LC-MS

[Juje]

Hello,
We are about to purchase an LC-triple Q instrument for targeted metabolomics analyses and have received offers from the following vendors:

1) Waters: Acquity H-Class coupled to Xevo TQD
2) Shimadzu: Nexera X2 coupled to LCMS 8050
2) Thermo: Dionex Vanquish Flex coupled to TSQ Access Max

Any comments on general performance, pro and cons, etc. of these instruments will be appreciated.

[JBetz]

Hi Juje,

I'm not sure if I can give any advice on which is best for your application but I have access to a pre-owned Shimadzu 8050 w/ Nexera LC, Genius 1051 generator thats for sale. It's 2 years old, covered under service contract for duration of ownership. You could save like 50% by purchasing pre-owned.

If you are interested in pricing please let me know.

Thanks,
Jason.betz@mckscientific.com

[JMB]

For the amount of money that you will be spending,
You absolutely must attend a demonstration at each of the vendors !!!
1. How much carry-over , if any, is there from one injection to the next?
2. How easy is it to remove and disassemble ion source for cleaning ?
3. Same for ESI probe?
4. Which has the best m/z range for your work?
5. How user-friendly is software? (Data acquisition & data analysis).
6. How easy to set up multi-MS/MS experts
7. Do you see electronic noise spikes in low-level experiments?
8. How easy is quantitation?
9. And on and on"..........
Remember, you are buying the manufacturer as much as the instrument (do they have good service engineers, are there enough of them, talk to other users).
Have them analyze YOUR samples; check sensitivity in both positive and negative modes for full scan MS, SIM, MSMS.
For multiply charged ions, how good is the deconvolution software?
For biological matrices, how well does the ESI probe & source resist effects of fouling ?
These are some of the questions that you should be thinking about.
Good Luck with your decision.

[lmh]

Yes, get demos and/or test-data on your own samples.

Do, though, make sure you are comparing like-for-like. For example, if you're getting a service contract, you may find that Shimadzu's contract has a lot more exclusions than Waters', but costs a lot less.

When you're looking at instruments and test-data, be sure to test the instrument & software rather than the demo-chemist.

The good news is that there are no really bad systems out there. The LC-triple quad world is ferociously competitive; no one can afford to sell bad instruments.