VersaMax™ ELISA Microplate Reader with SoftMax® Pro Software by Molecular Devices®

"The VersaMax(TM) microplate reader is a real substitute of Bioscreen C (Growth curves, Bioscreen, Finland) to determine bacterial growth parameters in a really easy fashion. You will need to spend a few minutes programming a run (wavelength, agitation mode, incubation temperature, and time intervals for OD measurements), but you can store it, and call it back each time you need it. In addition, you can monitor the microbial growth in real-time, by visualising the growth curves (OD vs time) you can determine which wells are contaminated or not inoculated, while you can stop it, for a minutes to solve this issue, and continue your run, without disturbing microbe growth. The provided software allows you to conduct the growth rate analysis for each well so easy, that my students don't want to use again Bioscreen C. In addition to this microbial growth application, the Versamax is also a plate reader, with standard 96 well plates (could be round-bottom, flat-bottom or half-area well plates) that decreases the cost of each run, specially when compared to Bioscreen C. So in general, is a really versatile microplate reader, that can be used for several applications, while giving a perfect result in a microbial growth kinetics. The manufacturer also indicated that this reader is also tunable, robot-compatible for using in a high throughput methodology, but in this case not for bacterial growth, if not for the other applications like endpoint ELISAs, enzyme assays, colorimetric protein, or to determine IC50/LD50 with an array of products."