Difference between Acquity UPLC and Acquity UPLC H-Class?
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Hello
There is a piece on this from when the H-Class was launched, if you search the site for "H-Class" it will come up, but basically both systems are going to give very similar UPLC perfromance, but H-Class is designed to make transitioning to UPLC easily. Also many customers said, we need a quaternary rather than a binary pump. The H-Class has a "direct" style rather than a loop based design. Both systems support the same range of optical detectors. It is a matter of what you are doing and what is more familiar to you, and yes there is a price difference. In actual column efficiency performance the two systems are equivalent, but each has the advantages the difference in design of the pump and the injector confers.
The H-Class and ACQUITY, differ in the dwell volume of the system, the H-Class has the larger volume and thus the ACQUITY UPLC system has a faster injector cycle time and less of an equilibration time, it is better for ballistic (short and steep) gradients, but the run times have to be very short <2 min for you to notice. The H-Class injector, is slower, but not by much, and only requires a single needlewash and there are no loops to change. It's a matter of what' is best for you. Although, because of the flexibility of the quaternary pump, if you plan to do a lot of method development or scouting the H-Class really stands out there, as you can have multiple mobile phases and can blend from stock solutions. Also what is the CDS that you are using, is it Waters' or 3rd party? As H-Class is new. not all the CDS vendors have the new control codes in place.
To make a decision you should spend some time with your sale rep who can point out the significance of the differences to you, such as: are Quat pumps or Binary pumps in use in your lab? Usually, you have chosen a particular type for a reason. Are you likely to be doing method development? Are you using MS based detection where cycletime is very important?
Both systems run HPLC and UPLC well, but how will the features of the two systems best fit into your current working practices. One is not better than the other, they are equally great in perfromance, but one may be better for your workflow than the other. Do not make a decision based only on the fact that H-Class is cheaper or is more recent addition to the family. Make a decision on what features would be most beneficial to your separation, as the chromatogram on either will look very similar.
Hope that helps a little
Liz
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