[mirimir]

Wow, that's better than I expected! So maybe a resale market could develop on Craigslist or whatever. Buy one, get your data, clean and wipe it thoroughly, and then resell it. Maybe the refurbished price would stabilize at $500 or whatever.

[hobofan]

There are some caveats with that though (some of which I just found out after some digging):

- You'll probably need more than one flow cell (which is used up during sequencing) for a human genome

- The flow cells make up the bulk of the price, costing ~$800 in single unit quantities

- You have to send in used flow cells for refurbishing (which is how they can make them as cheap)

So the $1000 is more or less already the refurbished price.

[mirimir]

I wonder how fast the flow cell price will drop. But even at $1000 I might be tempted, except that I'm so damn old, and never (as far as I know) had any kids.

[hobofan]

While it mostly comes out to the same, I doubt the price will drop much, but rather they will release a newer iteration of flow cells with slower degradation or more redundancy.

There also doesn't seem to be any significant competition, as Oxford Nanopore has a very broad patent portfolio surrounding their tech.