This Picture May Help People New to Testing

I decided to pull out all of my meters and see how much the results varied between them all. I have another Aviva Expert that yielded a 120mg/dl reading but didn't make its way into the picture.

The point of this test was to show people that glucometers aren't perfect and there will always be some variation.

Results converted into mmol/l:
6.1 One Touch Verio
6.6 Accu-Chek Aviva
6.2 Accu-Chek Aviva Expert
6.3 Accu-Chek Aviva Connect
5.3 One Touch Ultra2
6.7 One Touch Ultra Mini
6.7 (not pictured) Accu-Chek Aviva Expert

Galja said:

I'm amazed that you have test strips for all these. Were any of the strips out of date?

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There are three different types of test strips all within their date range: Accu-Chek Aviva, One Touch Ultra, and One Touch Verio strips. The good thing about being a T1 in the US is that you're a gold mine to pharmaceutical companies. Roche was sending me 100 free test strips a week while they helped me fight to get off the One Touch Verio meters.

EdMac said:

@TorqPenderloin obviously this demonstrates a lack of consistency between meters. How about consistency of the same meter over time? For example does the meter providing the low reading always give a low reading?

I just watched the 'Control Test' video for the accu-check aviva. I would use the Level 1 control solution and it states the acceptable range is 1.7 - 3.3. In the context of monitoring a FBG range of 4.5 to 6.0 the acceptable calibration range is fairly wide ie. giving pretty poor confidence limits for an actual test? (in this case wider than the range I'm actually monitoring). Does this suggest the meters are not great for monitoring lower end steady FBG's? Or am I misinterpreting something?

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You raise a very good point and it's a test I may have to setup one of these days. I have tried the Accu-Chek and OneTouch control solutions for my Accu-Chek meters and both read within 3-5mg/dl (.17-.28 mmol/l).

The best "Consistency" test I have was that my Accu-Chek Aviva Expert (the one I use the most) had my 3-month average blood sugar as 105 mg/dl (5.83mmol/l) and my last a1c was 5.4% which suggests an average blood sugar of around 109 mg/dl. I'd consider that accurate enough to trust it with my life (quite literally).

In practice, I found the One Touch Verio meters (I used to have another but gave it to my father) to be wildly inaccurate. It was common for me to get two readings as much as 2 mmol/l apart and got to the point where I had to average the three readings together.

Admittedly, I didn't use the One Touch Ultra meters much and only went through about 200 test strips.

The Accu-Chek Aviva Expert was my only meter for the past ~4 months and it was very close to my a1c. Note: I did have an issue with either low batteries and/or bad test strips with this meter. It consistently yielded readings in the 7mmol/l range. I kept giving myself insulin corrections and thought my honeymoon phase was completely over when it didn't do anything. Finally, my Dexcom CGM started to alert me of a low. I tried a different meter and found out my blood sugar was in the 3mmol/l range. Haven't had issues since then though.

I'm not using an Accu-Chek Aviva Connect which I think is called something different in the UK. It's the meter that sends all of your readings to your phone via Bluetooth. No complaints so far.

If anyone has any requests on how I can make this information/resources valuable to them, I'd be happy to do my best to help. Science projects are fun, lol.

PenfoldAPD said:

Am interested in a monitor that sends info to smartphone without having having to manually enter - I often forget then have to enter a few days at a time. Trying to find Connect on the Accu-Check website, have heard good things about their products.

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It's very convenient and oddly enough it's a very low priced meter here in the US ($30).

I have mine set to post to my iPhone "Health" app and even have it convert from mg/dL to mmol/l since I spend a fair amount of time on this forum.