Why are Fluke multimeters so expensive? PART 2
A teardown of the Fluke 70/170 series vs the Brymen BM786. Is there any design and construction difference that justifies 2-3 times the price?
00:00 - Fluke vs Brymen
01:07 - The Yellow Peer Pressure
01:57 - Fluke 77/177 vs Brymen BM786
04:01 - Ruggedness
05:05 - Plastics
06:11 - Teardown
11:09 - Input protection
14:36 - LCD Connection
16:45 - Input Protection
19:20 - Hybrid resistor divider
20:47 - Processor and Chipset
22:27 - Arguably a tighter and more expensive BOM
23:39 - Range Switch
26:53 - Buzzer & Shielding
27:46 - Conclusion
Part 1:
Multimeter fuse protection:
That is a fair and remarkably unbiased review considering that you are selling one of the products.
However, a few minor quibbles, or at least things worth pointing out.
1) Prices may vary worldwide, but here in the US on Amazon right now the BM786 is $185 and the Fluke 77-IV is $323. So 1.75X the price, with a 'Lifetime/10 year' warranty.
2) On the input protection, the comparison of 2 PTCs vs 1 may not be valid because IIRC Fluke uses a particular part that is the Godzilla of PTCs, other designs need 2 in series to match it. I looked it up once and I think this was it:
https://www.mouser.com/datasheet/2/18/amphenoladvancedsensors_YS4020-1157120.pdfEdit: 3) and I realize you were using what you had on hand, but nobody should probably go out and buy the Fluke 77-IV, the 179 is a more apt competitor with TRMS and temperature. It is also cheaper, $309 on Amazon.
My Bryman 869s has this strong and unpleasant chemical stench, like the one you get from over-baked PCBs. Do other Bryman multimeters stink? None of my other multimeters, including the Fluke 187, smell that bad.
Well, I actually think there is a big obvious design difference between the two. It looks like Fluke's designers had the user in their minds, whereas Brymen didn't think much at user's experience.
I don't have any of these two meters, but I always have a Fluke 87V and a BM789 on my bench, and try really hard to like BM789. I like it, but can't love it.
The Flukes are designed (ergonomically) to be actually used. BM789 seems to be designed to be packed with extra-features (one might or might not need), thrown together to impress on paper. They do deliver on what they promise, though.
When you get to use the BM789, you figure you have to press 6 (that's six) times the yellow button in order to switch from AC mV to DC mV (you have to circle through options you might not even need in the first place). Every time you switch the rotary dial, you also have to double-tripple check if you are on the right function (ohms? buzzer? conductivity?). Like other handheld meters that don't care about ergonomics, it always shows a variable number of useless zeros at the left of the decimal point (006.67 mV instead of 6.67 mV - you have to look really well to make sure you don't misread the position of the decimal point). I know some people don't mind, but many do. Also, look at the rotary dial of 77 vs BM786: the positions are nicely spaced, easily readable on the Fluke, crumbled together and hard to read on the Brymen. These might seem minor things, but it is obvious Fluke did think about them, whereas Brymen didn't. Other than the ergonomics, BM789 is a great meter.
If you don't need the extra features and precision of BM789 (i.e. if you have other specialized meters for that when you need them), there is really no reason to choose one for everyday use. I always tend to grab the Fluke first, then sometime refrain myself and use the BM789, to impress myself with its accuracy (and ask myself what they were thinking when they designed that user interface...).
On the other side, Flukes seem stripped down to the bare minimum for their intended user (87V is an exception). They have an 88V for automotive use, which is pretty much an 87V to which they added RPM but removed the true RMS (why?!) and the high res mode (if I'm not wrong). Or they sell an 116 with a uA position (for flame sensor check, if you are one of those guys who service furnaces) but no Amps (you have to buy the 117 if you are an HVAC technician who cares about Amps but doesn't work on gas furnaces, because you don't get uA on 117...). You really have to know who you are and accept it upfront. Ridiculous.
Fluke 87V (and maybe Fluke 77, too) are nicer, faster and easier to use (... and outrageously expensive, especially outside US - as it seems). BM789 (and 786, I guess) are the way to go if you only plan to have one quality reasonably priced meter, not sure what features you might need in the future (dBm? DC+AC mV? two temperatures? 4-20 mA? the highest counts/$ you can get?) and don't mind working harder to make a simple measurement.
Not sure if the ergonomics is factored explicitly in the price (e.g. if Fluke paid an arm and a leg to the design guru and it would take them decades to recover the investment), but people do like ergonomics and if they are willing to pay for it, the prices stay up. As in any other product, the fair market price is what people are willing to pay, not the price of the materials and manufacturing plus a reasonable margin to keep the business going.
That is funny..
Brymen are idiots that doesn't know how to design something ergonomically because their device has more features.
And Fluke 87V is better product because it has less features for twice the money because fact that it has only few features makes it easier to use...
Brymen made product that has high quality, more measurements for less money. They did very good job. It also remembers the settings, you can set user defaults for settings etc. I would say it has excellent ergonomics for it's feature set.
Your argument could be extended to absurdity that Keysight 34461A is a horribly bad instrument. Ergonomically, compared to F87V, it is too heavy and big, doesn't even have battery, it is too complicated to use and makes for a horrible handheld meter....
It is OK for you to say you cannot be bothered to learn how to use it and it has many features you don't need.
You simply bought product that wasn't for you. You needed something simple with just few measurements so you don't have to think too much when using it.
Perfectly valid point.
So you shouldn't have bought a more capable, more complicated instrument.
Fact is that that F87V is perfect instrument for you not because it is better than BM789, but quite the opposite.
F87V is less capable, simpleton device that better suits your use case. It is literally better for your use case because it is less of instrument.
Combine that with superb quality of Fluke and it is perfect for you. Simple and reliable, like an old horse that knows his way home even if you sleep in the saddle.
And that is OK. We must do what is better for us. That doesn't make everybody else wrong per se.
Best,
Dave, you mentioned that the 77 IV uses the same PCB as the 17x but didn't really explain the differences. The 77 IV is average responding, whereas the 17x series is true-RMS. There might be an unpopulated footprint on the 77 IV PCB for the true RMS converter chip.
That is funny..
Thanks, that was my intention. Your post is funny too.
Brymen are not idiots by any means, but miss big time on ergonomics. Less is more. Do you really enjoy using a meter that requires pressing 6 times a button to switch from AC to DC? For a typical user who owns a handheld and a bench multimeter, the extra features of BM789 fill a much needed gap.
Fluke exaggerates in the other direction.
Dave, you mentioned that the 77 IV uses the same PCB as the 17x but didn't really explain the differences. The 77 IV is average responding, whereas the 17x series is true-RMS. There might be an unpopulated footprint on the 77 IV PCB for the true RMS converter chip.
There are actually almost no differences beyond firmware. The 77-IV even has the AD737 converter chip, they just omit the external averaging capacitor which turns it into an average-responding converter.
Brymen are not idiots by any means, but miss big time on ergonomics. Less is more. Do you really enjoy using a meter that requires pressing 6 times a button to switch from AC to DC? For a typical user who owns a handheld and a bench multimeter, the extra features of BM789 fill a much needed gap.
Fluke exaggerates in the other direction.
You might want to try a Fluke 289 before you conclude that this is a brand issue vs the realities of packing features in a handheld device.
That is funny..
Thanks, that was my intention. Your post is funny too.
Brymen are not idiots by any means, but miss big time on ergonomics. Less is more. Do you really enjoy using a meter that requires pressing 6 times a button to switch from AC to DC? For a typical user who owns a handheld and a bench multimeter, the extra features of BM789 fill a much needed gap.
Fluke exaggerates in the other direction.
I agree, again, that simple can be good enough for some uses.
But less is always less. If that is good enough that is grand.
And there are many users that does not own bench meter, or work outside but need fully featured meter.
Simple is not synonym with ergonomic. It is simply devoid of features, so less to learn.
I have BM869S. And it is perfectly ergonomic. It took few uses to get used to it. And now it is natural and automatic.. It is perfectly ergonomic. Only thing I would improve on it would be the stand. That one could be better. I would never go back to F87V.. Which I sold, added a bit more money and bought Metrix 3293
that is even more powerful. I ended up very rarely using bench meter after that....
But that's me.
Dave, you mentioned that the 77 IV uses the same PCB as the 17x but didn't really explain the differences. The 77 IV is average responding, whereas the 17x series is true-RMS. There might be an unpopulated footprint on the 77 IV PCB for the true RMS converter chip.
There are actually almost no differences beyond firmware. The 77-IV even has the AD737 converter chip, they just omit the external averaging capacitor which turns it into an average-responding converter.
Correct, I did a video on this before I went on holidays, it's not released yet, but here it is:
Correct, I did a video on this before I went on holidays, it's not released yet, but here it is:
My first thought is "how will that affect the calibration"? I guess I'll have to watch...
That is funny..
Brymen are idiots that doesn't know how to design something ergonomically because their device has more features.
And Fluke 87V is better product because it has less features for twice the money because fact that it has only few features makes it easier to use...
You don't have to buy the 789.
I own a BM857s and one of the reasons I chose that model was because of the lack of overload. The only time I ever press a button is to switch between Ohms and continuity. That's it.
It still has 50,000 counts, etc., and it costs even less than the 789.
And ... it doesn't default to AC on the amps ranges like the Fluke 87V does.
Like other handheld meters that don't care about ergonomics, it always shows a variable number of useless zeros at the left of the decimal point (006.67 mV instead of 6.67 mV - you have to look really well to make sure you don't misread the position of the decimal point). I know some people don't mind, but many do.
Actually I like that feature, because you see in an instant how far the range you're working in extends to.
So I really think this is more a personal preference matter than "not caring about ergonomics" to where you contribute this feature to, and that it was a deliberate choice Brymen made here.
And it's not uncommon too, for instance look at this keithley bench dmm:
I think for high resolution measuring equipment, it's rather common.
Dave's keysight bench dmm shown in that last video does it too.
Like other handheld meters that don't care about ergonomics, it always shows a variable number of useless zeros at the left of the decimal point (006.67 mV instead of 6.67 mV - you have to look really well to make sure you don't misread the position of the decimal point). I know some people don't mind, but many do.
Actually I like that feature, because you see in an instant how far the range you're working in extends to.
So I really think this is more a personal preference matter than "not caring about ergonomics" to where you contribute this feature to, and that it was a deliberate choice Brymen made here.
And it's not uncommon too, for instance look at this keithley bench dmm:
I think for high resolution measuring equipment, it's rather common.
Dave's keysight bench dmm shown in that last video does it too.
I understand your point – those zeros at the left don’t bother some people and actually carry useful information (as in you get an idea of the precision of your measurement based on how far away from the end of the scale you are and what the heck the manual ranges you are circling through are).
Fluke provides the very same information by indicating the range at the end of the bargraph, without cluttering the main reading with extra-zeroes.
You are right, all bench meters show those zeroes. My DMM6500 does it too (can’t say I love it for this). Not sure why they do it. Probably when you pay an arm and a leg for a 6½, 7½ or 8½ digit bench meter you want to see all those digits you paid for, to make sure they are all there. Joke aside, those are high precision meters, you expect to see lots of numbers and pay close attention to each of them while carefully doing your measurement or adjusting your value. More ergonomic ones made the effort to separate the digits in groups of three, for easier reading (like Dave’s Keysight). My Keithley doesn’t do this and at times it’s really annoying to count all those digits to figure if a certain digit represents uv or tens of uv (arbitrary example). I conclude that Keithley don’t care about ergonomics either. I still love mine, because it works well, it's full of features and it’s the only one I have (and can’t afford a better and more ergonomic one).
As far as handheld meters for general everyday use are concerned, I’d rather have them display a simple reading, legible at a glance, hard to misread in any light conditions from any angle, like the Fluke on the right (rather than the Brymen on the left). I could live happily with BM789 as my only meter, though.
Some like it simple and it is very obvious that Fluke put efforts in ergonomics.
Brymen are not idiots by any means, but miss big time on ergonomics. Less is more. Do you really enjoy using a meter that requires pressing 6 times a button to switch from AC to DC? For a typical user who owns a handheld and a bench multimeter, the extra features of BM789 fill a much needed gap.
Fluke exaggerates in the other direction.
You might want to try a Fluke 289 before you conclude that this is a brand issue vs the realities of packing features in a handheld device.
True, but Fluke 289 is the exception in Fluke's lineup. It's also a great example of how you can pack lots of extra features in a handheld meter without losing basic ergonomics (you can still switch from AC mV to DC mV and back by only using the rotary dial; for some extra features you have to work harder, which is fair). Brymen should watch and learn.
Like other handheld meters that don't care about ergonomics, it always shows a variable number of useless zeros at the left of the decimal point (006.67 mV instead of 6.67 mV - you have to look really well to make sure you don't misread the position of the decimal point). I know some people don't mind, but many do.
Actually I like that feature, because you see in an instant how far the range you're working in extends to.
So I really think this is more a personal preference matter than "not caring about ergonomics" to where you contribute this feature to, and that it was a deliberate choice Brymen made here.
And it's not uncommon too, for instance look at this keithley bench dmm:
I think for high resolution measuring equipment, it's rather common.
Dave's keysight bench dmm shown in that last video does it too.
I understand your point – those zeros at the left don’t bother some people and actually carry useful information (as in you get an idea of the precision of your measurement based on how far away from the end of the scale you are and what the heck the manual ranges you are circling through are).
Fluke provides the very same information by indicating the range at the end of the bargraph, without cluttering the main reading with extra-zeroes.
You are right, all bench meters show those zeroes. My DMM6500 does it too (can’t say I love it for this). Not sure why they do it. Probably when you pay an arm and a leg for a 6½, 7½ or 8½ digit bench meter you want to see all those digits you paid for, to make sure they are all there. Joke aside, those are high precision meters, you expect to see lots of numbers and pay close attention to each of them while carefully doing your measurement or adjusting your value. More ergonomic ones made the effort to separate the digits in groups of three, for easier reading (like Dave’s Keysight). My Keithley doesn’t do this and at times it’s really annoying to count all those digits to figure if a certain digit represents uv or tens of uv (arbitrary example). I conclude that Keithley don’t care about ergonomics either. I still love mine, because it works well, it's full of features and it’s the only one I have (and can’t afford a better and more ergonomic one).
As far as handheld meters for general everyday use are concerned, I’d rather have them display a simple reading, legible at a glance, hard to misread in any light conditions from any angle, like the Fluke on the right (and unlike the Brymen on the left). I could live happily with BM789 as my only meter, though.
Some like it simple and it is very obvious that Fluke put efforts in ergonomics.
In the pictures, it is immediately obvious how many more volts the Brymen is capable of displaying in the range it is in... that isn't so obvious on the Fluke (in fact, I can't immediately see how you'd know?).
In the pictures, it is immediately obvious how many more volts the Brymen is capable of displaying in the range it is in... that isn't so obvious on the Fluke (in fact, I can't immediately see how you'd know?).
As he said, the range is indicated below the reading ('60', '600', '1000').
Personal preference IMO, I don't mind either and neither causes me a hint of confusion nor costs me any time.
In the pictures, it is immediately obvious how many more volts the Brymen is capable of displaying in the range it is in... that isn't so obvious on the Fluke (in fact, I can't immediately see how you'd know?).
As he said, the range is indicated below the reading ('60', '600', '1000').
Personal preference IMO, I don't mind either and neither causes me a hint of confusion nor costs me any time.
Ah, ok. I prefer the one I didn't have to think about, similar to bench meters. Horses for courses, as you allude to!
Would be cool if it was a configurable option.
Like other handheld meters that don't care about ergonomics, it always shows a variable number of useless zeros at the left of the decimal point (006.67 mV instead of 6.67 mV - you have to look really well to make sure you don't misread the position of the decimal point). I know some people don't mind, but many do.
Actually I like that feature, because you see in an instant how far the range you're working in extends to.
So I really think this is more a personal preference matter than "not caring about ergonomics" to where you contribute this feature to, and that it was a deliberate choice Brymen made here.
I understand your point – those zeros at the left don’t bother some people and actually carry useful information (as in you get an idea of the precision of your measurement based on how far away from the end of the scale you are and what the heck the manual ranges you are circling through are).
Anything divisive like that should always be made user-configurable.
In the pictures, it is immediately obvious how many more volts the Brymen is capable of displaying in the range it is in... that isn't so obvious on the Fluke (in fact, I can't immediately see how you'd know?).
It's displayed on the screen for you:
In the pictures, it is immediately obvious how many more volts the Brymen is capable of displaying in the range it is in... that isn't so obvious on the Fluke (in fact, I can't immediately see how you'd know?).
It's displayed on the screen for you:
Could it be any smaller?? If you need magnifying glass to see it then it is not there..
It's displayed on the screen for you:
Yes but that's a manual range setting.
With these it's not so clear:
Regarding the zero's before the decimal dot: I never realized that anyone could have difficulties reading such a display, because virtually every higher end bench dmm has that too (siglent, rigol, keysight, keithley etc), nor have I ever read about it.
(you can still switch from AC mV to DC mV and back by only using the rotary dial; for some extra features you have to work harder, which is fair). Brymen should watch and learn.
If that's important to you, you should have bought the BM867/869 as they have it that way. And not all flukes have that per rotary dial, some have it the same way per button press.
But I don't really see the importance of that, as that same switching but in the mA range (so from DC mA to AC mA) is usually done with a button press, both on brymens as on most current Flukes (179, 87v, 289)
Pretty much nitpicking if you ask me.
18:45
Fluke does not have beefier diode protection. It uses a single 1.5A bride rectifier. Brymen uses 4x 1A diodes which are equivalent to 2A bridge rectifier.