New Fluke 101 meter showing readings when not connected

[makerman]

I managed to blow my multimeter the other day so ordered my first fluke (101), powered it on and when not measuring anything it's showing anywhere between 6-20 mA then slowly drops down. The uni-t meter and other cheapies i have don't do this, should i be worried ?

[KermitTheFrogg]

Yoooo I don't think it is that bad. Some brand new multimeters aren't calibrated or maybe it is malfunctioning.  Do you still have warranty?

[Mr. Scram]

Both the Fluke 87V and Fluke 179 here do that, although they start at an even higher count. The Fluke 179 is only a few months old. I'd say it's expected behaviour.

[makerman]

Thanks for replies, it's measuring fine so i'll stick with it.

[ender4171]

All of my Flukes do this.  Try shorting the leads together.  If it drops to 0.00 immediately, you have nothing to worry about.  It's just stray inductance from the environment.  I think cheaper meters are either just not sensitive to pick up EMI, or they use some sort of "zero-ing" circuit to discourage the behavior since a regular Joe would probably think it means the meter is broken.

[Mr. Scram]

All of my Flukes do this.  Try shorting the leads together.  If it drops to 0.00 immediately, you have nothing to worry about.  It's just stray inductance from the environment.  I think cheaper meters are either just not sensitive to pick up EMI, or they use some sort of "zero-ing" circuit to discourage the behavior since a regular Joe would probably think it means the meter is broken.

I think it's the latter. There have been instances of cheap meters "cheating" on their readings described on these forums. Instead of true linearity they seem to fix it in the firmware.

[joeqsmith]

I managed to blow my multimeter the other day so ordered my first fluke (101), powered it on and when not measuring anything it's showing anywhere between 6-20 mA then slowly drops down. The uni-t meter and other cheapies i have don't do this, should i be worried ?

That's crazy!!  The meter is for sure bad as the Fluke 101 has no current measurement and can't display mA at all!  Something must really be screwed up.