Biotech and life sciences

Buying guide

Because this group covers eight very different instrument types, the first thing to settle is which stage of the workflow the purchase serves, and that decision is rarely about the headline specification. For a thermal cycler the block configuration and ramp rate matter, but what separates a usable used unit from a liability is calibration history: a cycler whose Peltier elements have drifted will run PCR that silently fails, and no datasheet records that drift. The same holds for a microplate reader, where the optics and the lamp age on a schedule the seller may not have tracked. So on this marketplace, where 95 percent of the listings are used, the condition of the detection and heating components is the lead question, not the brochure figures.

Once condition is established, the specification that actually decides the purchase is throughput matched to the assay. A real time PCR instrument with 96 wells and a four-colour optical set covers a different scale of work than a benchtop system built for single-plex screening, and an incubator rated for CO2 and humidity control serves cell culture where a dry convection unit does not. Read the specification against the protocol, not against the price.

Verification on a used unit comes down to what degrades invisibly. Ask for the last service record, confirm that optical filters and light sources are original or documented replacements, and check that software licences and any dongles transfer with the hardware, since instrument control software is often the hidden cost. On a flow cytometer, fluidics and laser alignment are the parts that fall out of true.

Price follows the type. The band here runs from EUR 1 to EUR 516.534, which separates a single plate washer from a multi-laser cytometer. A used microplate reader or a basic electrophoresis rig sits near the lower end and is what most buyers mean when they ask what a unit costs; a fully optioned real time PCR system or a flow cytometer sits far higher. The brands occupying that range are Bio-Rad, Thermo Scientific, Applied Biosystems, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Invitrogen, which is where a limited budget and a specific model search most often meet. Refurbished and used units listed for sale are more affordable than new, and for a group this capital-intensive that gap is often what makes the equipment reachable at all.

Types of Biotech and life sciences

Incubators

Incubators are the largest group here, and they hold biological samples at a controlled temperature, and often a controlled CO2 level and humidity, so that cells and microbial cultures stay viable and grow at a predictable rate. The split a buyer faces is between dry convection units, which suit microbiology and general bacterial work, and CO2 or tri-gas models built for mammalian cell culture, where pH is held by a buffered atmosphere. Among the listings that specify a type, both occur. The field they serve is cell culture, and within that, cell imaging and bioprocessing workflows depend on an incubator holding conditions steady for days. A unit used for primary cell culture, or for a cell culture incubator with CO2 control feeding a downstream immunoassay, is the common starting point for a molecular biology or microbiology lab.

PCR equipment

PCR equipment amplifies a target DNA sequence through repeated cycles of heating and cooling, and this category covers the thermal cyclers and block systems that run endpoint PCR. What separates them is block format, 96-well, 384-well, or a gradient block that lets a researcher optimise annealing temperature across a row in one run. These instruments do PCR, the foundational reaction of molecular biology, and they sit at the front of workflows in genomics, molecular diagnostics and gene editing, where a clean amplicon has to exist before anything downstream can read it. A thermal cycler for PCR amplification is also used for cloning and library preparation in synthetic biology.

Electrophoresis

Electrophoresis separates charged molecules, DNA, RNA or proteins, by driving them through a gel under an electric field, so that fragments resolve by size. The category divides into horizontal systems for nucleic acid agarose gels and vertical systems for protein polyacrylamide gels, with power supplies and transfer units listed alongside. This is the workhorse of electrophoresis and protein purification checks, and it underpins histology-adjacent protein analysis, proteomics and molecular biology. A gel electrophoresis system for DNA fragment analysis is also used for Western blot protein transfer when paired with a blotting module.

Microplate readers

Microplate readers measure an optical signal, absorbance, fluorescence or luminescence, in each well of a multi-well plate, turning a colour or light change into quantitative data. They differ by detection mode: a single-mode absorbance reader is the economical choice for ELISA, while a multi-mode reader adds fluorescence and luminescence for a wider panel. The field is the immunoassay, and a microplate reader for ELISA quantification serves molecular diagnostics, drug screening and proteomics, reading hundreds of samples where a single-cuvette instrument reads one.

Real time PCR

Real time PCR instruments, also called qPCR systems, amplify and measure DNA at the same time, tracking fluorescence cycle by cycle so that the starting quantity of a target can be calculated. They separate from endpoint PCR equipment by their optical detection block and by the number of fluorescence channels, which sets how many targets run in one well. The work is quantitative molecular diagnostics, and a real time PCR system for gene expression analysis sits at the centre of genomics, pathogen detection and synthetic biology, measuring copy number where endpoint PCR only confirms presence.

Cameras

Cameras in this category are the imaging detectors mounted on microscopes, gel documentation systems and cell imaging platforms, capturing the fluorescent or brightfield signal as a digital image. They vary by sensor, cooled CCD and sCMOS units resolve faint fluorescence for low-light cell imaging, while standard colour cameras document gels and stained histology sections. A scientific camera for fluorescence microscopy supports cell imaging, histology and high-content screening, converting an optical signal into data a molecular biology or proteomics pipeline can measure.

Flow cytometers

Flow cytometers pass cells single-file through one or more laser beams and record the scattered and fluorescent light from each, so that a population can be counted and sorted by marker. They differ by laser count and by the number of fluorescence detectors, which fixes how many parameters a researcher measures per cell, and sorting models physically separate populations where analysers only read them. The field is flow cytometry, and a flow cytometer for immunophenotyping serves immunology, molecular diagnostics and cell biology, profiling thousands of cells a second.

Microplate washers

Microplate washers dispense and aspirate wash buffer across every well of a plate, removing unbound reagent between the steps of a plate-based assay. They separate by the plate formats they handle, 96-well and 384-well, and by the number of dispense channels, which sets wash speed and uniformity. The work is the immunoassay again: a microplate washer for ELISA plate processing keeps background low in molecular diagnostics and drug screening, and the quality of that wash step decides whether the reader downstream sees a clean signal or noise.