're not an authorized reseller,
then they're not gonna have a warranty
through the manufacturer.
Number three, will you provide a receipt with ABN?
So an Australian Business Number
or any business number, if you're in another country,
just make sure it's a proper business,
and they'll provide you with a receipt
with that business number on there,
especially because a lot of the health insurance companies
need that in order for you to claim, they need that ABN,
and they generally need that
physical shopfront location as well,
so just make sure you've got that there.
Number four, just please avoid buying new machines
of places like Facebook marketplace, Gumtree,
you know, eBay just avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid, avoid,
the only people on those places are dodgy, dodgy operators,
so don't buy from there.
And lastly, you can just ask the company
how long you've been in business for,
you probably don't wanna be buying from the guy
who's just opened up six months earlier
because you know, he may not succeed in business
and then you might be stuck,
so generally buy from someone
who's been in business a few years,
you can check out their, you know,
Google My Business rating,
just make sure they're just a reputable business,
that people have got some reasonable feedback about them,
they're never gonna have a perfect five out of five star
because that's just the CPAP world that we live in,
but just do your research,
and that way you can still get a good deal online,
but just without, all the headaches
and the heartache of just not being able to get in touch
with the company ever again,
and just whenever you need assistance, there's no one there,
you will need assistance with it at some point,
all right, so just buy from a good company,
pretty simple.
Anyway, that's it for today, guys,
I hope you enjoyed the video, Nick's C-PAP buyer's guide,
just a few little tips that might help
make life a little bit easier
if you're looking to buy your first CPAP machine,
or maybe you're looking to upgrade from an older machine.
Certainly a big challenge,
so try not to get too bogged down
in all the clever marketing stuff,
at the end of the day, it really doesn't matter
whether you get the most expensive machine in the world
or the very basic machine,
they're all really gonna do the same thing,
which is get rid of your sleep apnea and your snoring
and give you a healthy night's sleep,
so just choose something that's right for you.
If you enjoyed the video,
I'd really appreciate your support with the thumbs up,
keeps me motivated and I love seeing it,
and certainly puts a smile on my face
and feel free to hit that subscribe button
if you wanna see more of this.
(laughs)
Till next time guys,
look stay safe, wherever you are in the world,
we're in another lockdown in Melbourne,
but five more days and hopefully that's it for us
and let's hope we can get on with life
with the rollout of the vaccines.
All right, stay safe, sleep well,
and look out for one another,
till next time, bye.