There's a guy on the eevblog or forum that does destructive testing on them... it's very entertaining.

 

. If reliability matters, nothing comes close to Gossen, although you clearly pay through the nose for it.

FYI, both SSDs are still running fine. It's been a few years now so I think it's safe to say it will work.

I picked up an Gossen Ultra. You are correct about the price but beyond that, I wasn't too impressed.

The fact that the meter's internal relays can be switched with nothing more than a magnetic hanger is really bad. You could easily have the meter in a state where it will not display any voltage in the presence of voltage.

Tossed it into a chamber with a few other lower cost meters. Seems much more susceptible.

The whole static field problem makes it useless. Batty life is so bad they have an option for an external pack. All fixable if Gossen ever decided it wanted to make a decent product.

 

Believe it or not.... this little $7.99 from Microcenter is one of my favorites......

https://www.microcenter.com/product/237694/mini-3-1-2-digit-19-range-digital-multimeter

 

Just have to chime in here - reading all the great posts.

I'm now looking for probably my 8th meter.. my $40 range MasterCraft now "drifts" live while I'm using it. Plug it into the wall and the voltage keeps climbing and climbing.. 110,111...I pulled it out at 140. My last one just stopped working, and the one before that would give randomly different results.

I'm tired of crap, I just want to pay for quality and have it forever! Reading on the forums here, though, it seems it's not that simple. For each person who says to buy a Fluke, others say they have lots of failures, too. sigh!

So, if budget is primary then I get the idea of buying crap, but if you're into this for a while, I'd suggest to invest in something good. That's finally what I'm going to do.

Learning now about tube amps and starting a project, and getting a new oscilloscope while I'm at it. The last thing I need is a flaky DMM when working with high voltage circuits.

 

Everything will fail if abused. A Made in the USA Fluke 87V or 177 will last a lifetime of normal usage. New or used, it's a wise investment.

 

Hello,

There's a guy on the eevblog or forum that does destructive testing on them... it's very entertaining.

Here is a lost of video blogs of EEV on the multimeters:
https://www.youtube.com/user/EEVblog/search?query=multimeter

Bertus

 

What sort of abuse have you been subjecting your meters for? aside from the cheap harbor freight one that my son stuck in the wall then started turning the dial on, I’ve never had any fail ever.

 

What sort of abuse have you been subjecting your meters for? aside from the cheap harbor freight one that my son stuck in the wall then started turning the dial on, I’ve never had any fail ever.

I'm very careful and gentle with my tools.. I still have most tools I bought as a teen, care for them and they still work. Great to hear you've had good luck, I guess with cheap stuff it's a crap shoot. Some people win (you), some lose (me)

 

Good and cheap generally don;t go together. Dad had a 20K ohm/vot and a 50K ohms/volt meter. In high school I purchased a FET_TVM. We were not quite at DVM's yet.

I blew up my work one. I forget how. It was a manually ranged fluke with peak-hold.

I bought a tektronix portable DMM for work. It was still working when I left. It had too many buttons on it, that no one "borrowed" it. Usually someone blew the current fuses.

I bought a Fluke 77 and I destroyed it while working on a microwave, It was repaired by Fluke. It has a detent problem now.

The 77 and the older Fluke had Either peak hold or touch hold. Both useful features.
Defeatable Auto power-off is essential too.

You need to evaluate the need for True RMS.

The fact that the display indicates the mode is very helpful too.

I have a $5.00 harbor Freight one for free. It's great for testing batteries.

I have like a $50.00 gift DVM that has a backlight, but no auto-range and no auto-power off. This one does frequency etc.
********

Get a $20.00 USD component tester from banggood.

So, the most important features are auto-range, fuses, auto power-off
Touch hold is also nice.

A good set of probes. That might cost you $120.00

if your doing electrican type stuff get a meter for that. Low Z volts.

Microwave ovens are killers.

***********
one Fluke bench meter I used at work had 2-30 ohms ohms compensation. That was useful working on an arc lamp.

At home I have a couple of Keithley System DVM's and a nanovoltmeter. Not working 100%. A company won;t sell me the part for the nanovoltmeter I need to make a low thermal connector. I did find the Cadmium solder I needed. They can do 4-wire ohms, high resolution etc.

I do have a high voltage probe 40 kV and an Isolation amplifier.

I have an SMU (source measure unit), but 4 cables will cost about $400.00.

I need to put the effort into fixing a few current meters. One would have battery and IEEE-488 when fixed. I bought a couple of keithley 425's because they are easy to fix. I bought them broken in the hope of recovering some costs. Some had the power cord cut, no IEEE-488, no handles. Most had the "only one range works" problem which is an easy fix.

I have a few specialized things like the Ideal Sure-test and Sure-trace. I wish I got the later model. The latter does wall tracing. The former checks the condition of the ground and current capacity of the circuit.

I have a contactless voltage sensor too.

I have a nice Agilent LCR meter.

I also have a AC/DC hall effect current probe at home. I would have liked the one I bought for work.

 

I'll admit that over 50+ years I've blown a couple of low range fuses. My 1st meter was a large case analog w/ a mirrored scale. Might have been a Realistic Tandy/Radio Shack knockoff of a Simpson. Used it for years and then loaned it to a guy who had been an Instrumentation/Electrical tech who was doing something around the house and needed a meter. Bad mistake. It looked fine when he brought it back but was dead next time I needed to use it. Opened it up and it had been smoked good. Yanked his chain about it and all I got was "It didn't work the last time I tried to use it." Don't loan your tools. I found out later the guy had a reputation for being a screwup that could break an anvil. My favorite meter is an older Fluke 27 MSHA model that is built for everyday use and abuse. Good basic auto-ranging digital meter that can be picked up used/rebuilt for less than $50 if you look hard enough and built to last. Reconditioned/barely used a bit more.

 

I just got a Owon 35 to replace an old Digital Radio Shack one that was decent. It's not really thick and I like the interface of it. I wanted a 20 amp model and it has a bar graph like my old one had.I have not used the blue tooth functions.

 

Its interesting to me the mention of fuses.
The Avo Mk 8 I used for many years, had re settable "fuses"
you open it up, pressed the button and all was good again
wonder why modern meters don have reset able fuses ?

saved me more than once,

 

I think the AVO had a mechanical trip that was hit by the meter movement crashing hard to beyond full scale. That was used as the "fuse". A great idea I reckon.
A fuse is probably the easiest way to protect the current reading setting without introducing errors. You could replace the fuse with a Polyswitch, but I think that would be a bit slow.

 

Cen Tech P98674

I have one of these I like a lot. My more pricey tools I tend to baby a little but this guy is cheap enough I don't mind abusing. Which I have done for many years now and its still going strog. All in all Its a great little meter for what I do (all low voltage work). The continuity testing has an instant response with helps me a great deal. Many of the other meters I have used in the past have all had a little delay which slows probing around quite a bit,

 

Current measurements are always crappy on a DVM. Too much drop in many cases. In the fluke 77, the 10A range is unfused and it's recommended not to use it for very long.

 

Many of the other meters I have used in the past have all had a little delay which slows probing around quite a bit,

Yes, that delay is very annoying!
I still think the AN8002 meter is very hard to pass up. Just an all round good cheap meter.
There are a few in the series, but that one is what I use at the moment.

It has a good set of built in functions.