I have a One Touch meter because that is the strips my insurance covers. Again this morning, before there was enough blood on the strip, the meter started it’s 5 second countdown and of course it came up “error - sample too small”. Ya duh, ya think? Lol. So then of course I had to use another strip. (Conspiracy theory - I think the company purposely manufactures these strips this way so you will have to use more.)
Is there a meter out there that will not start it’s countdown until it has enough blood on the strip?
I can’t stand that either. One thing to remember is that, compared the the vast amount of blood the strips used to take, what they take now is “a drop in the bucket”?
The other good thing is that you can hit the meters really hard and they still work. Which, of course, they don’t advertise…
This is part of the reason I found another meter…
Freestyle, Accu Chek, Bayer, pretty much most mainstream meters use less blood than the current One Touch products…
(This does not include meters such as the Breeze and Compact Plus, which both use a lot of blood for convienence of multiple tests)…
I occasionally have that problem too. I guess I have learned to really let the vampire bite and then a good blood sample is produced. I always use my fingers and never a forearm. There is also a difference in the One-Touch strips. The black strips take twice the blood that the blue strips do. The blue strips are pretty much the standard now, so you should be getting those when you order. I did get a box of black strips awhile back and had some trouble with them. I got a new meter with my pump and that meter had black strips with it. The learning curve continues.
Before the sample size was so small on the Freestyle meter, I called to complain because that was happening to me somewhat regularly. I called Freestyle customer service and told them that it was unacceptable to have to use 3 strips to do one test. They sent me a box of 50 strips free of charge.
A couple of differences between the current freestyle and OneTouch strips are
One touch needs more blood.
One touch has the window so you can actually see the blood wicking up, which I love.
I use freestyle because I have the Freestyle Navigator I have to use their strips. My insurance company charges me a $75/month copay because they are out of network, but Freestyle has a benefit of up to $600/year of copay reimbursement. You get up to $25 off the copay for 50 strips or up to $50 off a copay for $100 strips. I get 200 per month, so I only pay $25/month. Pretty good.
And sometimes it’s tricky!
Today I had a sample for my One Touch Ping, and I just swore it was going to error out on me because it was really tiny.
Guess what?
It worked!
Ya never know.
Thanks for all the info Emmy! Yup, unfortunately on this darn One Touch once the countdown begins you cannot add more blood to the strip. I try every time. I have seen the Freestyle, nice and small too. I should check with my insurance.
Lol, yup a lot less blood is nice so one would think I could get enough to come out of my finger each time haha! My fingers are wearing down me thinks. I have thought of hitting the meter believe me. 
I used to use Precision Xtra and I loved it! Until my insurance changed. I really need to find out how much extra it would be to use a meter off of their “preferred” list.
Yes I do like having the “window” in the strip. I have thought of calling the One Touch customer service. I know I must have used at least 50 “sample too small” strips in the past year. Wow they give a copay reimbursement? How does that work, do you need to mail in your receipts to them?
Glad I’m not the only one. If I can’t change I guess I just really have to make sure I have enough blood before touching the strip. The kind where your finger bleeds forever after and you have walk around with a tissue on your finger. haha!
Ooh ya I can’t do the forearm. I think it hurts more and leaves scars, for me anyways. I just “love” those commercials…“you don’t have to prick your fingers anymore”. Yes but they don’t tell everyone that you have to prick your arm instead. I do have the blue One Touch strips and they are better than the black strips.
Lol! I think that is our diabetes motto “Ya never know!” Sometimes things work and sometimes they don’t for no apparent reason.
I do not know if there is a meter that does not start until there is enough blood on the strip. I too had the same problem with One Touch Meters and it was so frustrating - caused me not to want to test! I wonder if it is because our blood is sometimes too thick and sticky (dehydration?).
I also had problems with it because the when I put the strips in, I found that the meter would not turn on, so I had to remove it and put it back in! All a nuiscance.
At the moment I am using the Bayer Contour USB and have not had an error message or problems turning on in the last 3 months!
And it has the added bonus of being able to download all the information on computer!
Unfortunately all test strip copay cards are not valid in MA… theres some law which makes them illegal to accept.