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Good Midrange Multimeter and Leads

rippysig

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Jul 28, 2020
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(I know there is an older thread, but rather than resurrecting an old thread, I'll make a new thread since my question is different.)

I've had the cheap multimeters from Harbor Freight and some cheap ones from Amazon, but I find they end up crapping out on me eventually. I've had to replace countless test leads over the years. I'm tired of it really. After the latest foulup, I need a new meter with good quality leads.

I need to be able to check resistance and check voltage for electronic builds and projects around the house and camper. Simple really. I just want one that will last me.

I've looked at the different Fluke brands. The Fluke 101 is on Amazon(but not meant for the US market) and the Fluke 107. Flukes are good quality meters and I probably wouldn't go wrong with one of them. But they cost more and I know a big part of that is in the name.

Is there a good quality brand somewhere between Fluke and the cheap Chinese no name multimeters? Are Klein meters good? Any good suggestions?

Finally, any good test lead suggestions? I need some that won't fall apart, fray or otherwise crap out.
 
Southwire sells a decent midrange multimeter at Lowe’s and the BORG has a Klein brand that’s probably ok.

I went to a pawn shop that was advertising a Fluke multimeter but it was sold when I got there. Ended up with a Snap-On branded meter. Never looked to see who makes it for them.
 
I think Klein is supposed to be good, but I've never use them.

Twenty years ago I bought a Fluke at Fry's for just under $200, still use it practically every day.

on eBay I see the name "Fluke" used in vain to get hits on ads for other brands.
I also see low-cost meters that appear to be Fluke. One is the model you said isn't meant for U.S., priced at $50. I don't know if these get counterfeited. Some of the other brands copied the style.


I see differences from other models in terms of CAT ratings, which have to do with arc blast protection. Might be quality of fuses used.


Fluke comes with good leads, of course. The safety banana is good when you're probing line voltage and PV strings.

If you're working with PV, a clamp meter for DC (not just AC) would be handy. But given the price, might go HF for that.
 
I have the Fluke 325. It's a high quality, well rounded meter. My only complaint is that the precision (number of decimal places) isn't as high as the cheap meters. Maybe the cheap meters really aren't accurate with their "greater" precision. I don't know.

The ammeter feature on the 325 has min/max buttons. However, it isn't clear to me if the max value is capturing in-rush current. My guess is that it does not. The 325's temperature feature is something that I didn't think I would ever use, but it sure came in handy when I was testing the battery warming system I created for my LiFePO4 battery bank.

I switched to the Fluke 325 from a $30 multimeter that was giving me some odd readings. The voltage would fluctuate while the leads were held steady on a set of studs.
 
thanks for the suggestions.

I found an old Meterman 30XR cheap and I bought a Kobalt pocket multimeter from Lowes.

Also Got some new test leads from Lowe's for the Meterman. I'm hoping that since these leads all fit in tightly, I won't have my little helper switching around my test leads again.

I still have my eyes on a new Fluke.
 
Here's the deal with Fluke:
Unless you have an established high-accuracy voltage reference to compare to, when you take a Fluke home, you can more or less trust it.

You can even use it to compare other multimeters to make sure they are just as good! But see what I'm saying - who 'ya gonna trust FIRST?

You pointed to the lowest cost Fluke, which I own for other purposes. Even though one doesn't need six-digit accuracy with a multimeter for the kind of stuff we do, I certainly don't use it with my lithium projects, where a 0.1v difference can be significant.

I'm just saying don't shoot for the bottom end with lithium based projects, no matter WHO the maker is. For the same reason, I don't advise Fluke gray-market either or olders versions where the tolerances are looser. It is important if you are doing lithium-based projects to get as close as you can.

The absolute lowest end of Fluke for doing work with lithium-based projects would be the 11X series, (113, 114, 115, 117 etc). They all have various features, but the most important things for most is dc voltage measurement accuracy.

So that's it. It's a matter of trust. And a matter of not shooting for the absolute bottom end.
 
Subsequent to the purchase of my Fluke multimeter, I bought a voltage reference device. It's accurate to 5.00000 volts. I think it's five decimal places of accuracy. Way more precision than I would ever need, but it's pretty cool. I checked the four multimeters I own and they were all close enough for my projects. The cheaper TackLife meter was off the most, but really not enough to complain about. The cheapest one was more accurate than the TackLife.

The odd experience with the TackLife (non-steady voltage reading) is what prompted me to buy the Fluke. The Fluke was dead-on with the reference device.
 
I’m a mechanical engineer so I never payed much attention to the meters I use at work. I’m never interested in anything more accurate than a watt or tenth of a volt.

Years ago I remember grabbing one of many identical meters off the shelf to measure the 24 hour power profile of one of the boxes I was certifying. I grabbed a fluke scopemeter because it had a data port that would let me record the output directly to a laptop and let me skip the monotony of scheduling people to read and manually record the values a few times per hour. And is also avoided the intermediate data transfer step and setup complexity of using a data recorder.

Just checked the prices on the equivalent model range scopemeter (190) and they’re currently over $5k. Now I’m afraid to check the price of the 32 channel analog data recorder I almost took with me instead.
 
This is what I'm using at work now:


It doesn't do FFT internally like the ($50k ?) scope I use:


But the DMM7510 has 18 bit ADC rather than just 12 bit.
So I pull the data into Matlab and convert to frequency domain there.

For home use, it's a handheld Fluke 79 III, which includes diode check, capacitance, frequency.

DMM 79 III IMG_1059.jpg

And on the bench HP 3456A, with 6.5 digits and ppm level accuracy (well, +/- 1ppm when I compared it to 3458A so maybe good for 4 ppm).
Lots of meters out there with 6.5 digits but only 4 digit accuracy.

3456A cropped IMG_1041.jpg


I just can't help buying toys :)
 
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