Waters Sets a New Benchmark for Robustness and Sensitivity for High-Throughput Labs with the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer

News Summary

• Up to six-fold increase in performance robustness with StepWave™ XR Ion Guide versus Xevo TQ Absolute.¹
• Uses up to 50% less power and gas, and occupies up to 50% less bench space than other products in its class.²
• Takes the industry-leading sensitivity of Xevo TQ Absolute to new heights, including for PFAS detection and pharma quantitation applications.

BALTIMORE and MILFORD, Mass., June 4, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- 73^rd ASMS Conference on Mass Spectrometry and Allied Topics – Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) today announced the launch of the Xevo™ TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer, the Company's most sensitive, robust, and reliable benchtop tandem quadrupole. Notably, the product exceeds the performance capabilities of the Xevo TQ Absolute, which itself set the benchmark in the industry for tandem quadrupole sensitivity, particularly in areas such as pharmaceutical quantitation and PFAS detection. Tailored for high-throughput applications in pharmaceutical companies, contract testing organizations, and government laboratories, the new system is designed to deliver exceptional performance for the most sensitive trace-level analyses in complex matrices, while maximizing system uptime and efficiency.

Waters announced the launch of the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer, the Company’s most sensitive, robust, and reliable benchtop tandem quadrupole.

"Analytical laboratories are under pressure to adapt to the complex needs of pharmaceutical organizations, and meet the increasing demand for PFAS testing driven by a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape," said James Hallam, Vice President, Liquid Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry, Waters Corporation. "The Xevo TQ Absolute XR design delivers up to a six-fold increase in performance robustness with unmatched sensitivity and resilience to contamination, significantly reducing downtime and enhancing operational efficiency for our customers."

Built on the trusted, intuitive design of the Xevo TQ Absolute Mass Spectrometer, the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer offers significant operational efficiencies. It uses up to 50% less power and nitrogen gas, produces 50% less heat than any other high-performing tandem or triple quadrupole on the market, and takes up to 50% less bench space, making it the ideal system for laboratories striving to reduce their environmental footprint without compromising throughput or performance.

Within the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer, Waters introduces the StepWave XR Ion Guide, which incorporates sophisticated technology designed to minimize the risk of unplanned downtime, while preserving high sensitivity and precision for even the most complex sample types and fragile compounds. Through this innovation, customers are realizing a new benchmark of robustness across a wide range of applications, including PFAS, bioanalysis, and genotoxic impurity testing.

"Our laboratory requires instrumentation that delivers high-quality, interruption-free results to our customers, helping them to bring safe and effective new drugs to market with confidence and speed," said Sally Hannam, Scientific Director, Synexa Life Sciences, a leading biomarker and bioanalytical services provider. "We are well in excess of 20,000 injections of crashed human plasma continuously analyzed on the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer combined with the ACQUITY™ Premier UPLC™ System and waters_connect™ Software, and our early experience is that it demonstrates new levels of reproducibility and accuracy, giving us ever more confidence as we are presented with increasingly challenging bioanalysis applications and new modalities."

In addition, the design of the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer delivers industry-leading, out-of-the-box quantitation of negatively ionizing compounds, such as PFAS. Bioanalytical, food safety, and environmental testing laboratories will benefit from the high confidence results and operational efficiency gains that the Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer delivers.

The Xevo TQ Absolute XR Mass Spectrometer is available to order now.

Additional Resources

• Product Page 

Waters, StepWave, ACQUITY, UPLC, waters_connect, and Xevo are trademarks of Waters Technologies Corporation.

ABOUT:

Waters Corporation (NYSE:WAT) is a global leader in analytical instruments, separations technologies, and software, serving the life, materials, food, and environmental sciences for over 65 years. Our Company helps ensure the efficacy of medicines, the safety of food and the purity of water, and the quality and sustainability of products used every day. In over 100 countries, our 7,600+ passionate employees collaborate with customers in laboratories, manufacturing sites, and hospitals to accelerate the benefits of pioneering science.

Contact:

Molly Gluck
Head of External Communications
Waters Corporation
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Mobile: +1.617.833.8166

1. Application Note on Product Webpage. In a well-controlled experiment, performance was maintained for up to six times the duration on the Xevo TQ Absolute XR compared to the Xevo TQ Absolute; more than 12,000 samples of pesticides in fish feed matrix were analyzed.
2. Based on a comparison of high-end tandem and triple quadrupole instruments available on the market. [Infographic]