A desktop analyzer creates a dependency that lasts as long as the instrument does. The strips are proprietary to the instrument in practice, so the decision to buy the analyzer is also a decision about who supplies its consumables for the next several years.

That makes continuity the useful question and instrument specification the secondary one. Two analyzers with similar performance are not equivalent purchases if one has a strip supply that will still exist in three years and the other does not.

The failure is quiet and complete. An analyzer whose strips become unavailable does not degrade; it stops, and the replacement decision arrives at the worst possible moment, with a laboratory workflow already built around it.

Ask three things before the instrument order: how long the strip formulation has been in production, whether the strips are made by the same group that makes the instrument, and what the shelf life is, because a long shelf life is what lets a buyer hold a buffer against a supply interruption.