The type of a mass spectrometer most widely used with MALDI is the time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF), mainly due to its large mass range. The TOF measurement procedure is also ideally suited to the MALDI ionization process since the pulsed laser takes individual shots rather than working in continuous operation. MALDI-TOF instruments are often equipped with a reflectron (an "ion mirror")  that reflects ions using an electric field. This increases the ion flight path, thereby increasing time of flight between ions of different m/z and increasing resolution. Modern commercial reflectron TOF instruments reach a resolving power m/Δm of 50,000 FWHM (full-width half-maximum, Δm defined as the peak width at 50% of peak height) or more.
MALDI has been coupled with IMS-TOF MS to identify phosphorylated and non-phosphorylated peptides.
MALDI-FT-ICR MS has been demonstrated to be a useful technique where high resolution MALDI-MS measurements are desired.