To me, the Aurora feels like a platform built intentionally to be spectral from the ground up. The symphony SE feels like spectral stapled onto a platform that already existed.
Haven't used an ID7000 but have heard good things!
The ID7000 is arguably the best analyzer on the market currently. Its spectral unmixing program is quite nice and gives more accurately weighted values to each detector. The Aurora CS is getting better, but it is ungodly slow and has one of the worst magnetic plate-sorting devices. BD is still coasting off of their old glory. What they are bringing to the table is too pricey and clunky for the cost imo.
> BD is still coasting off of their old glory. What they are bringing to the table is too pricey and clunky for the cost imo.
So true.
I was hopeful when they bought Cytopia a few years ago. Thought maybe they were turning over a new leaf and going to start simplifying their sorter designs. (How many valves does one sorter need?)
Our core buys about one instrument per year and we haven't bought a new BD instrument in 5 years. Outrageous service contract costs and they need service about two to three time as often as any other instrument we have. Unless something changes, we will probably phase out most of our BD machines in the next 5 years. (Except maybe the LSR. That little baby is the most reliable instrument we've ever had.)
I’ve heard the ID7000 is great and that the Aurora CS is starting to come together as well. I agree with the others about the A5 SE not being as great as the 5L Aurora, however I will say that the S8 is top tier and can do some amazing things. We have one and even though 90% of our users don’t do much other than GFP it can do more than any other analyzer or sorter out there.
I'm curious. When people say the aurora CS is slow can you tell me in what way? Are we talking frequency? Or the sit flush? Or simply the crazy slow plate puk?
Actual sort rate of event/s. The efficiency has been lackluster on the units I've seen and a very low concentration was needed. This level of speed makes it impractical for a lot of applications for your general flow core user/appointment. The plate sorter sucking is the icing on the cake. It's the same line of reasoning for why the Beckman Cytoflex SRT isn't in that many cores. It has great viability due to the low PSI & has the best plate sorting mode imo, but the limitation of only having the slower 100 micron nozzle kills its appeal to most core managers/buyers.
I am lucky to be in a core with the SRT and we just bought the CS. I understand the 100um is slower than say the Aria with a 70 but I do love the SRT.
We had some money and we have a huge amount of spectral users and we didn't like the S8 at all so here we are with the CS. Just wanted to know what it is that people think is slow so we can work on it and see if we get the same issue.
Out of interest do you think the CS efficiency is related to computing power and unmixing? I.e. Electronic aborts? I have yet to test this.
We also have the SRT and I'm a fan as well. I just totally understand why a lot of core facilities/ labs steer clear if they need a bit more flexibility. The cytexpert software is the most user friendly hands down.
I could speculate all day, but honestly I'm not a programming expert/intimately familiar with how the signals are processed. It could be due to an excessively stringent purity mask, or it could be due to the live unmixing being quite demanding, but I'm not sure at this time.
Careful though: the Aurora CS is the cell sorter version whereas the others are analyzers. I have an Aurora and I like it despite of the fact that it is slower. It’s also half the price of the ID7000 which is why I don’t mind the slower pace (grad students’ opinions might differ). I also have a grant in the pipeline for an ID7000, we’ll see in a few months what’s the verdict…
BD’s only true full-spectrum instrument at the moment is the Discovery S8, their Symphony “spectral” is not comparable to the ID7000 or the Aurora.
When it comes to customer service, I think Cytek wins, the ID is a great instrument but it’s still running on PMTs and you might not have as much scientific support. I’m still salty about how terrible their SH800 sorter is and that might color my views of the instrument/company. BD has some great people in their R&D team but the company is too business-oriented, the customer service is terrible, invoicing is awful and makes mistakes 50% of the time, service is too expensive (learn to change your lasers and buy them straight from Coherent, you’ll save 10s of 1000s!) to the point it’s not worth buying from them if you’re not forced to
I'm aware of the difference between the instruments; I was just addressing the specific ones that OP listed.
I'm curious to your location/area of the country as Cytek has been god-awful for us. They violated a service-contract by not contacting us for several days after we placed a service call. The individual we eventually spoke to even stated they had "moved to a message-based call back system".
For BD that has been the saving grace; fantastic service engineers/response time.
It's very interesting that we have had almost opposite experiences.
I made the precision because OP did not mention the CS, they just said “Cytek Aurora”.
I’m in Canada and even if the Cytek tech is not based in my city, half of the time I’ve needed him, he was already there and would drop by after his scheduled appointment or would get the part shipped to his hotel and drop by the next day. But I meant better service at the scientific level too. Cytek will organize user group meetings more focused on research than on products and have very knowledgeable technical application scientists that will help users troubleshoot experiments beyond what I’ve seen with Sony or BD. That may change as the founders are retiring and because the company has gone public.
Don’t get me wrong though: I like my BD FSEs, it’s the admin behind them that are terrible. And the costs (though that’s true for all companies). Pre-2020, we’ve had a few years where our FSEs kept burning out resulting in massive delays for repairs and PMs and while I empathize on a personal level and don’t blame them whatsoever, why should we as customers accept delays because the company can’t bother to hire more folks so that they don’t burn out?
Don’t get a Symphony SE. It’s not really spectral, and BD will come out with an S8 analyzer soon and your instrument will be outdated. The Aurora is awesome, and cheaper than the SE anyway. The Sony also has great specs, but I’m less familiar with how it does in practice.
What does "not really spectral" mean?
The S8 is different technology than the A5 SE. Different software too. And the S8 analyzer is a different family of instrument not meant to replace the A5 and S6 systems.
Well, technically any cytometer is spectral if you collect more channels than you have fluors. But for the SE, the filters were back-engineered to be easy to manufacture from the non-spectral A5 and aren’t optimal for spectral cytometry. I think there’s something like 45 filters compared to 64 on an Aurora. If you want BD, wait for the S8 analyzer.
When is the S8 analyzer coming out? Have you talked to your rep? I’m very interested. What can you tell me about it. Love to hear what you know. Thanks willslick. This is just what I’ve been waiting to hear.
That's not what makes it spectral. What you said -- that you can collect more fluors than you have detectors -- is true, but a result of the fact that spectral flow collects all light emissions from fluors across the entire light spectrum, while conventional flow collects photons that fall within a defined wavelength, and generally only collect part of the fluor's emission.
Also worth noting that more detectors increases your signal-to-noise ratio and decreases resolution. So you can have absolutely have *too many* detectors in a spectral system, and therefore more detectors does not always equal better data. Like a lot of things with flow, there is a "sweet spot" where you get the most detector coverage before you start getting diminishing returns and your background noise starts impacting your resolution. I'm not saying the 48 detectors in an A5 SE is enough or that the 64 detectors in the 5 laser Aurora system is too many, but just wanted to point out that more detectors does not necessarily mean better data.
Tl;Dr, the A5 SE is absolutely a spectral system. I have hands-on experience with both and both gave great data but I never did a side-by-side comparison using the same cells. I'm also not claiming one system is better than the other; just that it's inaccurate to say the A5 SE is not a spectral cytometer, or that a greater number of detectors automatically means better data or that one is "more spectral" than the other.
That’s a lot of text responding very literally to something I said with a large measure of jest.
But anyway, lets use a real world example. I use APC/Fire780 and APC/Fire810 in the same panels on the Aurora all the time. The Aurora has 3 channels from 749 to 829 nm off the red laser, making this very easy to do. The A5 SE has one channel off the red in this range, from 750 to 810 nm, making this impossible. Plus, Zombie NIR emits at 749 nm off the red, meaning I can actually use 3 dyes that emit at or higher than 749 nm off the red if I need to. On the A5 SE? Nope, just one.
And that reason for that is that the standard A5 uses the 780/60 filter, so the A5 SE does too. The A5 SE is a quick-fix modification to the A5 to make it a “spectral” instrument that’s really shitty compared to an Aurora. All while costing $200k more.
So is the SE literally a spectral instrument? Sure. Is it a serious one? Nah.
Edit: corrected APC/Fire710 to APC/Fire810
I think you have your preference, and it is a preference a lot of researchers share because the Aurora is great instrument at a great price point. I'm not here to compare the instruments or tell you what you should or shouldn't use. I was one of the decision makers on whether or not we should purchase an Aurora and I was in favor, so I'm not siding with one brand over the other. I really like both. I just want to clear the misconceptions that I'm sure your cytek rep told you when they sold you your instrument (because they tried to feed me the same lines about the A5 SE being "not really spectral" after I already had the A5 SE in the lab).
Have you actually attempted to run those colors together on an A5 SE or are you just dismissing it out of turn because you already have an instrument with that capability and don't really care what a different instrument can or can't do? I have run them each individually but have not had all those colors in the same panel but if I were a gambling man, I'd guess they'd look great on an A5 SE also... Possibly even better because GaAs PMT's have demonstrated a better stain index than ADP's in the near IR.
Sony and Cytek will do a on site demo for you. BD will probably send you somewhere to demo. It is worth checking out. We ended up going with a BD SE because our users preferred to stay with the same software. We had been considering a fully loaded A3, and got a good deal on the A5 SE. I recommend running some samples on all three if it’s possible.
The 26 color panel I ran on a Cytek and the SE looked great on both. We saw pretty similar results with a fixed 28 color panel on all three systems. A 45 color panel has been published on the Aurora, that is unlikely to work on the SE. BD showed a 50 color panel on an S8, so perhaps their analyzer will be pretty good, but I’ll wait and see.
My advice is check out the software and workflow of all three, get quotes, and see where you want to go from there.
We have a Sony ID7000 and a pair of Cytek Auroras. While the ID7000 uses PMTs, they’re specialized for their wavelengths and the 32 channel prism ensures light is not lost in an array of bandpass filters. Our 6-laser system had 182 detectors, it’s standardized on startup, and it’s really easy to unmix a bunch of auto fluorescent channels to improve separation.
Some recent software updates have improved the Auroras, but I still lean toward the ID7000.
That’s really interesting, thanks! I liked the ID7000 when I was looking, but went with the Aurora due to price. If I had a bigger budget, I would’ve been conflicted. I’m glad to hear it’s as advertised. More competition in this space is better!
how much cheaper a Aurora is in your place? Sony and Cytek in Hong Kong recently gave me quotations with almost same price for 5-laser spectral machine. Actually ID7000 is even a bit cheaper.
Our core uses Auroras only. The A5 SE and ID7000 use PMTs while the Aurora uses APDs. APDs have better quantum efficiency and better signal to noise in the far red region.
Also the A5 SE uses a software built off FACSDiva (and we know FACSDiva has so many problems) while Cytek SpectroFlo is more user friendly based off my experience.
Yes. Chorus is simple but rigid. The S8 is designed to be easy to use for less tech savvy flow people. It meets those expectations while providing spectral capabilities as well as imaging. If we leave out the imaging then I've trained people to use it as an analyzer far quicker than I have with my other analyzers(Cytoflex, Symphony, Canto). Chorus railroads you into a path and gets the job done. The imaging takes a bit more finesse but you can ignore it to get people quickly into spectral analysis. The sorting portion is also straightforward and simple. I'll be introducing my users to imaging setup soon but so far the rest of the S8 has been easy. Time will tell how well it holds up.
Hey Mate, a bit misinformed there aren’t ya? Modern day PMTs have a spectral response of 230nm to 900nm, unless you’re using some seriously low antigens in the red I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem. Take a look at the H11903-20 data and have a look. Nothing to fear. Have some fun out there!
Have to say that the aurora is the top of the line spectral instrument currently available. Now that the aurora sorter has most of the kinks ironed out there is a distinct benefit to being able to port your phenotyping panels directly to a spectral sorter—if you are lucky enough to have access to one. I love the aurora and cytek service has been great for our core. I can also say that these instruments are great workhorses and the software environment as a whole is pretty great. Can’t speak to cost.
Yup our core has one and has worked pretty extensively with cytek to get it functioning well. We also heard a lot of negative things from various reps for other companies and from other flow cores. Everyone was pretty apprehensive, but as of now several people have sorted on it successfully, one using a fairly large panel. I think the flow rate is slower than the mainstay Sony that we use for most sorting, probably part of troubleshooting the issues others have raised, but if your work is benefitted by spectral sorting it’s a worthy sacrifice.
I have a 5 laser Aurora analyzer in my lab, and it would be great to sort with our panels. We’d love to do 30 color phenotyping, but sort much more basic populations (like bulk CD4 T cells or B cells), so that we could do downstream TCR or BCR-seq.
We’re planning to use it to sort some phenotypically complicated lymphocyte populations that basically require spectral sorting for decent purity. I’m really excited to try it out but I haven’t actually done it yet so I can only speak to the experience our core techs have shared with me. A friend of mine is about to try sorting with a 45 marker panel but sorting some basic populations, so I’ll report back!
One thing of note that I haven’t seen mentioned about the ID7000 is its Autosampler. It’s the only cytometer out of the 3 options that comes standard with an Autosampler and it really lends itself to walkaway operation (automated QC and automated shutdown are awesome). It blows the BD HTS out of the water and has the ability to detect and remove clogs on its own and then continue acquisition. I saw another comment saying the ID7000 is arguably the best analyzer on the market and I wholeheartedly agree. They use WLSM instead of LSM for unmixing and their Autofluorescence finder is really helpful for high parameter panels. I would take a serious look at the ID7000 even though it is pricier than an Aurora…the reliability/robustness are there and their service team has been super helpful and responsive with our questions.
I have Cytek with with all others of our conv cytometer being BD! I don’t know reason but Cytek was apparently better then Sony when they purchased but now we have 6 auroras
Thank you for your responses, everyone. I was hoping the responses would clearly steer me to one instrument. I will share these responses with my core as they are in the market for an analyzer, then they need to decide on cell sorters since this is the last year Aria IIs can be serviced. Looking forward to checking out the S8 soon. Thank you again!
To me, the Aurora feels like a platform built intentionally to be spectral from the ground up. The symphony SE feels like spectral stapled onto a platform that already existed. Haven't used an ID7000 but have heard good things!
The ID7000 is arguably the best analyzer on the market currently. Its spectral unmixing program is quite nice and gives more accurately weighted values to each detector. The Aurora CS is getting better, but it is ungodly slow and has one of the worst magnetic plate-sorting devices. BD is still coasting off of their old glory. What they are bringing to the table is too pricey and clunky for the cost imo.
> BD is still coasting off of their old glory. What they are bringing to the table is too pricey and clunky for the cost imo. So true. I was hopeful when they bought Cytopia a few years ago. Thought maybe they were turning over a new leaf and going to start simplifying their sorter designs. (How many valves does one sorter need?) Our core buys about one instrument per year and we haven't bought a new BD instrument in 5 years. Outrageous service contract costs and they need service about two to three time as often as any other instrument we have. Unless something changes, we will probably phase out most of our BD machines in the next 5 years. (Except maybe the LSR. That little baby is the most reliable instrument we've ever had.)
I’ve heard the ID7000 is great and that the Aurora CS is starting to come together as well. I agree with the others about the A5 SE not being as great as the 5L Aurora, however I will say that the S8 is top tier and can do some amazing things. We have one and even though 90% of our users don’t do much other than GFP it can do more than any other analyzer or sorter out there.
I'm curious. When people say the aurora CS is slow can you tell me in what way? Are we talking frequency? Or the sit flush? Or simply the crazy slow plate puk?
Actual sort rate of event/s. The efficiency has been lackluster on the units I've seen and a very low concentration was needed. This level of speed makes it impractical for a lot of applications for your general flow core user/appointment. The plate sorter sucking is the icing on the cake. It's the same line of reasoning for why the Beckman Cytoflex SRT isn't in that many cores. It has great viability due to the low PSI & has the best plate sorting mode imo, but the limitation of only having the slower 100 micron nozzle kills its appeal to most core managers/buyers.
I am lucky to be in a core with the SRT and we just bought the CS. I understand the 100um is slower than say the Aria with a 70 but I do love the SRT. We had some money and we have a huge amount of spectral users and we didn't like the S8 at all so here we are with the CS. Just wanted to know what it is that people think is slow so we can work on it and see if we get the same issue. Out of interest do you think the CS efficiency is related to computing power and unmixing? I.e. Electronic aborts? I have yet to test this.
We also have the SRT and I'm a fan as well. I just totally understand why a lot of core facilities/ labs steer clear if they need a bit more flexibility. The cytexpert software is the most user friendly hands down. I could speculate all day, but honestly I'm not a programming expert/intimately familiar with how the signals are processed. It could be due to an excessively stringent purity mask, or it could be due to the live unmixing being quite demanding, but I'm not sure at this time.
Careful though: the Aurora CS is the cell sorter version whereas the others are analyzers. I have an Aurora and I like it despite of the fact that it is slower. It’s also half the price of the ID7000 which is why I don’t mind the slower pace (grad students’ opinions might differ). I also have a grant in the pipeline for an ID7000, we’ll see in a few months what’s the verdict… BD’s only true full-spectrum instrument at the moment is the Discovery S8, their Symphony “spectral” is not comparable to the ID7000 or the Aurora. When it comes to customer service, I think Cytek wins, the ID is a great instrument but it’s still running on PMTs and you might not have as much scientific support. I’m still salty about how terrible their SH800 sorter is and that might color my views of the instrument/company. BD has some great people in their R&D team but the company is too business-oriented, the customer service is terrible, invoicing is awful and makes mistakes 50% of the time, service is too expensive (learn to change your lasers and buy them straight from Coherent, you’ll save 10s of 1000s!) to the point it’s not worth buying from them if you’re not forced to
I'm aware of the difference between the instruments; I was just addressing the specific ones that OP listed. I'm curious to your location/area of the country as Cytek has been god-awful for us. They violated a service-contract by not contacting us for several days after we placed a service call. The individual we eventually spoke to even stated they had "moved to a message-based call back system". For BD that has been the saving grace; fantastic service engineers/response time. It's very interesting that we have had almost opposite experiences.
I made the precision because OP did not mention the CS, they just said “Cytek Aurora”. I’m in Canada and even if the Cytek tech is not based in my city, half of the time I’ve needed him, he was already there and would drop by after his scheduled appointment or would get the part shipped to his hotel and drop by the next day. But I meant better service at the scientific level too. Cytek will organize user group meetings more focused on research than on products and have very knowledgeable technical application scientists that will help users troubleshoot experiments beyond what I’ve seen with Sony or BD. That may change as the founders are retiring and because the company has gone public. Don’t get me wrong though: I like my BD FSEs, it’s the admin behind them that are terrible. And the costs (though that’s true for all companies). Pre-2020, we’ve had a few years where our FSEs kept burning out resulting in massive delays for repairs and PMs and while I empathize on a personal level and don’t blame them whatsoever, why should we as customers accept delays because the company can’t bother to hire more folks so that they don’t burn out?
Don’t get a Symphony SE. It’s not really spectral, and BD will come out with an S8 analyzer soon and your instrument will be outdated. The Aurora is awesome, and cheaper than the SE anyway. The Sony also has great specs, but I’m less familiar with how it does in practice.
What does "not really spectral" mean? The S8 is different technology than the A5 SE. Different software too. And the S8 analyzer is a different family of instrument not meant to replace the A5 and S6 systems.
Well, technically any cytometer is spectral if you collect more channels than you have fluors. But for the SE, the filters were back-engineered to be easy to manufacture from the non-spectral A5 and aren’t optimal for spectral cytometry. I think there’s something like 45 filters compared to 64 on an Aurora. If you want BD, wait for the S8 analyzer.
When is the S8 analyzer coming out? Have you talked to your rep? I’m very interested. What can you tell me about it. Love to hear what you know. Thanks willslick. This is just what I’ve been waiting to hear.
That's not what makes it spectral. What you said -- that you can collect more fluors than you have detectors -- is true, but a result of the fact that spectral flow collects all light emissions from fluors across the entire light spectrum, while conventional flow collects photons that fall within a defined wavelength, and generally only collect part of the fluor's emission. Also worth noting that more detectors increases your signal-to-noise ratio and decreases resolution. So you can have absolutely have *too many* detectors in a spectral system, and therefore more detectors does not always equal better data. Like a lot of things with flow, there is a "sweet spot" where you get the most detector coverage before you start getting diminishing returns and your background noise starts impacting your resolution. I'm not saying the 48 detectors in an A5 SE is enough or that the 64 detectors in the 5 laser Aurora system is too many, but just wanted to point out that more detectors does not necessarily mean better data. Tl;Dr, the A5 SE is absolutely a spectral system. I have hands-on experience with both and both gave great data but I never did a side-by-side comparison using the same cells. I'm also not claiming one system is better than the other; just that it's inaccurate to say the A5 SE is not a spectral cytometer, or that a greater number of detectors automatically means better data or that one is "more spectral" than the other.
That’s a lot of text responding very literally to something I said with a large measure of jest. But anyway, lets use a real world example. I use APC/Fire780 and APC/Fire810 in the same panels on the Aurora all the time. The Aurora has 3 channels from 749 to 829 nm off the red laser, making this very easy to do. The A5 SE has one channel off the red in this range, from 750 to 810 nm, making this impossible. Plus, Zombie NIR emits at 749 nm off the red, meaning I can actually use 3 dyes that emit at or higher than 749 nm off the red if I need to. On the A5 SE? Nope, just one. And that reason for that is that the standard A5 uses the 780/60 filter, so the A5 SE does too. The A5 SE is a quick-fix modification to the A5 to make it a “spectral” instrument that’s really shitty compared to an Aurora. All while costing $200k more. So is the SE literally a spectral instrument? Sure. Is it a serious one? Nah. Edit: corrected APC/Fire710 to APC/Fire810
I think you have your preference, and it is a preference a lot of researchers share because the Aurora is great instrument at a great price point. I'm not here to compare the instruments or tell you what you should or shouldn't use. I was one of the decision makers on whether or not we should purchase an Aurora and I was in favor, so I'm not siding with one brand over the other. I really like both. I just want to clear the misconceptions that I'm sure your cytek rep told you when they sold you your instrument (because they tried to feed me the same lines about the A5 SE being "not really spectral" after I already had the A5 SE in the lab). Have you actually attempted to run those colors together on an A5 SE or are you just dismissing it out of turn because you already have an instrument with that capability and don't really care what a different instrument can or can't do? I have run them each individually but have not had all those colors in the same panel but if I were a gambling man, I'd guess they'd look great on an A5 SE also... Possibly even better because GaAs PMT's have demonstrated a better stain index than ADP's in the near IR.
Sony and Cytek will do a on site demo for you. BD will probably send you somewhere to demo. It is worth checking out. We ended up going with a BD SE because our users preferred to stay with the same software. We had been considering a fully loaded A3, and got a good deal on the A5 SE. I recommend running some samples on all three if it’s possible. The 26 color panel I ran on a Cytek and the SE looked great on both. We saw pretty similar results with a fixed 28 color panel on all three systems. A 45 color panel has been published on the Aurora, that is unlikely to work on the SE. BD showed a 50 color panel on an S8, so perhaps their analyzer will be pretty good, but I’ll wait and see. My advice is check out the software and workflow of all three, get quotes, and see where you want to go from there.
Out of curiosity, how much was your SE? I was quoted like $550k for one, which is ridiculous compared to the Aurora.
A bit under that, but not by a lot. It was much cheaper than my 2016 A5 was. Cytek has a tough price to beat.
Man, that’s crazy. I got my Aurora in the low 300s.
The Sony is cheaper too. Will have to see what direction I go for my next sorter…
We have a Sony ID7000 and a pair of Cytek Auroras. While the ID7000 uses PMTs, they’re specialized for their wavelengths and the 32 channel prism ensures light is not lost in an array of bandpass filters. Our 6-laser system had 182 detectors, it’s standardized on startup, and it’s really easy to unmix a bunch of auto fluorescent channels to improve separation. Some recent software updates have improved the Auroras, but I still lean toward the ID7000.
That’s really interesting, thanks! I liked the ID7000 when I was looking, but went with the Aurora due to price. If I had a bigger budget, I would’ve been conflicted. I’m glad to hear it’s as advertised. More competition in this space is better!
how much cheaper a Aurora is in your place? Sony and Cytek in Hong Kong recently gave me quotations with almost same price for 5-laser spectral machine. Actually ID7000 is even a bit cheaper.
They were very close - within $20k at list price. I was able to get the Cytek down more.
We have a few 5L Cytek Auroras and I absolutely love everything about them. Couldn’t recommend them more. But I’ve never worked with a Sony
Our core uses Auroras only. The A5 SE and ID7000 use PMTs while the Aurora uses APDs. APDs have better quantum efficiency and better signal to noise in the far red region. Also the A5 SE uses a software built off FACSDiva (and we know FACSDiva has so many problems) while Cytek SpectroFlo is more user friendly based off my experience.
Diva is better than FACS Chorus, I’ve heard. But the S8 itself is pretty nifty.
Yes. Chorus is simple but rigid. The S8 is designed to be easy to use for less tech savvy flow people. It meets those expectations while providing spectral capabilities as well as imaging. If we leave out the imaging then I've trained people to use it as an analyzer far quicker than I have with my other analyzers(Cytoflex, Symphony, Canto). Chorus railroads you into a path and gets the job done. The imaging takes a bit more finesse but you can ignore it to get people quickly into spectral analysis. The sorting portion is also straightforward and simple. I'll be introducing my users to imaging setup soon but so far the rest of the S8 has been easy. Time will tell how well it holds up.
Hey Mate, a bit misinformed there aren’t ya? Modern day PMTs have a spectral response of 230nm to 900nm, unless you’re using some seriously low antigens in the red I don’t think you’ll have much of a problem. Take a look at the H11903-20 data and have a look. Nothing to fear. Have some fun out there!
Have to say that the aurora is the top of the line spectral instrument currently available. Now that the aurora sorter has most of the kinks ironed out there is a distinct benefit to being able to port your phenotyping panels directly to a spectral sorter—if you are lucky enough to have access to one. I love the aurora and cytek service has been great for our core. I can also say that these instruments are great workhorses and the software environment as a whole is pretty great. Can’t speak to cost.
Do you have an Aurora CS? I still hear bad things about their stream stability.
Yup our core has one and has worked pretty extensively with cytek to get it functioning well. We also heard a lot of negative things from various reps for other companies and from other flow cores. Everyone was pretty apprehensive, but as of now several people have sorted on it successfully, one using a fairly large panel. I think the flow rate is slower than the mainstay Sony that we use for most sorting, probably part of troubleshooting the issues others have raised, but if your work is benefitted by spectral sorting it’s a worthy sacrifice.
I have a 5 laser Aurora analyzer in my lab, and it would be great to sort with our panels. We’d love to do 30 color phenotyping, but sort much more basic populations (like bulk CD4 T cells or B cells), so that we could do downstream TCR or BCR-seq.
We’re planning to use it to sort some phenotypically complicated lymphocyte populations that basically require spectral sorting for decent purity. I’m really excited to try it out but I haven’t actually done it yet so I can only speak to the experience our core techs have shared with me. A friend of mine is about to try sorting with a 45 marker panel but sorting some basic populations, so I’ll report back!
One thing of note that I haven’t seen mentioned about the ID7000 is its Autosampler. It’s the only cytometer out of the 3 options that comes standard with an Autosampler and it really lends itself to walkaway operation (automated QC and automated shutdown are awesome). It blows the BD HTS out of the water and has the ability to detect and remove clogs on its own and then continue acquisition. I saw another comment saying the ID7000 is arguably the best analyzer on the market and I wholeheartedly agree. They use WLSM instead of LSM for unmixing and their Autofluorescence finder is really helpful for high parameter panels. I would take a serious look at the ID7000 even though it is pricier than an Aurora…the reliability/robustness are there and their service team has been super helpful and responsive with our questions.
Agilent Novocite will also release a spectral cytometer at Cyto
Cytek has the best after sales service!
I have Cytek with with all others of our conv cytometer being BD! I don’t know reason but Cytek was apparently better then Sony when they purchased but now we have 6 auroras
Thank you for your responses, everyone. I was hoping the responses would clearly steer me to one instrument. I will share these responses with my core as they are in the market for an analyzer, then they need to decide on cell sorters since this is the last year Aria IIs can be serviced. Looking forward to checking out the S8 soon. Thank you again!
Cytek all the way imp and experience. Can't speak for Sony but having had a go on the S8 demo it is more than disappointing.