The objective of the present study was to determine if the hypertension-abdominal obesity phenotype (HTAOP) is the most useful binomial to identify people with metabolic syndrome (MS). Observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study that included 350 subjects with excess weight between 19 and 70 years old, who were consecutively recruited in a consultation enabled for this investigation. The definition of the joint provisional declaration was used as a diagnostic criterion for MS. In addition, the HTAOP, the hypertriglyceridemia-abdominal obesity phenotype (HGAOP) and the hyperglycaemia-abdominal obesity phenotype (HGLAOP) were also studied. The concordance between the MS criteria and the phenotypes studied was estimated with the kappa coefficient; the sensitivity and specificity of phenotypes to identify people with MS were also calculated. The frequency of HTA-OP was 76.9% (269/350) and the frequency of MS was 69.1% (242/350), followed by the HGAOP (28.0%) and the HGLAOP (20.9%). The HTAOP showed high sensitivity (90.5%) and moderate concordance (0.475) to detect people with MS. The high sensitivity and moderate concordance of the HTAOP to identify people with MS, as well as the simplicity in its determination, make it a useful option for detecting people with MS.