Thermal cycler - (Apr/08/2011 )

Hi,

Our lab is planning to buy a new thermal cycler for PCR. One option that we are looking is Veriti® 96-Well Thermal Cycler from Invitrogen.
Has anybody used this model before? I want to get some feedback about the machine before we buy it. Also, which other companies have reasonable and efficient thermal cyclers?
Thanks.

We use the Veriti from Applied Biosystems (don't know what the difference to Invitrogen's is??) and are very satisfied.

Invitrogen and Applied Biosystems merged last year, under the new name Life Technologies, so it's the same cycler. I know a lab, where they use it and they are satisfied. It's probably OK, like all cyclers from former ABI.

As for other cyclers, it depends on what you need. Verity has a unique block, that can run six different annealing temperatures, that's good for optimisation, Bio-Rad (former MJ, one of the leaders in classic cyclers) MJ mini has a gradient feature, that can serve in similar way (but of course Life Technologies tag line "better than gradient" says their opinion) and is cheaper. ABI (Life Technologies) and Bio-Rad have several other models of classic cyclers, upgrades of older MJ from Bio-Rad (S1000 or C1000 series) have interchangable block, so you can have two 48 well blocks and can set two completely independent runs, capable of gradient. It's good when you have less than 48 samples and need more cyclers at the same time. But I have no experience with these new Bio-Rad models and they're quite expensive, if I'm not mistaken.