The main difference is the thickness of the glass.

The chambered coverslip is a coverslip glass thickness is 0.13 – 0.17 mm (Lab-Tek II) while the chambered slide of Lab-Tek measures 1 mm.

The thicker chamber slides no not fit with some (inverted) microscopes.

The chambered cover glass will fit, but is more fragile. The glass is easily broken if you do not handle the microscope correct; the objective may pierce through the glass. The glass coverslip can break easier when the glass is detached from the chambers.

Good luck

The chambered coverglasses are made from thin glass and are idea for live-cell imaging. Note that the labtek and labtek II products have different precision in the thickness of the glass - labtek II is the equivalent of #1.5 thickness and should be used for high N.A. microscopy. I'm not sure why they bother making the #1 thickness versions.

The chambered slides are made from normal slide glass and are not designed to be imaged through. Instead, you remove the chamber unit after doing the immunofluorescence staining in the wells and seal a coverglass over the top of the mounting medium. I have to say, I've never used these. Unless they are precious cells that have to be cultured in tiny volumes I would just immerse a clean coverglass into a 6-well plate and grow the cells as normal. You can then do IF staining directly on the coverglass and mount it onto a slide. Much cheaper than the chambered slides!

I agree with Michael Porter. The only reason our lab occasionally uses cover glass dishes is for live imaging and everything else IF we do pretty much as he described. 

Also #1.5 is the most common for objectives these days like he said as well. Although, coverslip thickness should always be matched to the N.A of  objective and it never hurts to check the N.A or your objective.

Also you should ask them to send you samples! We did this for a number of companies when we were looking for live imaging dishes and most of them (including Nunc) sent us samples that helped us decide which ones we wanted to use. 

Hi,

I have use both for confocal microscopy 100x and I had troubles with the chamber slide because when you detach the chambers you have some glue residues so when you set the coverglass it doesn't fully make contact therefore it is very hard to focus, and with the chamber coverglass you wont have that problem but these ones are a little bit tricky to set in the microscope because you can't detach the chambers.

Cheers,

Hi,

I`m experiencing a growth difference in CMT93 cells in chamber slides. They grow slower compared to cell culture flasks (plastic). Have anyone experienced this before? 

Hi Mahesha,

Many cells do not like glass surfaces hence you might observe the growth differences.  You might try coating your slides with fibronectin/gelatin or laminin or collagen depending on the type of your cells. Hope this helps. 

Chambered cover glass are commonly used for live cell high resolution imaging, because it has a thin cover glass (usually #1.5, around 0.17mm thick) at the bottom. Therefore the microscope objective lens can be moved close to the cells.

For chambered slides, the cells are seeded on a glass slide around 1mm thick. For high resolution imaging, you need to remove the frame and put a cover glass on top of the sample. It is not convenient as the chambered cover glass, but if you need to preserve the sample for a long period that is more suitable, since you can seal it, and a slide takes much smaller space.