TRUE Balance Glucose Meter Review

The TRUE Balance glucose meter is the latest offering from Nipro Diagnostics. Like most of Nipro’s offerings, this meter is available for sale under the Nipro brand name, as well as branded to third parties, such as major drug store chains.

A lot has changed since Nipro bought the Home Diagnostics brand, and the Balance is just one of the many upgrades to this entire glucose monitoring solution, particularly the data management software.

The TRUEbalance is a very simple, no frills meter that packs a BIG accurate punch. Let’s get into it.
 
 

Key Advantages

• Ease of Use: This is one of the two distinct advantages of this meter. The meter does not require coding and testing is done in a very straight forward two step process. Buttons and settings are a bare minimum, just testing!
• Accurate: The TRUE Balance glucose meter is a newer meter, thus it shows how technology continues to advance in the glucose testing arena. While inexpensive and simple, the meter has undergone tremendous accuracy testing. Using industry protocols, the meter returns favorable results in 99.6% of the time. However, please be aware that, like all home glucose testing, results can and do vary. In fact, some users report that they have had problems with the accuracy.
• Cost: This meter is very inexpensive.

Disadvantages

• Slow: Each test takes approximately 10 seconds. While this is not exactly glacier speed, it is slower than many other manufacturers.
• Lack of Features: This meter lacks some of the sophisticated data tracking options of other meters on the market today.

For some people, this trade off is fine, they only want simple blood glucose tracking and testing. For others, this meter will not do the job of advanced tracking.

Test Strips

The meter uses the TRUE balance test strips. These test strips have a new larger design, making them easy to handle. They also have what is called TRUEfill technology. Essentially, this means that they have the latest and greatest technology to deliver the most accurate. To Compare the BEST prices on strips, check out our Test Strip Price Comparison page.

Bottom Line

Nipro’s business model is to provide inexpensive, simple and accurate meters both for its own marketing and for third parties. The TRUE balance glucose meter covers all of these goals. It also is a preferred Medicare/Medicaid meter.

I can’t say it is exciting, but I would say it will do the basics well.

Other Consideration

This review was written in February 2012. Since Nipro took over the company several years ago, they have done a good job updating the data management software. It is called TRUEmanager. The software is free, but you will have to purchase a data cable to connect your blood glucose monitor to your computer.

The software comes in English, Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Technical information