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I generally don't use test strips for the same reason I don't pay attention to the stock market: the results seem fairly random and just make me anxious. Or, if I have been especially "good" with diet and exercise and my blood sugar is higher than usual anyway, it ticks me off.
I tend to put more stock in A1C results.
My former GP had my A1C tested with a blood draw that was sent to a lab.
My current GP (who has a specialty in endocrinology and diabetes management) uses an in-office prick test similar to my at-home test strips and gets results in real time. I think they go away and stick it into a separate machine somewhere but the results are always back within 5 minutes.
I note though that while the lab tended to give me results around 7.1 or so, this new system gives me results from 6.1 to 6.7 quite consistently, with no change in diet or meds and in fact (due mainly to pandemic-related lifestyle changes) a significant decrease in exercise. Combine that with the passage of time with a progressive illness like Diabetes 2, and I'm a little suspicious of his calibrations.
I know that labs vary in what they use for controls and consider a normal baseline. But I would assume that overall a blood draw sent out to a lab would tend to be more accurate.
Close enough for government work. Always expect an aberant result here and there because of the sample being used is hard to control using capillary blood rather than venous blood.
Point of care testing has a negative bias of about 0.3% which means if you obtain a 7.1% with laboratory testing then expect about a 6.8% result with finger stick POC. The negative bias is less like about 0.1% when one uses venous blood. Venous blood is more constitutionally constant compared to finger stick capillary blood. That's one reason Elizabeth Holmes with her doing 100 tests with one drop of finger blood went wrong.
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