SpectraMax Plus 384 Microplate Reader by Molecular Devices®

"This is the only reliable feature in measuring bacterial growth in our lab. We have another photometer that works with droplets only, but it is far from reliable. We use the SpectraMax for all sorts of measurements and it works fine; I even use the shake mode to shake 96 well plates evenly."

"This instrument has received a lot of wear and tear over the last 6 years and it has held up remarkably well. Sometimes the instrument was used back to back for 10 hours at a time and it never faltered. We have had no maintenance done on it, but we also have a SpectraMax 190 that did need work and they were fast and efficient and even walked us through the repairs that were made."

"I don't know anything about value for money, because I was not involved with the purchase or maintenance. It is a great "must have" in any lab."

"The microplate reader is quite user-friendly. It comes with a PC software that is very interactive and a range of useful functions. I have done reproducibility tests on this reader and, also compared the absorbance data to the BioTek ELx808 plate reader. The results were excellent. The software has useful functionality: you can export your data to excel format, save your plate readings onto PDF and also allows you to calculate unknown concentrations if you label the concentrations of your standards. Most biochemical assays require incubation at a prescribed temperature. No worries! The plate reader has a temperature control that also improves reproducibility because assays can be carried out at a controlled temperature. Although it is pricey, I think it is worth the price. Overall, I give it 5 stars for ease of use, after sales & care and four stars for "value for money"."

"The software package which comes with this machine is intuitive and easy to use for the main basic function. If you want to program complicated assays it can also do this although it takes a bit more working out on the part of the programmer. The results are clear and the audit trail function is incredibly helpful in the regulatory environment. It was one of the more expensive instruments we researched, but the software, validation data sets and the training provided mitigated the increased cost."