Trusting your LFS
is like a color-blind person reading the strips. They use the strips, and they're in a hurry, so they're likely to make mistakes that will affect the reading.
There are some of the digital testers, but they're expensive ($150-260 for a
nitrate tester), and they don't have them for all of the chemicals. What I saw were nitrate, pH, total dissolved solids (probably not important unless you're doing a really specific reef tank),
salinity, conductivity, and temp.
Reading most of the tests, if you did the bottles, should be doable for you, as they go from yellow to another color and you wouldn't have to look at all of the different colors at once. But the nitrate test, I think, goes from blue to red, which, if I'm reading you right, would look all the same to you.
All I can think of is to have someone else read the numbers. Once your aquarium is cycled (if it isn't already) and you figure out how much of a
water change you need to do to keep your nitrates down, you can get away with not testing the water constantly. I haven't done a test in about two months (not ideal, but none of my tanks have been showing any signs of illness, and all are well established). I try to do them once a month, just to keep an eye on things.
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the best IMO is the api liquid master 
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