I attended the LowCarb USA Conference in San Diego last month and it was a great conference. One of the vendors was a new company, KetoMojo, selling what they are promoting to be the Ketonian’s dream meter. Although there was not an actual meter on hand at the booth to touch and play with, the founder was really enthusiastic and really convincing so I ordered the meter. What “sold” me was the promise of its improved accuracy over other meters and the price of the ketone strips. I got a special $.99/strip for life deal for ordering so early but even at regular price, the test strips are still much cheaper than even what I’m paying through a Canadian pharmacy for the strips for my Abbott Precision Xtra (around $2.20/per strip). In summary… better accuracy? Cheaper strips? And the glucose strips will also give me a read for hemoglobin and hematocrit? Sign me up!
The meter arrived yesterday and, I have to be honest, I am underwhelmed. I’ve been following keto for a while so I’m in that place where my body is actually using the ketones and my numbers tend to run low. My fasting ketones run .3 or .4. The KetoMojo meter just read “Lo” while my Precision gave me the .4 read. This made me read all of the small print that came with my meter and test strips that wasn’t available at the conference. It turns out that the increased accuracy over other meters is really at ketone levels above 2.0 mmol/L. For someone like me who tends to run on the low side, that’s not especially helpful.
I appreciate that the initial kit came with 10 ketone strips but it includes no glucose strips. The hemoglobin and hematocrit readings are part of the glucose reading, not the ketone reading, which means that if you’re actually interested in those numbers you need to be testing your glucose. This fact also gives me concerns about the “sell” on this meter. Part of the accuracy claim the company made was that BECAUSE it takes hemoglobin and hematocrit into consideration, that is what gives the more accurate glucose and ketone reading. However, the machine doesn’t give you the hemoglobin and hematocrit readings with the ketone strips which makes me wonder if that claim is only relevant to the glucose test. I have glucose strips on order and I’m anxious to see how the numbers compare across machines for this one.
At the conference, the founder talked about how the second version of this meter is already in the works. If I had it do do over again, I’d probably wait for the next generation machine… or the one after that. It seems like a great company and the owner seems like a hard-working, legitimate-intentioned guy so I hate the idea of hurting his business in any way by not recommending the first version of this meter. Nonetheless, so far I can say I wouldn’t recommend this meter.