High-end home lab equipment

Agar plates, stains and reagents last longest cold, and none of them belongs next to food. A fridge you never open for lunch is the minimum.

A household fridge swings in temperature every time the door opens, and it gives no warning when it drifts. Small dorm-style fridges can freeze what is inside, and the CDC advises against them for storing vaccines.

A lab refrigerator is built to hold one temperature and tell you when it can't. Look for a display you can read without opening the door, an alarm and a lock.

The KoolMore here has all three. KoolMore gives a range of 2 to 8 °C with swings of up to 2 °C either way. A battery keeps the alarms and temperature log running for 24 hours in a power outage; it does not run the cooling.

Mark the door for lab use only. The lab safety guide covers the other bench habits, and genetics experiments at home explains how to handle agar plates.

Enzymes, buffers and spare reagents go in a freezer, and the defrost system matters more than the size. A frost-free freezer runs a heater on a schedule to melt its frost; a manual-defrost one does not, which is why it suits reagents. Manual defrost vs frost-free has the details and the defrosting steps.

Competent cells are the exception, and it is worth knowing before you buy. Addgene's transformation protocol takes them straight out of -80 °C, which a bench freezer does not reach, so buy them fresh for the experiment.

The Whynter CUF-112SS here is manual defrost, 1.1 cubic feet and under 20 inches tall, so it fits beneath a bench. Its dial sets between -11 and 3 °F, and the door locks with a key.

Thaw enzymes on ice and pipette them cold. How to use a micropipette covers the small volumes.

At sea level, a pressure canner at 15 psi reaches 121 °C, the steam temperature lab autoclaves use. Higher up, the same gauge reading runs cooler. Using a pressure canner as an autoclave walks through a full sterilizing cycle.

Look for a steam gauge you can read, a regulator weight that holds the pressure steady, and a pot tall enough for media bottles standing upright.

The All American 921 here seals metal to metal, so there is no rubber gasket to wear out. It has a steam gauge and a regulator weight that sets 5, 10 or 15 psi, holds 18 pint jars, and works on gas, electric and flat-top stoves.

A binocular microscope has two eyepieces. A trinocular adds a third, upright port for a camera, so the camera stays mounted. On a simul-focal head you can keep looking through the eyepieces while it records; most heads switch between the two.

For an occasional photo, a phone on a binocular scope costs less, and phone photos through a microscope shows how. If you photograph every slide, a fixed camera port saves lining up a phone each time.

Look for 4X, 10X, 40X and 100X oil objectives, a mechanical stage that moves the slide with knobs, and a camera that works with your computer.

The SWIFT SW350T here has all of those, plus a Siedentopf head that changes eye spacing without losing focus. The listing here bundles it with a USB camera, software for Windows and Mac, 100 blank slides and 100 cover slips; SWIFT sells it without a camera. Swift SW350T vs SW380T compares it with its sibling.

The 100X objective needs oil, covered in how to use immersion oil. Other cameras are matched by model in microscope camera adapters.

Buffers and growth media only work at the right pH. A strip gives a color to match against a chart, which is fine for a rough check.

A benchtop meter gives a number instead. The Apera PH700 here reads to 0.01 pH with a combined pH and temperature electrode.

A meter is only as good as its last calibration. Apera recommends calibrating before every test when you need accuracy within 0.02 pH, and about weekly for work within 0.1.

Recalibrate when the electrode is new or has sat unused, after measuring a strong acid or base, or when a sample is much warmer or colder than the buffers.

The PH700 calibrates at one to three points and shows the electrode's condition. It comes with pH 4, 7 and 10 solutions and a holder for two electrodes. Store the electrode in its storage solution, as Apera's manual directs.

A mini centrifuge spins 1.5 mL tubes. Pelleting bacteria from a bigger culture takes a centrifuge that holds 15 mL tubes.

Every run has to be balanced, and how to balance a centrifuge shows which tube counts work in each rotor.

The ONiLAB listing gives six 15 mL tubes, with adapters for smaller ones, and 300 to 5000 rpm, up to 2600 × g, set by speed or g-force, with a timer up to 99 minutes.

The lid stays locked until the rotor stops. Protocols often give g-force, and the RCF calculator converts it. Smaller tubes are covered in mini centrifuge tube adapters.