Blood-glucose meters

Choose based on ease of use

People with diabetes who measure their blood-glucose levels at home are more successful in managing their disease, research suggests. All of the blood-glucose meters we looked at this year passed our tests for accuracy and consistency, which are patterned after the Food and Drug Administration's current guidelines. These guidelines allow for up to 20 percent variability, but we believe the standard should be stronger, and we've alerted the U.S. government about our concerns.

We will continue to study the challenges with accuracy and consistency of the meters, and hope to provide more detailed Ratings in the future. In the meantime, choose your model based mainly on how easy they are to use.

Ease of use is not just about convenience, however. If your blood-glucose meter is hard for you to use, you could also get inaccurate readings. "Sometimes those human issues are as important or more important than the technical issues when it comes to accuracy," says John Buse. M.D., Ph.D., chief of endocrinology at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine and past president of the American Diabetes Association.

To test ease of use, we had volunteers with diabetes score each blood-glucose meter for size, speed, and whether test strips required users to enter codes before testing. Four instruments scored Excellent for ease of use (for subscribers).