Roche 480 LightCycler can kiss my shiny metal …..
It’s official. I think the Roche LightCycler 480 has quite possibly the worst user interface in the world… at least as far as currently available real-time qPCR machines is concerned.
First of all, it reports a Cp value as opposed to a Ct value. I still have yet to find out what the hell that means. I’m sure that it makes sense, but honestly, why not let the user set their own threshold values? Or at least give us an option of a couple of calculation methods.
But the biggest problem is that once you start a run, you can’t stop it. I spent an hour and a half setting up a plate with samples that will be very hard to get more of. Instead of using my existing protocol, I mistakenly hit the “SYBR Green Macro” that someone had programmed… expecting it to setup the default experiment and then I’d be able to adjust things as needed before the run starts.
Yeah… no.
I put my plate in, and hit the button.
It asked me what to name the experiment, and then proceeded to start running immediately. No asking. Just starting. And the protocol doesn’t match my primers. I’m looking furiously for a stop button. Oh look, there’s a bright shiny red X. I’ll hit that. ERROR: “You can’t close this screen unless you abort the run” Great, I think… I’ll just abort the run. How do I do that?
THERE IS NO WAY TO ABORT THE RUN.
The ABORT button is disabled. Since the machine takes the plate in with a nifty little sliding tray, you can’t even manually remove it.
Basically, I’m screwed and I have the previous two hours of my life to replay. Thanks Roche. I’m sure that your machine gives good data, but you have a ton to learn about how to actually use an instrument in the lab.
Needless to say, I’m going to lobby heavily against getting a Roche machine ever again.
PS: I’m stuck using this machine because the Eppendorf realtime machine in my building broke. That interface was so frickin simple my 7 month old could figure it out.
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January 22, 2011 at 4:39 pm
Hi,
Light cycler 480 is far better than eppendroff real time PCR. eppendroff unconsistant results. May be every real time has some options unique but when you compare the data from one run to other run LC 480 is far better.
cheers mate.
Nothing is simple in this world.
January 22, 2011 at 5:55 pm
The hardware on the Roche may be great, but if I can’t get the thing to work correctly with the UI, then it is just a big paperweight.
I actually don’t have much to add on that, since it was so long ago. I do remember that the numbers that eventually came out of the Roche were great, but that their analysis also left a bit to be desired (for very low concentrations), so I had to recalculate the Ct values on my own.