I am going to chuck the Ascensia Contour. The Ascensia Elite XL that I have is awesome, and incredibly accurate. I have tested it dozens of times against the lab machines through work and it is reliably accurate. Unfortunately, it requires a much larger blood sample than the Contour. The OTU requires a sample that is in-between sizes. Since the Contour is a Bayer meter as well, I thought that it would be just as good and have the additional benefit of requiring a mere speck of blood. Not so, it sucks. It seems to read somewhat accurately at really high numbers (300s) but anything under 150, it reads a good 30-50 points lower than the OTU and Elite. I can't say this is true of all Contours or if I have a bum one. I may just get another one and test that one since I'd like to think that Bayer kept up the quality somewhat with their meters!
So, here is my BG reading comparisons. These are all within the past week from animals at work. Most animals were not diabetic and these are all using venous blood. When possible, I compared the BG meters to one of our lab machines called an i-Stat, using it as a gold standard. It measures blood electrolytes, blood gases, and pH. I tested an OTU-2 (the newest version), OTU Mini, Elite, and Contour. Results:
OTU-2/Mini/Elite/Contour/i-Stat
54/59/60/35/X
74/76/75/44/84
76/79/81/X/X
75/78/81/X/93
X/121/108/83/X
143/155/139/116/154
211/229/200/179/X
I actually have a re-designed Contour, a more recent model than the one I was testing, so I am going to bust that one out and continue testing. I'll keep you posted ...
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