BK LCR Meter

[dnyberg]

I've been looking for an LCR meter I can afford, and came across the BK Precision 875B, which claims a wide range of C and L and meets my price point (a little under 200 USD), and wondered if you can get your hands on one to review.

But I'm not dead set on BK, so I guess a better question  is "what would you recommend in that price window, or maybe 250 USD with both alligator and tweezers, as  I need something for both through leads and SMDs"?

The extech 200 might do, but I'd like a wider component range, and I don't care  about size, as this would be for workbench, not mobile use.

Thanks!

[robrenz]

Check out the IET DE-5000  http://www.ietlabs.com/digibridges/de5000-lcr-meter.html  It is US$ 335.00 but has great specs and works very well. even goes to 100KHz  tweezers are are cheap at US$ 29.00  I bought one and am very impressed.

[amspire]

For that kind of money, you want something that shows two readings - the inductance and capacitance and the resistive value or dissipation value.

It is only another $25 for the B&K Precision 878B  (measures up to 1kHz) and Dave did a review of the B&K Precision 879B (same except measures up to 10KHz). These are much better instruments with about twice the accuracy of the 875B.

I know some of the others have been following the LCR market, so hopefully you will get some other suggestions.

Richard

[EEVblog]

Check out the IET DE-5000  http://www.ietlabs.com/digibridges/de5000-lcr-meter.html  It is US$ 335.00 but has great specs and works very well. even goes to 100KHz  tweezers are are cheap at US$ 29.00  I bought one and am very impressed.

I have one of these on the way for review.

Dave.

[dnyberg]

Neat! (More expensive than I'd prefer, but what isn't these days?)

[Achilles]

I have one of these on the way for review.

Dave.

Oh Great! I am waiting for that one . I just got a broken old escort on ebay which I will have a look on, but you never know......

[Ronnie]

Hopefully after Dave's review I can decide between IET Labs DE-5000 (US$335) and Agilent U1733C (US$400). The Agilent is out of stock at Allied Electronics http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=8350760
I'm concern about the epoxy found on the main IC of DE-5000 as mentioned by Robrenz in another post. In my opinion it may affect the reliability of the IC   

[EEVblog]

Hopefully after Dave's review I can decide between IET Labs DE-5000 (US$335) and Agilent U1733C (US$400). The Agilent is out of stock at Allied Electronics http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=8350760
I'm concern about the epoxy found on the main IC of DE-5000 as mentioned by Robrenz in another post. In my opinion it may affect the reliability of the IC   

Agilent still haven't sent me a U1733C, I only have the older B model I never got around the reviewing because it was obsolete and the new one was on the way.
Might have to give them a prod...

Dave.

[sub]

Agilent still haven't sent me a U1733C, I only have the older B model I never got around the reviewing because it was obsolete and the new one was on the way.
Might have to give them a prod...

Dave.

When I ordered mine from Trio about a month ago they were saying anywhere up to six weeks, so if it isn't coming directly from Agilent you might still have a bit of a wait ahead.

[EEVblog]

Agilent still haven't sent me a U1733C, I only have the older B model I never got around the reviewing because it was obsolete and the new one was on the way.
Might have to give them a prod...

Dave.

When I ordered mine from Trio about a month ago they were saying anywhere up to six weeks, so if it isn't coming directly from Agilent you might still have a bit of a wait ahead.

I'm speaking with Agilent direct, so presumably I will get one from their secret stash straight away if they agree. Won't know until next week though.

Dave.

[Rufus]

Why is there so much interest in LCR meters (and current clamp meters) here?

Strangely one of my first jobs was designing LCR meters but I have never owned one and don't think it would get much use if I did.

Rs you can do with a multimeter. How often do you need to measure a capacitor? How often do you need to measure an inductor?

[Lightages]

In filter work it is nice to be able to match components. When buying 5% tolerant parts and making a multipole filter it is very helpful to the filter working at its best if you know the actual values of the components. Sometimes it is just not feasible to get tighter tolerance parts. This is just one reason or example where having an LCR meter is very useful.

Another is if you are winding your own inductors. Calculations on what to do and what actually you end up with do not always agree with imperfect construction methods.

Another is if you have a pile of surplus parts or pulls from equipment with nothing but proprietory markings on them.

Just a few reasons to have an LCR meter.

[Rufus]

Just a few reasons to have an LCR meter.

I know there are things you can do with an LCR meter. To me in the spectrum of electronic 'things' their utility is a fraction of a percent of equipment like power supplies, multimeters, and scopes. They seem to get a disproportionate amount of interest/coverage here.

Clamp meters are electrician tools.

[saturation]

LCR interest has a way to go before it equals the top draws: DSO, DMM and suprising to me, the Hantek 3x25.  Its seems what users are interested in just now, but I agree too that LCRs are less common a tool than a DMM for general use, but that depends on what type of work you're doing.

Here's eevblog stats on the top topics and Alexa stats are similar:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?action=stats

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/eevblog.com#

Just a few reasons to have an LCR meter.

I know there are things you can do with an LCR meter. To me in the spectrum of electronic 'things' their utility is a fraction of a percent of equipment like power supplies, multimeters, and scopes. They seem to get a disproportionate amount of interest/coverage here.

Clamp meters are electrician tools.

[EEVblog]

Just a few reasons to have an LCR meter.

I know there are things you can do with an LCR meter. To me in the spectrum of electronic 'things' their utility is a fraction of a percent of equipment like power supplies, multimeters, and scopes. They seem to get a disproportionate amount of interest/coverage here.

Clamp meters are electrician tools.

I'd pretty much agree with that.
Most people can get by on not having an LCR meter, unless you are into winding your own inductors or whatever.
I don't own a clamp meter.
But as always, YMMV, and I know people use an LCR meter as much as their multimeter. And at one job I had, an LCR meter was an essential daily use tool.

Dave.

[alm]

I agree about the LCR meters and clamp meters. For testing dodgy electrolytics, a cheap ESR meter (eg. the Dick Smith design) is much better suited. Clamp meters are only of interest for high-current circuits, which are not very common in most electronics labs. There are current clamps designed for lower currents (eg. current probes for scopes), but these tend to be very specialized equipment.

LCR meters are quite useful for some RF work were accurate capacitor/inductor values are important, and creating your own caps/inductors is quite common. Winding your own low-frequency inductor/capacitor gets old real fast due to the large values required.

[gregariz]

I'd pretty much agree with that.
Most people can get by on not having an LCR meter, unless you are into winding your own inductors or whatever.
I don't own a clamp meter.
But as always, YMMV, and I know people use an LCR meter as much as their multimeter. And at one job I had, an LCR meter was an essential daily use tool.

Dave.

To me the LCR is pretty much an RF tool. If you're not doing that so much I could understand wondering whats going on. I wonder myself and I do use them. I use LCR's alot simply because I do alot of impedance matching circuits etc whereby I would use a trimmer and then use the LCR to check the value. But I'm always in the low pF range and so have found that the multimeters have always been a bit poor on those values. There's been a few LC meters in the project mag's in recent years. I have 2 different versions of those kits and find that I can measure down to tenths of a low pF value with no prob. I need that type of resolution so I use them instead. I haven't checked recent multimeters but some years back they never could do close to that with stability.

[Rufus]

To me the LCR is pretty much an RF tool.

Measuring at 1kHz like the one in the title isn't much good for RF type values. I have one of the cheap VNAs which can measure LCR at radio frequencies (and a lot more). That doesn't get much use but I wouldn't want to swap it for even a high end LCR meter.

Otherwise the only L's that I remember wanting to measure were solenoids to be able to calculate stored energy and it is more realistic to measure them at their operating current with a scope.

[EEVblog]

Check out the IET DE-5000  http://www.ietlabs.com/digibridges/de5000-lcr-meter.html  It is US$ 335.00 but has great specs and works very well. even goes to 100KHz  tweezers are are cheap at US$ 29.00  I bought one and am very impressed.

I have one of these on the way for review.

Dave.

Got it:



At first glance I'm really impressed!
Great fully custom carry case, and all the accessories including 4-wire connection leads and pods.
I got a cal certificate and sticker too, but I think you pay extra for that?
Very professional presentation and feel to everything!

Dave.

[Ronnie]

Now we will wait for the review & teardown. My buying decision will depend on this review as I'm considering also the Agilent U1733C (though it is out of stock @ http://www.alliedelec.com/search/productdetail.aspx?SKU=8350760).
I'm not impress with manufacturers smearing ICs to cover the identification   

[EEVblog]

I just happened to be at the TrioSmartcal lab today and took the LCR meter in.
It is 0.26% out compared to an Agilent B series meter which was almost spot on for the standard capacitor used for the test.
I'll have to check the cal report and datasheet see if this is within spec, but it did seem to be consistently reading high.

Also, we could not plug standard banana plugs into the meter!, there is something seriously wrong there...

Dave.

[dnyberg]

0.27% isn't too bad, but if there's a cal sticker,  what does that claim?

One does expect to be able to connect to the terminals. I've seen different sized banana jacks, but they were wildly different, like 5 vs 3.5 mm or something; not close enough to mistake one for another. If there were a 4.5 mm standard too or something, that'd be a different matter; easy to mistake one for another.

[amspire]

It looks like the best capacitance accuracy quoted is 0.3%, but at 100KHz, it is 0.6%.

If you were on one of the 0.3% ranges, I think 0.27% is too close for a new meter.

I have some 0.5% russian silver mica capacitors that I could measure on my ancient 0.01% transformer bridge as a testing reference, if that would be any help. I believe it is accurate, but I only have one reference cap to check it against.  Sounds like you might be testing a lot of LCR meters - they are appearing everywhere!

Just found another new brand:

http://www.appatech.com/appa_product_home.php?pdid=20090922031341867448&&kindid=20090922092100978931

The 100Khz datalogging model (APPA 703) claims 0.2% accuracy, but it is a bit suspicious - they don't detail the accuracies on all the ranges. Available for $370 postage free. The 10KHz model has the same basic accuracy, but only goes to 10KHz, and is available for $299 postage free. Less accessories then the IET and comes in a cardboard box.  20,000 count for both readings and resolution down to 0.001pF/0.001uH/0.001ohms.

Richard.

[robrenz]

On the topic of LCR usefullness. The one thing I didn't even consider when I bought the DE-5000 is the feature I have used the most. That is measuring low resistances at 1kHz in regular resistance mode (not DC resistance mode).  I think that since it uses ac excitation in this mode thermal emf errors at low resistances are canceled out.  I understand that if you have resistors with significant inductance this measurement will differ from a dc resistance measurement.  The measurements settle very fast and they are extremely stable and repeatable (way better that a DMM). At a glance you would think that the fluke 87v would be more accurate at low resistances with +/- 0.2% + 2 digits on the 400 ohm scale and the DE-5000 at +/- 1.0% + 3 digits on its 20 ohm scale. But the catch is the DE-5000 has .001 resolution on that range compared to the 87v .1 ohm resolution on the 400 ohm range. (in 4.5 digit mode it is .01 ohm but the +/- digits jumps to 20) So when you do the math on a .01 ohm measurement the actual 87v max error is +/-2000.2% and the DE-5000 max error is +/- 31%  65 times more accurate.  Same thing on a 1.0 ohm measurement the actual 87v max error is +/-20.2% and the DE-5000 max error is +/- 1.3%  15 times more accurate.  Contact resistance measurements are why I care about the low ohms.

[jarvis]

I just happened to be at the TrioSmartcal lab today and took the LCR meter in.
It is 0.26% out compared to an Agilent B series meter which was almost spot on for the standard capacitor used for the test.
I'll have to check the cal report and datasheet see if this is within spec, but it did seem to be consistently reading high.

Also, we could not plug standard banana plugs into the meter!, there is something seriously wrong there...

Dave.

What is the capacitance for your standard capacitor ? What's the test frequency ?

[Kiriakos-GR]

I am aware about APPA but I really dislike their LCD display's.
Its like my love and hate relation that I have with some Extech multimeters with long bold fonts.

The APPA products are also distributed and as re-branded in Russia, at a lower pricing.


 

[robrenz]

One thing I have noticed on the handheld LCR specs is that you cannot say brand "X" is accurate to .X%.   All the manufacturers pick their best range/Hz as their banner spec. But another range/Hz may be 25 times less accurate on percentage alone even before you consider LSD.  Comparing specs without actually calculating the %+LSD error of the max of the range and lowest of that range that isn't covered by the next range for each meter is a total waste of time. Some manufacturers use a lower percentage but compensate with a higher LSD especially on the highest resolution ranges.  The LSD may not be the same resolution between meters on certain ranges so the same LSD number could be ten times more error. When you test using a known standard you have to take the test value and do the actual worst case error from the meter specs for that value/range/Hz as %+/-LSD and then divide that by the test value to get the actual meter % accuracy for that value. one meter may excel at capacitance and be worse on inductance. You have to do your homework to accurately compare specs.  Wether or not the meter actually is within the stated specs and for how long is another story.