Review – Accu-Chek Compact Plus GT
Not a Maserati GranTurismo. Oh no.
I recently got my hands on Accu-Chek’s newish Compact Plus GT and took it out for a test drive. The “test drive” thing is relatively apt as, for some reason, Accu-Chek have added the suffix “GT” to the meter’s name. I always understood that GT referred to cars and stood for Grand Tourer (or Gran Turismo if you want to go for the Italian – like the Maserati GranTurismo – which is still high on my Christmas wish list). Unfortunately, if the Compact Plus GT were a car it would be big clunky ugly minibus and not the sprightly Maserati above.
The Compact Plus GT is designed to be an all-in-one meter – with finger pricker, test strips and said meter all rolled into one. The meter element isn’t particularly exciting in itself; it has all the features you’ve come to know and love on any modern meter – a 500 test memory, a pretty straightforward user interface and a bright display for night-time use.
Of slightly greater interest is the relatively innovative test strip drum. Rather than sticking in a strip every time you want to test, you put a drum of 17 tiny strips into the machine in one go. A handy dial round the back of the meter tells you how many strips you have left in the meter and the drum incorporates a bar code which automatically calibrates each new set of strips. A switch on the front of the meter then spits out a test strip whenever one is needed. The strips themselves are tiny, very slurpy but require a positively vampiric sample size of 1.5 µL. The attached finger pricker uses an air-pump instead of the usual spring to fire the lancet into your finger. But, as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve not noticed any difference between this and a normal finger pricker. Buy, hey, ten out of ten for effort in trying to reduce wear and tear on our ravaged, pepper pot fingers.
All in all, the Compact Plus is made up of some good components – the meter’s okay (but nothing world-shattering), the finger pricker is acceptable and the strip system is very good. However, combined, they form a pretty ugly, clunky bit of kit; which doesn’t take up any less space than my usual meter and assorted kit and just doesn’t really offer anything greater than I have already.
Some people might like the all-in-one nature of the Compact Plus which makes it very easy to grab and shove in a bag as you leave the house; but sadly I just don’t think the sum of the parts makes it a better system than anything else out there. Pity really.
So, in summary:
Sample size – 1/5
1.5 µL – vampiric
Test time – 2/5
Five seconds – not wildly quick, but not disastrous
Test strip calibration – 5/5
No calibration by user required
Test strip slurpiness – 4/5
Pretty damned slurpy!
Memory – 4/5
500 readings – which isn’t too bad
Sexiness – 1/5
I would say it’s an ugly duckling; but “duckling” implies small and cute.
Beeping – 5/5
Can be turned off. Thankfully.
4am test – 3/5
Bright, easy to read display makes it a bearable meter at 4am. But no light on the test strip – boo!
TOTAL – 25/40
Check out our other blood glucose meter reviews or have a look at the manufacturer’s web site.
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I like the idea of all in one, but it sounds like this one doesn’t quite hit the mark. I’m a bit cynical about the strips in a drum thing – sounds like a good way of increasing the cost of consumables to me – 17 strips in a pre-loaded drum has to be more expensive than a simple box of 50. Bah humbug!
@Alison You’re probably right Alison – but, in their defence, they were actually quite good test strips – small, slurpy and a tiny sample. Still not a great meter though. Bah!
I used a Compact Plus for quite a while – only ditched it when I got a new meter at the same time as my pump last May (new meter ‘talks’ to the pump). This GT model looks pretty similar – in fact I am struggling to spot the difference, but no doubt once I have posted this comment I will find out!
The most infrutiating thing for me was what Tim describes as:
“a handy dial round the back of the meter tells you how many strips you have left in the meter”
Why was this infruriating? Because I never look at the back of the meter and unless you do, the first time you know that it is empty is when there are no strips left! At this point, a quick BG test takes more than twice as long as you were expecting – remove the old drum, get a replacement out, insert new drum and wait for this to initialise as the motor spins it round to the first strip. It would have been better if they had put a counter on the display as I pointed out to an Accuchek rep once – but more expensive to produce no doubt.
Best feature apart from not having to load strips every test is the handy dandy pricker which stays with the meter – definitely an all in one.
Alan
@Alan Good point Alan – I only got one lots of test strips so I never had the chance to get irritated by this feature. But now you point it out – yes, yes that would be annoying.
i actually really hated the compact plus…I found it way too noisy especially when testing in public. I don’t particularly like being stared at as i’m testing my blood but the noise emitted from the compact plus made that er…kind of inevitable. Plus, its too big, and ugly and the test strips get everywhere, even more so than normal ones cuz they’re so small! Also, looking at the back of the meter really got on my goat too. The amount of times I was out and suddenly found I was out of strips cuz I hadn’t checked the back. Awful meter. 0/10 from me – a very irritated ex Roche customer
@sam I’m getting the sense the Compact Plus isn’t going to be at the top of everyone’s “Meter of the Year” lists. Oh well.
I was confused with μl and ul actually there are the same
(I checked it out) so why would you say 1.5 is miniscule when the freestyle only wants 0.3??
@katerina I said that because I misread the specification! I got the decimal point in the wrong place – oops! Anyway, I’ve duly updated my review accordingly. I’ve also updated the site so that I consistantly use μL throughout (unless I’ve missed any!) Thanks for pointing out my failures
I upgraded from the blue/silver Accu-Chek Compact Plus to the Accu-Chek Compact Plus Model GT. Now I discover that the software and dongle to download the meter data does not work and you have to buy new software and dongle. What a nuisance!!!.