Hi Folks -
I've been doing bench repair and design for many years and got by just fine without a dedicated LCR/ESR meter. However there have been instances where I wished I had one and so I have been casually researching and shopping around for the past year. Just couldn't justify the cost (you know that slippery slope of feature creep going from wishing I had a simple ESR all the way to full fledged high precision bench LCR), but didn't really want to go 'value' either. For
my needs the adjustable excitation voltage was an absolute necessity, and this isn't found in most meters out there.
Closest I could find was in the SmartTweezers, but it just seemed too gimmicky for me. All the new Keysight meters are fixed at 0.74Vrms, plus more expensive, less incl. accessories....There's an older model BK 885 and 886, but they fetch a premium even used.
Anyway long story short, tequipment (I have no affiliation) has the BK 880 model on sale, down from the MSRP of $399. If you include the eevblog discount total before shipping came to less than $320. This is the only meter in this price range, of (reasonably) reputable brand and in active production that has adjustable voltage level this low (0.3/0.6/1Vrms) and frequency up to 100kHz. Includes 4-wire clips
and tweezers to boot.
Personal opinion of course, but I don't have a problem with BK. They're good for re-branding, but I'm ok with that if the rebrand premium gets you good support in the long run (i.e. I'm fairly confident I'll be able to find a new set of kelvin leads 5 years from now if I need them). 3yr warranty.
Anyway I thought someone may find this useful down the road- for the price I don't think you can beat the value if you're in the market.
Thoughts? Opinions?
tequipment product link:
http://www.tequipment.net/BK/880/LCR-Meters/?v=7223#tab-product_informationB&K 880 Overview:
https://www.bkprecision.com/products/component-testers/880-dual-display-handheld-100khz-lcr-meter-with-esr.html"Press Release":
https://www.bkprecision.com/news/releases/news/releases/2016/239-bk-precision-offers-100-khz.html