Klein Tools MM2000 Multi-Meter Review

[semaphore]

I feel very lucky today!

Today, I went to the Home Depot to pick up Vinyl tubes for my project. I thought to stop by Electrical Department to see if they have anything new/cool. I saw this bright orange Klein Tools MM2000 multi-meter sitting on the shelf and though to check it out. The specs look reasonable. It is more for electrical work not electronic. This is because the missing mV selection. It may not be a problem if you don’t need resolution in mV range. It got 4,000 counts, CATIII 1,000V, true RMS, LowZ, uA, temperature, capacitance, Hz, Duty Cycle and more. It comes with very sharp probes, alligator clips and thermocouple probe (see pictures below). Guess the price tag? It listed $59.88! I thought to myself… Wow that is a good price. Klein Tools is a well know company for electricians. The company has been around since 1857. They made good high quality hand tools and meters for professional electricians. I think it is a US company (correct me if I’m wrong). Oh… and this particular model of multi-meter is made in Korea! No way… finally something doesn’t make in China. So I decided to buy one just to check it out. I don’t really need another meter, but why not for this price.

Went to the cashier to pay and it rang up for $99.98! What! I’m not paying for this. There is something wrong. I marked with $59.88 on the shelf and there is nothing else says $99.98 on the entire shelf. Something is majorly wrong here! It turns out this is a brand new item that just got put up by the night crew last night. I’m not sure this it is a new item to the Home Depot or new product. But they screwed up. This is the price for the other model MM1000 which currently they don’t have. Don’t ask me how that happened because I don’t care. It said $59.88 so I’m only going to pay $59.88. After spoke to the manager they agreed to adjust the price for me. That is why I feel so lucky.

Just because of that I think I’ll give it back to this community and give the Klein Tools MM2000 a review here. Another thing is no one has talk about Klein Tools in here before so here it is.

This is the receipt with $40.10 off! I blacked out some information. Don’t want anyone at Home Depot to get in troubles.



The packaging looks okay. I love that they have the features and specs clearly labeled. My Fluke 179 box doesn’t have this much info.





This is the unit with white backlight on. It has very nice big font and unique bar graph on the bottom. Here is the unit on Ohm measurement. Before reading the manual I was like what the heck is “Apo” and “AT”. Can anyone guess?

“Apo” = Auto power off
“AT” = Auto range



Here is the back of the unit. The tilting bail is a hard plastic and fold out at about the same degree as my Fluke 87V.



“Don’t turn it on – take it apart!” Of course, taking CATIII meter apart I’m using CATII rating screw driver!  



The holster is a bi..h to pull out. I was very close to pull out my hammer.
Here is the back without the holster. You can see the “Made in Korea”.



Remove one metal threaded insert to get to the battery and fuses compartment. Look at those nice two big HRC fuses. It uses 2 AAA batteries!



I almost rip this thing apart without removing the screw underneath the battery. Here it is with 5 self-tapping screws they are easily come apart.



Here are some engineering porn photos Look like they use mostly prime spec parts. Lots of potentiometers.





Bad hand solder job on those shunt resistors. Left over flux.



Back cover.



Here you can see some blast protection notches.



Close up of sense resistors and bad solder joints.



More electronic side. Nice gold plated PCB layout.



Here is the accessories that come with it.



Nice sharp probes with CATIII 1,000V 10A rating.



Alligator clips with CATIII 1,000V rating.



Thermocouple probe (not sure what is the range of this particular probe).



Nice solid jacks



Here is the voltage comparison with my Fluke 87V. It looks good to me. The digit is bigger, the backlight is brighter and the unit is smaller and light than the Fluke 87V. Of course, the accuracy is not as good as Fluke 87V.



Here is the manual and specs









…phew that is a lot of work. I’ll come back some other time to review the technical aspect of this meter. Or if you have any quick questions that I can answer about this meter please feel free to post it here.

[Kiriakos-GR]

Amazing pictures !!  bravo ..
I have the eye of  " photographer " (hard core hobbyist my self)  , and this images looks better than studio work.

My impressions so far, just from the pictures are mixed ..

Looks like an UNI-T at the front , and like Fluke at the back ...  plus some nice quality of construction ( PCB and parts ) ..

Looks good  100% , but  even the Fluke 87-5 has some usability and software quirks ,
I bet that you will found them on it too , but after some  long time of in depth testing.

[EEVblog]

Awesome photos! What setup did you use?
At that price it's a bargain.

Dave.

[semaphore]

My other hobby beside electronic hacker,tinker and DIY is photography. So I like to practice photographing whenever I can. I'm using Nikon D90 DSLR camera with Nikon AF-S Micro 60mm lense. I took photos using tripod and a remote control. All of them took at a very high f-stop like 29 with white foam board for background. Then use Photoshop CS5 for a quick touch up.

Just change the background to match EEVblog color. You may have to refresh the broswer to see. How do you like that?

@Dave
Do you think it is still a bargain if I have to pay a full price $99.98USD?

The pictures you took with your Olympus E-510 on the Triplett 630NA look really nice and sharp too!

[saturation]

A great job, my congratulations!  Superb photos, thanks for taking the time to post these.

In the technical reply, can you show its response at 1.000 0 V and 10.000 V DC and AC, as these are common calibration voltages and you're likely to tease out any small accuracy differences.

Wow, you have a Fluke 87V Ex!  That's a pricey version.

[thaking]

OMG, what a great picture's, great as multimeter 

[EEVblog]

The pictures you took with your Olympus E-510 on the Triplett 630NA look really nice and sharp too!

They were just hand-held outside on the back deck with my 35mm macro lens.

Dave.

[armandas]

If you take a closer look, this meter is very similar to the UEi DM391, which Dave has reviewed favourably in the $100 shootout.

[semaphore]

If you take a closer look, this meter is very similar to the UEi DM391, which Dave has reviewed favourably in the $100 shootout.

Yeah.. it is some what similar, but not all the way. Here you go!

[Kiriakos-GR]

Well picture comparisons ,  its not an major proof of true quality ...

Does this DMM  acts as it should ?  

I care more about true specs than numbers ,  and the bottom line are ,  that who cares if is marketed with an retail  price of  70 - 100 - or 150 ... DOES IT WORK properly !! ?  

The KLEIN group did what thousands similar companies that sell tools for general use do .
They  just promote another one DMM by their logo ... I do not get excited by that ... every one does that today... everyone ..  

[Mambo]

Guys.....maybe you can't see the wood for the tree's here.

The board is clearly marked "Finest"....Refer http://fineinstr.en.ecplaza.net/products.asp

It's no Uni-T nor Fluke.....it's as the board says a finest meter who are from Korea.....again it's my job to know....just ask.

[semaphore]

You win Mambo! Just never heard of Finest meter before. Only thing is I can't find this model (MM2000) or anything that look alike on this like.

http://fineinstr.en.ecplaza.net/products.asp

May be they just make this specifically for Klein Tools.

[slburris]

My other hobby beside electronic hacker,tinker and DIY is photography. So I like to practice photographing whenever I can. I'm using Nikon D90 DSLR camera with Nikon AF-S Micro 60mm lense. I took photos using tripod and a remote control. All of them took at a very high f-stop like 29 with white foam board for background. Then use Photoshop CS5 for a quick touch up.

How do you light these shots?  I'm always struggling with getting nice even
lighting across a product when I'm trying to photograph it.

Scott

[alm]

How do you light these shots?  I'm always struggling with getting nice even
lighting across a product when I'm trying to photograph it.

The solution to uneven lighting is to move the light source (which might be a secondary source like a diffuser or reflector) farther away from the subject. The evenness is a function of the difference between the closest and farthest point of the subject from the light source relative to the distance of the light source to the subject. The farther the light source is from the subject, the less difference between various points of the subject. If the subject is flat, placing the light source more parallel to the object is also useful, as long as it doesn't impact reflections or shadows negatively.

You may have to increase the size of the source to compensate for harder shadows caused by the longer distance (smaller light source as seen from the subject).

[Sabertooth]

Hi Semaphore,

You mentioned you would post a technical review later, but never did.  I'm just curious what you think of this meter after using it for a few months.

Is it worth the $60 you paid for it?  Would it be worth the regular price of $100?  Just wondering is I should add this to my Christmas list.

[Dzambaz]

Hi,

Few months ago I decided to buy new True RMS auto-ranging DMM. After spending some time reading and watching reviews for many multimeters (including the reviews on the EEVblog YT channel and the review for MM2000 on this forum) I decided to buy MM2000.

I made and uploaded a review on YT to share the positive experience that I have with this meter and also to point out some minor drawbacks that I noticed:

Klein Tools MM2000 Multimeter Review:

Any comments are welcome.