Okay folks, what’s the verdict on the new receiver? We’ve just received ours and maybe we’re not using it right, but so far we kind of hate it.
Reasons why:
Touch screen is not as responsive as old-school button press.
You have to push two buttons to get out of the lock screen; why? It’s not like you can deliver insulin by accidentally butt dialing so there’s no reason for a lock screen.
Battery seems to drain much faster.
Bulkier so harder for Samson to carry around in his black bag
Most functions now take more button pushes
Alarms do not seem as loud (subjective and perhaps we’ve set things up wrong)
I didn’t get it, and for many of the reasons you have stated, I don’t plan on getting it.
I am not sure why there is so much fascination with touch-screen. I can use the old one with no problem when driving or running or when just waking up in the middle of the night. The buttons are easy to get to without looking.
Kind of like the old-school phones. I could put together a txt message without ever looking at the phone. I’d only look at it to proof-read before sending. Was great for driving or when in a meeting.
Is the old one not still available? My understanding was that Dexcom was NOT going to discontinue the old one, but give users the choice. Is that not correct?
It does go sideways, I don’t know about the scale but I presume so – but then the old receiver did that too. Also, I do think it has the data backfill capability.
no it definitely has backfill capability now that I think about it. But for us this isn’t a huge deal as we use both the smartphone & the receiver simultaneously, and for data analysis purpose we’re relying on the Smartphone data, which sends to NightScout.
@TiaG, my experience of the new receiver, which I used for one month this past summer, was very similar to yours. I will continue to use the mobile app on my phone and keep the old receiver as backup.
I just spoke with Dexcom. The old one is no longer available.
Because the old one is no longer available, I just bought one from eBay.
@TiaG, since your old one is broken and you brought this issue up I’d be happy to send it to you if you want it. Otherwise I am going to hold on to it as a spare.
I would think it would be hard to Dexcom to discontinue the G4 with the Animas Vibe still using it. Who knows with Animas ditching its customers but I would still expect Dexcom to continue the G4 product line for some time.
But when I asked the product guy he said at this point it is undetermined what the plan is for the G4, but said he anticipates at some point they will be phasing it out…
Since they totally killed the G5 receiver, ditching the G4 would not surprise me. But that’s just speculation.
Oh, just a few more fun details about the phone call. When I was on the phone with the guy, I told him how disappointed I was about them discontinuing the old receiver, and that when I was no longer able to use an old receiver, I was done with Dexcom.
I also told him that letting marketing people make decisions about things like this is stupid if they aren’t using it 24x7. There is a big difference between looking at something in a conference room and saying, “Oh the colors are so pretty! I like it!” and using it at 4am because your BG is 50.
As the call was going on I bought the one from eBay.
And then I asked him if the call was being recorded. He said it was.
So I replied, “My name is Eric [last name], my date-of-birth is [DOB], and I am breaking federal law right now purchasing an older model G5 receiver from the diabetic black market because of Dexcom’s decision to discontinue the old receiver…Did you get that recorded?”
Eric, that is too funny. I suspect the new receiver is due to problems manufacturing the old ones. We had two old ones go down in one year, and during the call the tech mentioned that a lot of the old ones were breaking due to some manufacturing difficulties. With that said, I really like the old receiver and will do the same if our current one breaks before the next gen sensors hit the market.
Agreed. The Dex CEO has stated the new receiver will be better for the company from a financial perspective. It was important enough to spend a few minutes talking about it.
They could restrict it to the Animas Vibe people. They would probably do a large batch run, then stockpile it for this small community. After the stock is gone, no luck.
Example: Freestyle (Abbott really) discontinued the mainstream Freedom meter which is only available when you buy an Omnipod system. For the rest of the world there is only the Lite (and the other models of course).
Edit. I forgot. The Vibe people didn’t even get a receiver. The pump IS their receiver. The pump and G4 came as a package but no receiver was included with it.