Sciex 7500 Q-Trap vs. Waters Xevo TQ Absolute

[danastley]

I know these two triple quads are relatively new to the market, but I'm interested if anyone has experience with either or both of them?

Trying to decide between the two for our lab. Thinking about future proofing our capabilities long-term. We are a clinical trial lab primarily looking at small molecule drugs, but may expand into monoclonal antibodies or oligonucleotides in the future.

So for today's standards, these two mass spectrometers are great. But which one will be the better purchase, or will there not be much in it? Is the 7500's Q-Trap worth more than the excellent sustainability and energy/gas consumption of the TQ Absolute?

They both have comparable mass ranges, but I assume the 7500 has better sensitivity because Sciex mass specs are usually the best in class.

And what about price? I have quotes from Waters, but I have no idea how much Sciex systems cost.

[JMB]

Although you are going to purchase one or other of these two instruments, there is rather more to the decision than cost.

In any given market segment, the instruments will usually have very comparable specifications, because they are designed to match what the competitors offer.

However, for a complex piece of instrumentation such as a triple quad you are also buying the company,because they will provide service support. Does each have one (or more) service engineer in your region.

Each company should provide a list of satisfied customers for you to contact; ask them about technical support and turnaround times for service calls.

Good luck with your decision!

[James_Ball]

Another thing to consider is software. If you can get a demonstration of the software that would be useful too. A great performing instrument can be hampered if it has poor performing software or software that is difficult to learn.

Will there be only one dedicated operator, or do you plan to have many people operating it? How much time can you invest in training? These things can be greatly affected by the ease of use of the software.

[per_oxid]

For such an expensive investment I think running your demo samples would be worthwhile. Most vendors claim to be best in class, let them show it. If they are superior a price premium is warranted but if not then you can decide what gives best value, perhaps better service contract is more important than small gain in IDL. When comparing cost make sure to look at the total cost over a time period, for example 5 year. If you use lc this can be very important part of decision. While it is not accepted in tenders knowing the people and how they deliver support is quite important. Not everything can be formulated in contracts but learned thorough experience. I have had one company that was over charging any kind of support and another that give free support for their systems no questions asked.
I also value to get installation files to make own installation of data processing software on any workstations.

It would be interesting to hear how you proceeded later on.

[BSP_UCSD]

We have both a Sciex 6500+ and a Waters TQ-XS at my lab. I know these are both a model down but the comparison aspect is similar so I figured I'd throw in my two cents. Keep in mind we use both of these instruments for mostly research purposes, so there may be other pros/cons in a production lab.

Although they have comparable sensitivity we have noticed that the XS is a little more (3x) sensitive with certain compounds that the 6500+. This can be overcome by using the ion trap (Q3) in the 6500+ but we have truly only used it on a handful of applications.

The Waters syringe pump and infusion design is fantastic. Water's Intellistart script does a very good job at compound optimization and you can even optimize while performing a post column infusion if you are concerned about matrix effect. In comparison, the 6500+ syringe pump is awful and performing post column infusions is quite difficult. You need to infusion at a very high flow rate (50-100 µL/min) to maintain spray otherwise the optimization curves will look wacky and useless.

Software is another place where Waters has Sciex beat. Water's Masslynx is not perfect, but Sciex's Analyst is convoluted and finicky. Since Sciex doesn't make LC systems, they utilize a device driver to integrate LC software (in our case Agilent) into Analyst and it simply does not work very well. We constantly have issues with miscommunication and crashes if we make any changes to the hardware profiles.

Speaking of the LC systems, Sciex will not integrate their MS software with Waters since they are a direct competitor so you're stuck using an Agilent or Shimadzu LC system. Waters LC systems are top of the line so you would miss out on utilizing their equipment if you go with Sciex.

Both sets of service engineers are quite capable and we haven't had many issues with long wait times or poor service from either company.

I hope this information helps you decide on your next instrument.

[per_oxid]

Thanks for sharing this info.
I ran my demo method, about 50 mrm with polarity change and dwell times around 5ms, on sciex 6500+ and Xevo tqxs and the results from this was that they were very close both on es+ and es-, both in terms of idl and precision. However, Waters i-class lc was way better than the sciex exion on my samples and sciex was asking a much higher price. My concern was that sciex has a reputation of robust reliable instruments but now 3years later we have had few problems and good support from waters so I dont think sciex price premium was justified.

I made a request that the demo lab run exactly my method for fair comparison. I also gave the option to complement with an improved method. This show the expertise of the application specialists in the company. This was quite good as I was shown a lc method with some improvements compared to my method, I still use this new lc method today. It also showed that i can get qualified support for developing my applications. I have been very happy with waters as they understand that if i am sucessfull I will get money to I will invest in their business. We had been using sciex before and there every service was costly.

I never quite understood the difference between waters scanwave (T-Wave) and sciex qtrap, are they not both ion traps between q1 and q2 that give enhanced product ion scans? Now waters removed the T-Wave function in the absolute. I know sciex qtrap have additional functions like ms3.

[bunnahabhain]

Software is another place where Waters has Sciex beat. Water's Masslynx is not perfect, but Sciex's Analyst is convoluted and finicky. Since Sciex doesn't make LC systems, they utilize a device driver to integrate LC software (in our case Agilent) into Analyst and it simply does not work very well. We constantly have issues with miscommunication and crashes if we make any changes to the hardware profiles.

I fully agree to this paragraph.

Speaking of the LC systems, Sciex will not integrate their MS software with Waters since they are a direct competitor so you're stuck using an Agilent or Shimadzu LC system. Waters LC systems are top of the line so you would miss out on utilizing their equipment if you go with Sciex.

We have a Waters Acquity i-class system coupled to our Sciex 6500+, so in theory it works. However, see the earlier paragraph: Frequent lockups without any error message. Waters says "Our drivers are fine, must be a problem within Analyst(R)", Sciex replies "Analyst is fine, must be a problem with the Waters(R) driver". Not nice from both companies.

According to Sciex, the 7500 series comes with SciexOS by default, which has integrated LC control for different LC systems. However, I had not yet the chance to test this.

Anyway, we decided internally that our next LC-MS system will NOT be from Sciex. YMMV but we experience more software issues with Sciex than with Waters.

[danastley]

Hi everyone,

Thank you all so much for your replies. These have been very insightful and have provided some additional points for me to consider. I think I am leaning one way, but the purchase process will run into next year so I may not have an update for quite a while! Some time next year, I will certainly revisit this thread to give an update on the system we purchased and how it all went.

[carlo.annaratone]

I never quite understood the difference between waters scanwave (T-Wave) and sciex qtrap, are they not both ion traps between q1 and q2 that give enhanced product ion scans? Now waters removed the T-Wave function in the absolute. I know sciex qtrap have additional functions like ms3.

The scanwave can not perform trap and fragment experiments, and it does not bring any improvements in MSMS experiments. It will however enhance by a significant factor (> 5x) the intensities of fragments ions in daugther scan mode (scanning a wider m/z range on the second quad while fragmenting a parent in the cell).

[per_oxid]

I never quite understood the difference between waters scanwave (T-Wave) and sciex qtrap, are they not both ion traps between q1 and q2 that give enhanced product ion scans? Now waters removed the T-Wave function in the absolute. I know sciex qtrap have additional functions like ms3.

The scanwave can not perform trap and fragment experiments, and it does not bring any improvements in MSMS experiments. It will however enhance by a significant factor (> 5x) the intensities of fragments ions in daugther scan mode (scanning a wider m/z range on the second quad while fragmenting a parent in the cell).

Yes the Sciex have some additional capabilities such as the MS3 and Enhanced MS. My question was more how the Waters ScanWave DS (product ions scan with T-wave) compares to the Sciex Enhanced Product Ion scan? If I am not mistaken these two methods are both trapping the product ions and scanning them out in a way to get better signal for product ion spectra by syncing the MS2 setting to the m/z that is released from the trap.