Tecan equipment

About Tecan

Tecan is a Swiss manufacturer of laboratory automation instruments and solutions for life sciences, clinical diagnostics, and OEM partnering, founded in 1980 by four engineers in Hombrechtikon, Switzerland. The company is headquartered in Männedorf, Switzerland, and its ultimate parent, Tecan Group Ltd., is publicly traded on the SIX Swiss Exchange under the ticker TECN with no controlling corporate parent as of the 2024 annual report. The business began with measurement, analysis, and laboratory automation devices, and that combination still describes its catalogue. Its instruments cover liquid handling and automation, microplate readers, microplate washers, sample preparation, and components sold to other manufacturers as OEM parts. Automated liquid handling is central to the work these platforms do, moving measured volumes across microplates for molecular biology, genomics, and immunoassay workflows that would be slow and error-prone by hand. The readers and washers complete the detection and processing steps around those plates. On Questpair, used Tecan equipment is listed from verified suppliers and distributors across several countries.

Tecan product lines on Questpair

The named product families cover distinct roles. The Fluent and the Freedom EVO are liquid handling platforms, the large decked systems that pipette, transfer, and prepare samples under program control; the Veya is a more recent automation platform in the same class. These systems carry out automated sample preparation for nucleic acid extraction and library preparation in genomics, and for the plating steps that feed cell culture and protein purification. The Spark, the Infinite, and the Sunrise are microplate readers, measuring absorbance, fluorescence, or luminescence from the wells of a plate, which is the detection step behind an immunoassay or a cell-based assay. The HydroFlex and HydroSpeed are microplate washers, handling the wash cycles an ELISA protocol depends on. The Cavro line covers OEM pump and valve components that Tecan supplies to other instrument builders, and the D300e Digital Dispenser dispenses picolitre to microlitre volumes directly into plates for assay setup and compound screening. The Resolvex handles positive-pressure solid phase extraction for sample cleanup. Not every family appears in the catalogue at any given time, and the specific listing is where the configuration of a given platform is recorded.

What is listed, and in what condition?

At present the catalogue holds 252 Tecan listings from 14 verified suppliers and distributors across 8 countries. Every one of them is used: 100 percent of the listings are used. Prices run from EUR 100 to EUR 73.171, with the spread reflecting the gap between a single benchtop reader and a fully configured liquid handling platform. A buyer comparing two listings of the same product name should read the deck layout, the installed arms, and the tip format on each, because an automation platform set up for one application is not interchangeable with the same model set up for another. Where a used unit needs a missing part to reach a working configuration, parts can be sourced via Questpair, and documentation can be requested by contacting Questpair, where specialists respond within the hour. Warranty is not fixed across the catalogue; it is often possible and is arranged in consultation for the specific listing. For a lab already trained on a Tecan platform, a used instrument of the same family preserves the existing operating knowledge, which is a consideration the price alone does not capture.

Questpair review of Tecan

Our take based on listings data and supplier feedback

Tecan occupies a specific position in the laboratory instrument market: the company builds automation around sample handling rather than around a single assay type, and the catalogue on Questpair reflects that focus. The first thing a buyer notices is the spread of platform classes held together under one maker. Liquid handling systems such as the Fluent and the Freedom EVO appear alongside detection instruments like the Spark and the Infinite, and alongside the plate washers in the HydroFlex and HydroSpeed lines. For a lab assembling an automated workflow, that means the liquid handling deck, the reader, and the washer can come from a single manufacturer with a shared control logic, which matters when a protocol passes a plate from one station to the next.

The 252 Tecan listings sit with 14 verified suppliers and distributors spread across 8 countries. That distribution is worth weighing. A liquid handling platform is a large instrument with a deck layout, a set of installed arms, and a defined tip format, so a buyer usually wants to see the specific configuration before committing. A pool drawn from multiple suppliers gives more configurations to compare than a single seller would, and the Questpair catalogue is where those configurations sit side by side rather than scattered across separate vendor sites.

On condition and price, the catalogue is unambiguous: 100 percent of the listings are used. Prices run from EUR 100 to EUR 73.171. That range is wide because the class is wide. A standalone microplate reader and a fully decked liquid handling platform are different instruments at different scales, and the spread captures both ends. A buyer reading the figure should map it against the specific platform they need rather than against the average, since the average of EUR 15.957 sits between two quite distinct kinds of instrument.

Where the catalogue asks for judgement is in matching an instrument's installed configuration to the intended work. A Freedom EVO set up for genomics sample preparation is a different machine from one set up for an immunoassay, even under the same product name, because the arms, the tips, and the deck accessories differ. The individual listing carries that detail, and a buyer should read it closely. Warranty on a used instrument is arranged in consultation for the specific listing rather than fixed across the catalogue, and parts, where a configuration needs completing, can be sourced via Questpair. For a lab that already runs Tecan software or has staff trained on the Fluent interface, buying a used platform of the same family keeps the operating knowledge in place, which is a practical argument the raw price does not show.

**Automation depth across a single listing pool**

The Questpair catalogue holds 252 Tecan listings from 14 verified suppliers and distributors, spanning liquid handling platforms, microplate readers, and washers in one place.

**Priced below new throughout**

Every Tecan unit in the catalogue is listed used, at prices running from EUR 100 to EUR 73.171, which sits below the cost of equivalent new instruments.

**Breadth of product lines in one catalogue**

Fluent, Freedom EVO, Spark, Infinite, and Sunrise instruments appear side by side, letting a buyer compare liquid handling and detection platforms without visiting separate sources.