I'm looking for a good but affordable chemiluminescence plate reader to be used for ELISAs. What do you use? Pros and cons? I'm not an experienced user so is there anything in particular that I should be looking for when comparing different readers? All help is most welcomed.
Cost, versatility, speed, user-friendliness. Most recently we got a Biotek Cytation5 in our dept. and it does a lot of things including heating, a lot of optimization parameters you can go through, a large range of fluorophores (can't recall if it did luminescence but likely does). It also worked with all types of plates/flasks with live cells, fixed cells on slides for microscopy-based quantitations and pics, etc. I normally use it for fluorescent detection of live cells. In contrast, we have used a Typhoon Imager 9400 (Amersham Biosciences) run on ImageQuant for this purpose. This machine is a no brainer; simple scan and go analyze on your own computer. The Cytation may require more extensive knowledge to use but I get my numbers right away and variety of applications. If a machine could work like the FastSkan (absorbances) which is fast, user friendly, cheap ($10,000?) and simple, then that is the way to go. For your application, i definitely know a lot of heavy use on a TECAN which pushes towards the more kinetically inclined. I have used that successfully for luminescence with CSPD for an AP enzyme assay. It is not cheap but was pretty user friendly and simple set-up. In my opinion, if i know how to use the machine and it can do more things without more problems then it would win my vote, but the headache of some issue(s) popping up from users make one push for simpler and cheaper machines. I hope this helped cause i seriously just rambled haha
If you want simplicity, impressive specifications and integrated abilities (type of plates, temperature control, shaking, optional integrated dispensers and various technology readings) have a look into Hidex Sense machine. It is designed by people that were involved in designing of Victor machine(s) from Wallac. Price is excellent too. It is worth considering this instrument and our experience is perfect.
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