Chromatography Forum

Hello All,

We are planning to buy new LCMS for toxicology (drug testing). Our method will quantitative analysis for panel of 75 drugs and We are looking at Waters Acquity, Agilent 6400 series and Shimadzu 6040. Which instrument have better sensitivity and linearity? Also, which has better data analysis software?

Thanks

I think you need to try these out for yourself; ask the manufacturers to provide test data based on a sample that you supply to all three (and do try to specify the method in a way that means you get comparable results). For an instrument of this value, they should be happy to oblige. It's impossible to say globally that one instrument is more sensitive than another, because sensitivity depends so much on the target compound (one rep once joked that his company had the best reserpine-measuring machine currently available).

All three instruments will do the job. Differences between the top-end instruments of the good manufacturers tend to be quite small (if they weren't, the worse companies would have gone out of business). Your method, and how you prepare your samples and how you use the instrument will have a far greater effect on sensitivity than the choice of instrument (but of course you want to get the best you can!).

About software: again, all three manufacturers have software that includes all the functionality you need, but they have very different philosophies. The best thing would be to get someone from each company to demonstrate the software and decide which you like best. It makes a big difference having something you feel happy with, and that fits the way your lab prefers to work.

I agree with LMH above. Getting software you are comfortable using is probably more a deciding factor than absolute instrument sensitivity. What good is a super sensitive instrument it if is nearly impossible to figure out how to run a sample.

We have a Sciex 3200 and the software for it is fairly simple, but coming from normally running Agilent equipment it seemed very difficult at first, although it really isn't.