Affordable, Accurate, basic use multimeter?

[rstofer]

I'm not like rstofer, with dozens of meters, only 8-obviously I am a failure at TEA.

You may actually be ahead of me.  But it's close if I include the crappy Harbor Freight meters.  I bought 5 or 6 of them quite a few years back.  Most have disappeared.

Those really cheap meters work great when you want to use 3 of them mounted to a display board to demonstrate Ohm's Law for an elementary school science fair project.  They're perfect for that kind of thing.

I bought a couple of used bench meters from eBay (because I could) and they're pretty nice but the little red Aneng is getting all the work.  I don't need 6 decimal places to check for the presence of 3.3V.  I just need to know it's there.

The Fluke 189 was a retirement gift and, while it's a terrific meter, it doesn't get much work.  I guess I'm kind of saving it for when I want the right answer to more digits.  For most things, it is overkill.

I don't use my digital calipers to measure 2x4s.  A tape measure is more appropriate if I'm going to cut them with a Skill Saw.

I'm not a collector of test equipment.  In comparison to the labs I see in the videos, mine is underwhelming.

[ez24]

Just don't try to measure mains in current settings!  Replace the crappy leads with Brymen gold plated leads that Frankie Tong sells on eBay. 

I did some current readings (@12v) using the 8008.  At 3a the leads got warm, at 4a very warm, at 5a hot and I stopped the test.  Been told by meter guys that the meter can read 10a for only 2 seconds.  I thought Frankie stopped selling?  I want a better set of leads. Thanks

[GreyWoolfe]

I'm not like rstofer, with dozens of meters, only 8-obviously I am a failure at TEA.

You may actually be ahead of me.  But it's close if I include the crappy Harbor Freight meters.  I bought 5 or 6 of them quite a few years back.  Most have disappeared.

Those really cheap meters work great when you want to use 3 of them mounted to a display board to demonstrate Ohm's Law for an elementary school science fair project.  They're perfect for that kind of thing.

I bought a couple of used bench meters from eBay (because I could) and they're pretty nice but the little red Aneng is getting all the work.  I don't need 6 decimal places to check for the presence of 3.3V.  I just need to know it's there.

The Fluke 189 was a retirement gift and, while it's a terrific meter, it doesn't get much work.  I guess I'm kind of saving it for when I want the right answer to more digits.  For most things, it is overkill.

I don't use my digital calipers to measure 2x4s.  A tape measure is more appropriate if I'm going to cut them with a Skill Saw.

I'm not a collector of test equipment.  In comparison to the labs I see in the videos, mine is underwhelming.

I meant CatalinaWOW.  Yet another brain fart.  I used to get senior moments.  Now, it's pretty much all the time.   I had a bunch of the HF meters that one of my co workers used to give me because he loved to use the free coupons.  I finally had to tell him to stop.  The ones I had were horribly inaccurate for anything at all.  I seem to gravitate to the HP 3466A meters on the bench, I spent $80 for the 2 of them.  The 2 Anengs stay in the company van.  I have a Vellemen and Fluke 27/FM.  The Fluke I use to probe mains outlets.  FInally, I got one of the ITT GW Instek GDM8251A for about $90 shipped, I should have gotten 2 of them before the prices got stupid as the stock wound down.  My lab is pretty underwhelming also, you are not alone.  I do have 3 Oscilloscopes but I use one of them in my ham shack as a station monitor.  All of my stuff, I got cheap or I wouldn't have any of it.

[rstofer]

Just don't try to measure mains in current settings!  Replace the crappy leads with Brymen gold plated leads that Frankie Tong sells on eBay. 

I did some current readings (@12v) using the 8008.  At 3a the leads got warm, at 4a very warm, at 5a hot and I stopped the test.  Been told by meter guys that the meter can read 10a for only 2 seconds.  I thought Frankie stopped selling?  I want a better set of leads. Thanks

You might consider ProbeMaster.  Their shop is right across the street from the company I first started working for back in '64.  Long gone...

[CatalinaWOW]

Sorry to hear you have had such bad luck with HF meters.   One of their high end models has actually become my go to meter.  My experience with the low end ones is that they either fail in an obvious way, or work.  The failures are most often the truly horrible leads they come with.   The advantage of these cheap meters over the better meters I have is that I can leave them everywhere, and thus always have something at hand to do simple checks.  Battery voltages, continuity, logic levels and the like.   I agree that they are not suitable for measuring tempcos of resistors and other similar things that challenge any 2000 count meter.

[22khz]

Okay I'm not going to embarrass myself anymore 
I took your words for granted, and yes I'm only planning for electronics use so I bought the multimeter.
I hope I won't get disappointed, and get accurate measurements.

 

[ez24]

Sorry to hear you have had such bad luck with HF meters. 

My last experience with cheap HF meters: 

I was using 3 meters to measure currents (2-3 amps).  They worked fine, no problems.  I put the project away and came back months later and I had forgotten to turn them off.  So I had three new dead batteries.  No matter what price or features, I refuse to buy a meter that uses a 9v battery and no auto off feature.

[Electro Fan]

Alright, Straight up; I don't really use multimeters all that much, to be honest It will be in a rare situation when I'm diagnosing a malfunctioned or a dead device I have to use a multimerer.
I never have done any heavy duty measurements, like measuring the current, volts, amps and watts in my house, on outlets, killswitches e.t.c, I plan on using a multimeter for electronic devices, like computers, video game consoles, phones, mobile phones and all that good stuff..

Hi, saw you bought the 8008.  Congrats - hope you like it a lot!  I'm pretty sure you will find it to be a reasonably accurate meter and enjoyable to use.  Just one thought, if you "have never done any heavy duty measurements, like measuring the current, volts, amps, and watts in (your) house, on outlets" you might want to stick to relatively lower voltage and lower current circuits until you convince yourself that surprising results don't happen too often.  I'm confident the 8008 is a decent meter but I think it might be best to learn on DC and low voltage and low current before you go probing AC high voltage and high current in your wall outlets.  Safety first.  Let us know what you think about the meter and what you are working on when you get it.  EF

[22khz]

Hi, saw you bought the 8008.  Congrats - hope you like it a lot!  I'm pretty sure you will find it to be a reasonably accurate meter and enjoyable to use.  Just one thought, if you "have never done any heavy duty measurements, like measuring the current, volts, amps, and watts in (your) house, on outlets" you might want to stick to relatively lower voltage and lower current circuits until you convince yourself that surprising results don't happen too often.  I'm confident the 8008 is a decent meter but I think it might be best to learn on DC and low voltage and low current before you go probing AC high voltage and high current in your wall outlets.  Safety first.  Let us know what you think about the meter and what you are working on when you get it.  EF

Cheers friend, I have a project on bringing a Playstation 2 back to life, and I really need a multimeter for this one 

[splitzzzzz]

I can recommend the Digitech QM1321 from Jaycar here;

https://www.jaycar.com.au/economy-true-rms-autorange-multimeter/p/QM1321

It’s AU$40 and for that price is a pretty good meter.

It’s a re-badged Honeytek HK68A and when you click on the link to the user manual in the above page it actually brings up the Honeytek HK68 series manual. This is definitely the HK68A identical to the image but yellow and the QM1321/HK68A doesn’t have temp reading and is 4000 count.

 https://www.jaycar.com.au/medias/sys_master/images/9047422009374/QM1321-manualMain.pdf

The only thing I did was replace what ** APPEARED TO BE *** 10A/500mA ceramic HRC AG3 fuses (unbranded) with the SIBA® equivalent.

It comes with PVC test leads which are a knock-off of the Silicon Fluke® TL71 and for PVC leads are quite OK to use, low resistance, and good connections (i.e. no wobbly readings with probe movement).
It’s claimed basic DC accuracy is 0.5% but this is only 0.5% + 3 digits up to 400mV at which it becomes 0.08% + 3 digits.
 
Despite the 0.8% accuracy, I’ve tested it against my PentaRef at 1, 2, 3, 5 & 10 Volts and at 12, 18, 24 & 30 volts from my PSU with my Fluke® 28ii as a reference and it’s within a “bees d1ck” and certainly good enough for home use. Also OK on VAC ~ 240V with close enough accuracy on frequency and duty cycle.

It’s 3.75 digit + 4000 count + True RMS + Auto ranging + auto power-off + built-in NCV which is all you need in a home DMM. There is also an ordinary vinyl case for it for AU$6 odd bucks!

I made an accuracy comparison chart to monitor “drift” of my DMMs. It’s a bit anally retentive I know but I’ll post it anyways to show this thing is well and truly within it’s spec. Mebbe I got lucky and got the “good egg”?

Cheers

EDIT: They have a Lifetime warranty which is a straight swap for a new unit, no sending off for repairs