Agilent vs. ThermoFisher

[zemolo]

In your opinion, which are the technical differences, pro and con, between
- Agilent 7890A+5975C
- ThermoFisher ISQ?

Thanks!

[aldehyde]

call the sales reps for each company and ask, make the sales people work.

[Klaus I.]

call the sales reps for each company and ask, make the sales people work.

Yes and he should make tests with his own samples on both instruments.

[chromatographer1]

FLexibility of method development:

Are splitless, direct, valve injection technologies available?

Detectors: collection of data simultaneously? types. cost?

parts cost. service costs. sensitivity of detectors: FID TCD HID ECD PID ?

autosamplers: dual injection? washing and rinsing of syringes? slow variable injection speeds available?

Headspace options?

details details details.

Many offerings today offer only the most generic abilities, no flexibility.

I always admired the Varian products. I don't know what will happen now that Bruker owns the GC product line.

best wishes,

Rod

[aldehyde]

In addition to the inlet/detector types mentioned there are also options for large volume injection/rapid vaporization, and FPD, NPD, and mass spec. What are you trying to do?

You mentioned the 5975C so it sounds like you want a mass spec. Do you want any other GC detectors? Are you going to be running lots of different types of analyses or just one-a few?

The mass spec would have further questions: electron ionization only or are you wanting to do chemical ionization? EI gives more fragmentation data, CI can give you a nice clean molecular ion. CI requires an additional gas (usually CH4) and you would have a source for each ionization type. Do you want a turbo pump or diffusion pump? Diffusion pumps are probably cheaper, a turbo pump has larger pumping capacity and gets ready faster after maintenance. There are moving parts so after a good lifetime of use its possible that the turbo can go bad and need replacing. The diff pump has no moving parts but does have a heating element, and also has oil that can go bad (or be sucked up into the analyzer if you're not careful.) With the Agilent MSD CI can only be run on systems with the large version of the turbo pump (and can't be upgraded in the field if you originally purchase a system with the small turbo or diff pump).

The 5975 has a "triple axis detector," which increases the sensitivity (specifically signal to noise) of the detector by bending the stream of ions around a charged pin. This allows the sample to pass into the detector electronics without having to pass through the stream of helium gas and neutral particles (the reason S/N is better). I also think the 5975 is easy to maintain.

I have worked on the last 3 generations of Agilent MSDs (5970, 5973A, 5973N, 5973A/B/C) and really like the 5975. I have no experience with ThermoFisher's MSD. I've got at least one customer that has instruments from both and they've spoken of a few features that I don't think Agilent has.

That said, both systems are very solid overall. It's a good time to be a mass spectrometrist .

[CE Instruments]

I always admired the Varian products. I don't know what will happen now that Bruker owns the GC product line.

Why thank you
We have built on the Varian knowledge and just launched the Scion in SQ and TQ form. I'm sure your Bruker rep will be keen to compete and we have all the Varian injectors , detectors and accessories

[Klaus I.]

I always admired the Varian products. I don't know what will happen now that Bruker owns the GC product line.

Why thank you
We have built on the Varian knowledge and just launched the Scion in SQ and TQ form. I'm sure your Bruker rep will be keen to compete and we have all the Varian injectors , detectors and accessories

Only to complete the diverse opinions. My practical experiences with Varian is dieametric.

[chromatographer1]

To be fair, and I don't wish to present any favoritism to Varian, I have seen that many other brands have had quality hardware and reliable operation. And poor examples ('lemons') can be found from any vendor.

The differences that are important are in the features and diversity of methodologies or techniques that each brand offers.

Every analyst has proprietary needs. Any general question about recommendations will be skewed around these needs and how well they have been fulfilled.

It is better to ask specific questions like:

How forgiving as far as discrimination of sample is the installation of the column in a split injector in Vendor A's GC?

or

Is the injection speed for Vendor B's autosampler infinitely variable or fixed?

or

How often it is necessary to clean the detector on Vendor C's GCMS?

Can metal capillary columns be used on Vendor D's GC?

But don't forget: How much does a service call cost? Or a maintenance plan cost?

best wishes,

Rod

[Klaus I.]

To be fair, and I don't wish to present any favoritism to Varian, I have seen that many other brands have had quality hardware and reliable operation. And poor examples ('lemons') can be found from any vendor.

The differences that are important are in the features and diversity of methodologies or techniques that each brand offers.

Every analyst has proprietary needs. Any general question about recommendations will be skewed around these needs and how well they have been fulfilled.

It is better to ask specific questions like:

How forgiving as far as discrimination of sample is the installation of the column in a split injector in Vendor A's GC?

or

Is the injection speed for Vendor B's autosampler infinitely variable or fixed?

or

How often it is necessary to clean the detector on Vendor C's GCMS?

Can metal capillary columns be used on Vendor D's GC?

But don't forget: How much does a service call cost? Or a maintenance plan cost?

best wishes,

Rod

Hmm, IMHO Users of other instruments would consider these questions as needless. Because the sample physics can not be displaced by sales-people arguments.

[chromatographer1]

Your point is well-taken.

Since the scientists-chromatographers don't often control the money expenditures, it is true that the best salesperson often gets the order instead of the choice of the lab people who do the work.

One only needs to look at the sales people who designed the 1980s Perkin Elmer GCs and the smooth talking sales people of HP-Agilent during the same decade to see the failure and the success of professional salespersons over the engineers in the market share, although the HP Engineers did design an adequate but polished GC over those years.

But it was the success of the sales dept who really made the difference in product acceptance.

But that was 30 years ago and times do change.

Rod

[gailharrison]

The ISQ offers a unique feature not available on other vendor's MS systems, the removable ion source. The source, including the lens stack can be removed and replaced with a spare in about 2 minutes without venting the instrument. If you are analyzing samples that require frequent cleaning of the source, this feature may have great value.