Table 1.

Time comparison between the manual and automated library preparation. Times for the manual protocol are taken from the Visium Spatial Gene Expression protocol, with the reaction time subtracted from the total to get the hands-on time for the preparation of the samples. The hands-on time for the automated preparation is the preparation of the plates and the handling of the robot. The total time includes the manual handling as well as reaction time.

Steps	Manual 1–8 samples		Automated 1–16 samples
	Hands on	Total	Hands on	Total
Thawing and setup	5 min	30 min	15 min	30 min
4.1 Fragmentation, End Repair & A-tailing	15 min	50 min	-	40 min
4.2 Double Sided Size Selection	30 min	30 min	-	43 min
4.3 Adaptor Ligation	10 min	25 min	-	17 min
4.4 Post Ligation Cleanup	20 min	20 min	-	33 min
4.5 Sample Index PCR	15 min	40 min	5 min	40 min
4.6 Doble Sided Size Selection	30 min	30 min	1 min	43 min
Total:	125 min	225 min	21 min	246 min