Chromatography Forum

Which GC-MS system should I buy a Shimadzu, Agilent or PerkinElmer? Agielent at the same price suggests a diffusion pump whereas PerkinElmer and Shimadzu - turbo 260l/min.
I also wonder over the purchase of HPLC, which of these companies is the best?

Which GC-MS system should I buy a Shimadzu, Agilent or PerkinElmer? Agielent at the same price suggests a diffusion pump whereas PerkinElmer and Shimadzu - turbo 260l/min.
I also wonder over the purchase of HPLC, which of these companies is the best?

There is no simple answer to this question.

Do not limit your considerations to hardware parameters. Take into account accompanying chromatography data system, service availability and service prices at your location.

There are discussions on preferences when buing GC and HPLC in the archives - thou I couldn't find links to help you.

There are a number of considerations which include what you want the instrument to do and where you are located.

Tell each vendor what you want to do with the instrument and what limits of detection, etc you need. (These can even be put in a purchase specification.)

Ask the vendors to run some samples. These must be samples with which you are familiar. If you send a sample that you do not know, the vendor will show you some results and ask if that is what you expected. If you don't know, you are both lost. But if there is a problem, the vendor can take a second look and even use input from you to get a better result.

By the way - make this a test of the instrument, not the knowlede of the vendor's application chemist. I've seen a poor decision made more than once because the customer expected the applications chemist to somehow be more of an expert on the customer samples than the customer.

Check on availability of service. If an engineer can get to you same or next day, tis is good. If the engineer has to obtain a visa and travel half-way around the world...

Get local references. These serve several purposes. If nobody is buying the instrument, there won't be any. You can find out how service is locally. There may be an office just down the road, but it may not be a great field office. You can find out what life is really like after the sales person leaves. And you will have the beginnings of a network of people with whom you can talk as you run into questions in the use of your instrument.

I was impressed by the Shimadzu systems. Those guys really want to compete on technical superiority, which is an interesting drive in this segment. I understood that besides tremendous high speed data collection It can be operated with much higher flows. This allows "faster GC/MS" using shorter columns and even larger diameter.
Why? practically people like shorter runs + robustness. For the last one you see that 0.32mm columns have been used widely in all segments as they can handle much more matrix effects. This means longer maintenance intervals, and people like that.


jaap
Restek corporation