Home Vs Portable Oxygen Concentrators

What is a portable Oxygen Concentrator? What is a Stationary Oxygen Concentrator? The names are pretty accurate descriptors!

Home oxygen concentrators operate the same way as a Portable. They bring in the atmosphere from the air around it, seperate the Nitrogen, exhaust it back in to the room, and passes the Oxygen to the patient. Weighing in anywhere between 31 and 55 pounds, Home Oxygen Concentrators are a much larger and more robust piece of equipment. They have several ergonomic handles built in to give ample room to grab the machine for lifting, or rolling it. Since they have high quality caster wheels installed on the base, they glide across most hard surfaces with ease! While certainly possible, just due to size and weight, it is not common practice to use a home oxygen concentrator for travel.

Portable oxygen concentrators are smaller, lighter machines that are designed with portability in mind. While keeping ease of use and ability of carrying the machine at the forefront of design, portable oxygen concentrators are a good mix of portability while still maintaining robust components inside the machine to ensure it will last for many years of vacation use! These lightweight Portable Oxygen Concentrators are good for occasional use. Trips to the movies, going out for dinner, or a day in the park are a perfect example of when you can use a Portable Oxygen Concentrator.

Many people use their Portable Oxygen Concentrator on a Pulse setting during daytime activities. This helps to conserve battery life. If using a Portable Oxygen Concentrator at night, most users opt to use their portable oxygen concentrator on a continuous flow setting. Unless your pulse portable oxygen concentrator is equipped with a night time mode, your nocturnal breathing is generally too shallow to trigger the pulse action of the portable concentrator. When using continuous flow, your poc will always deliver oxygen to you as long as the poc is running. A week or two long vacation should be fine as well!

While POC's are much easier to use while mobile, they are not a good choice for a primary Oxygen Concentrator. Why? Well, while they are generally pretty reliable and trouble free, the components inside of them are much smaller than an in home Oxygen Concentrator. This means that they wear out and need repairs much sooner. One comparison could be a Respironics SimplyGo. We see that they generally run about two thousand hours of use before they need any major repairs. That is a lot of vacations! A Respironics EverFlo home oxygen concentrator should run ten thousand hours or more before needing any majoy repairs. That is quite a big difference!

When choosing a suitable Portable Concentrator, there are many factors to keep in mind. Please check out our blog to help with your decision.