TC10 Cell Counter from Bio-Rad

The group I am part of uses a large number of lymphoid and epithelial cell lines as well as primary material from healthy donors and lymphoma patients. The number and variety of cell lines that we use, and the experiments we carry out, such as limiting dilution, proliferation and apoptosis assays, which are all critically dependent on accurate cell counts, necessitated a robust and intuitive cell counter. We looked into several machines including the Invitrogen Countess, the Millipore Scepter and the Nexcelom Cellometer. Although the Nexcelom instrument was the most flexible and has the best capability for data output including cell viability and imaging, the price and the need for an external computer to be linked to it, made it unrealistic for us. The handheld Millipore device is not guaranteed to detect some of the very small cells, such as primary B cells, which we routinely use. We found the Countess and TC-10 were very similar in their data output and intuitive interface, however the TC-10 won on the price of both the instrument and disposable slides (we got an extremely good deal from our rep).