One day on a video chat here with Terry Gregg who at the time was CEO of Dexcom, I asked who chose the impossible to read RED color for hypos. He said it was the marketing team. 
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Ahhhh! The color/type ignorant! The colors that pop on black backgrounds are yellow and white. I am always fuming at the telly when they scroll warnings at the bottom of the screen with red type over a black background… and tiny type. Totally illegible!
Sorry you had such a bad experience. The 670G has been a lifechanger for me. I guess Im a unicorn.
So I was in process for getting a 670G and I was also allowed to join their user Facebook group while in the process. After reading all the posts regarding “LOOPING” while in auto mode, repeated fingerstick and blood glucose calibrations being needed, particularly at night I will probably just wait and ride things out with my OOW Animas Vibe and order a new Dex 6. My A1C is already 6.2-6.6 on the Dex G5 and the discretion of making treatment decisions from my iPhone or watch appeals to me. After reading about tape issues, looping, repeated calibrations, and an algorithm that seems to have challenges in automode, why bother? I have been on a pump over 20 years and have used Dexcom since “the oval brick,” Dexcom 7. I’d prefer to revert to basal/bolus therapy temporarily on an accurate sensor should the pump fail. I think Medtronic just wanted to keep their installed base with the latest and greatest, but I’ve been around the block far too many times after managing patients with Type 1 to put my own diabetes management at risk for “latest and greatest.”
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So, I thought technology was supposed to move forward, but with this pump, I think it just went backward. This has been a horrible experience from the start. My endo, who has a MM rep on staff, made all these great promises on this pump and I think I’m only the 2nd person in their office to be on it. I applied for the pump in December and had to wait until January related to my insurance and deductible. So I finally get the pump in mid-January. I got a 10 minute class on setting up the pump with the CDE and was basically left on my own from there. The Guardian sensors had to have a prior authorization from my insurance and they had to have 90 days of glucose logs, of which I had already given to my endo office, but when it came to faxing them to my insurance, they had lost EVERY SINGLE LOG, so back to another 90 day log period as I gave them my hard copy logs and their meter download software was not working. I did the 90 day logs again and they also downloaded my meter, this was at the next visit, with promises by the doctor that they would fax my paperwork for the PA that day. Well a month goes by and I called my insurance to see what the hold up was. My endo office had never faxed my logs. I contacted the CDE and told her they needed to fax my logs and that the doctor said they would be faxed the day of my visit and they weren’t. She promptly denied any knowledge of my insurance needing a PA when she is the one who told me in the first place that the inzurance needed my logs and that " oh, I’m so sorry, but we’ve lost then and you have to start over." She then informed me that she was quitting and that day just happened to be her last day. So basically like a sorry but this is not my problem situation. So I called medtronic and my insurance AGAIN, which took 2 hours, just to find out where I had to fax my logs to. I got them faxed and had the sensors the next week, but now, no office CDE and the pump rep couldn’t meet for training for over a month. I’ve used a cgm before, so that wasn’t rocket science and went ahead and started using those, plus the autosuspend feature. The sensors can be up to 70 points off and I don’t think I trust this pump in automode to make decisons for me. Then after all the hatd stuff is done, my endo magically wants to bring me in for pump training, not cgm or automode training, but back for the pump training I already had. The autosuspend is great until its 230 am, your sugar is 174, but pump says 61 and its suspended. Then you override it and then the sensor fails. Also the scrolling… I don’t trust my endo at all. I figure if you can’t keep up with records, how can you take care of a patient, see data trends and make any needed changes? I not only feel like I’m a slave to this pump, but I feel completely unsupported by my endo team, but I have do see them as I work for that hospital system and anyone else is out of network. I might just pay the extra and go out of network anyway. Sorry for the long post, but like the no drugs campaign commercials, just say no to this pump. What’s promised is not what it delivers.
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Yeesh. I actually had a very attentive and helpful trainer and a great CDE, so that wasn’t my problem. I just couldn’t get the thing to keep my BG in as good control as I’d had before the pump.
I’m seeing a lot of 670 hate here.
I think that we’ve become accustomed to electronic devices being intuitive and user-friendly right out of the box. Steve Jobs didn’t like to read user manuals, so he decided to create interfaces that are usable by people dumber than a doorknob. This has now become the accepted norm. Nothing wrong with that, but this CAN’T be the norm for medical devices. Butt-dialing is not the same as butt-bolusing.
The complaints about the 670 stem 98% from people who are not willing to be patient and give it a chance. The other 2% are people who anyway have tight control and don’t need it.
At first I was ready to smash my 670 with a sledgehammer. The looping, the constant badgering about highs and lows and calibrations and entering glucose…
But I decided to give it another chance.
After several months, I can confidently say that it was worth my time and effort. The engineering behind it is brilliant, and this gives me a lot of hope for the future of type 1 diabetes. I have learnt how to “work with” the system. Some of the alarms are still annoying, but I know exactly how to deal with them.
First, you must read the manual. Read it twice. Second, meet with a Medtronic trainer. Let them train you in. Third, give yourself time to work out any technical issues. Don’t give up right away.
Medtronic has this right. Their UI is terrible but they have it right.
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I am in the 2% (in your estimation) of people who can’t take full advantage of 670 because my control is better than what it has been able to provide, but I agree with you that the technology IS there. Too bad that the company couldn’t make the UI more user-friendly though since this should have been the easy part and to lose customers and the credit otherwise deserved that way is just silly.
I agree with what you just said. As a long time MM customer (1996) it pains me to see the direction that the company has taken its pumps. I’m doubtful that relative newcomers to pumping, or to MM pumps in particular can appreciate my point of view that MM has done a disservice to their customers by:
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not such as DRASTICALLY revamping their sensor tech. It’s just not all that great. Definitely behind what Dexcom has been doing (although the jury is still out on the G6–it’s too early to know if it truly is better than the G5 for accuracy and longevity)
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like others mentioned, not improving the UI. After all these years, you’d think they could cobble together a UI that doesn’t require so many button presses–more presses needed than on their earlier pumps.
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their failure to produce a smaller pump for those who don’t need a 300 Ml resorvoir. the move to a color screen apparently requires a bulkier battery (AA instead of AAA).
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not providing algorithms that are worthy of the difficulty/time getting into, and staying in “Auto Mode”. When people complain that the pump doesn’t give a decent corrective bolus–so much so that they need to get out of Auto mode, that tells the tale of what I’m alluding to, as but one example.
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and, what happened that mythical tubeless pump that was the talk of the community years ago? The preeminent company in the insulin pump space can’t come out with a tubeless pump for those who prefer such models? That’s yet another reason I think Medtronic has lost some of its mojo. (Not that I PERSONALLY want/need a tubeless pump).
If you don’t agree with my assessment of what Medtronic has been doing (or more to the point, NOT doing) these past few years, I’m all “ears”.
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The Guardian 3 is basically on par with the Dexcom accuracy-wise. There are some technical things people like about the Dex like the way it gets inserted etc, but overall they are neck-and-neck. Medtronic is in the process of producing a 15-day disposable sensor-transmitter combo. It’s expected to ship sometime in 2020.
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The UI doesn’t LOOK nice, but it’s engineered correctly. There is a very specific reason they set up the menu the way they did. Ease of access is NOT always a good thing, especially when you can accidentally press something you shouldn’t. They put the most important features in the first menu, and the secondary features in the second menu. I hope they get a designer on the team that can improve the look of the UI. A good example that comes to mind is Subaru. For years they built ugly cars but they were solid and reliable. Smart buyers opted for function over form.
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I agree on this one. I am fairly certain that it would require getting two separate approvals from the FDA which would delay the rollout. Also, having a single product means that it only requires a single design and a single assembly line, which results in a less costly manufacturing process. (which hopefully means a less costly pump for customers.)
The AA battery is not necessarily due to the color screen. The 670 has a built in microprocessor to handle the auto-features. That processor is demanding on battery. That said, getting a week out of a single AA battery is pretty impressive engineering.
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Medtronic is not yet approved for auto-corrective bolusing, but they are working on that and expect it to be released sometime in 2020 pending FDA approval. Right now they are staying very cautious with their corrective suggestions, which is why most people will either just leave auto mode to correct. It’s more about them having their hands tied by the FDA then the algorithm.
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I never heard about Medtronic making a tubeless pump. Do you have a link to this? As it stands now tubeless pumps are not as reliable.
I don’t have a link but remember much discussion in the early 2000’s about their supposed upcoming tubeless pump. When I got my pump, I was on Compuserve. LOL!
LOL so funny. I got a visual as well.
Please, please, please can we make a video log of people yelling at their tech? SO fun. Also, I think it would be fun to have a video log of people lecturing us about our diabetes. It reminds me of my best friend, who used to do impressions of my mother whenever I ate a piece of cake. 
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The hardware is very good. Hard to believe the software was designed by same company. I’ve missed dozens of bolus’ and calibrations because I didn’t confirm. Have high frequency hearing loss and miss alarms all the time. Minimed claims user requested all the extra clicks to avoid dispensing insulin by mistake.
I’ve also changed reservoir and missed resuming insulin. Strange it does not alarm for that. Also pump doesn’t log failure to confirm errors. Minimed does not want to solve take it or leave it. Chances are when you call for assistance you’ll get advise that conflicts with either common sense or yesterdays advise. When I call for a replacement sensor I do it while driving so they can’t force me to look up things on my pump.
I just lie about carb intake in and out of auto mode takes to long. Pump didn’t come with an operator
Has anyone figured out how to use gaurdian sensor with diy syatems? Love the sensor pump softwares the worst.
Just saw this. Improvements are being made all the time. Ours is working well for us but we were determined to keep at it.
Same! Using my trusty old 530. After using the 670 I barely know the 530 is here. It’s tiny in comparison and doesn’t bother me.
No. It takes FIVE clicks to suspend. And that includes waking up the screen.
Is this a good thing or something you dislike?