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Multimeters at 500.000 counts ... Do we need more than that ?

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Kiriakos-GR:
Multimeters at 500.000 counts ... Do we need more than that in a handhold DMM ?

The question sounds simple, but, is it out there any easy answers ?
Should we say to the manufactures .... stop we do not need more counts, use your R&D for making better other aspects than that.

BravoV:
Its easy answer, depends who "we" are talking about, and which market segment is those manufacturers are targeting or planning for new product.

If "we" are electricians that work mostly on high voltage power mains or power installations like yourself, then 500.000 counts is way overkill, c'mon, you have to admit that too.

Have few friends that are experienced electricians, mostly they claimed that that those high counts meters especially hand held usually is not for the real job, but merely for bragging factor. :D

But say if "we" are bunch of calibration operators that are working of ppm degrees everyday when doing high precision calibration job, I would say 500.000 counts still not enough, hell, even with 1.000.000 count / 1 ppm resolution will not make these guys completely happy.

Kiriakos-GR:
Well my own wish list about the 500,000 counts portable solutions, will be an sample rate of 6 times per second.

Until now and probably the start of 2012, the max that we have see is up to 1.25/S nominal .. not bad, but still away from my liking. 

Conrad Hoffman:
I like my 6 1/2 digit bench meters, but in a handheld it would seem like a distraction. My old Fluke 77 does everything I need in a handheld, but I'm old school. Now, if a meter also has a frequency counter function, I can see where having more digits would be nice. Even the counters built into digital scopes leave a lot to be desired in terms of resolution and update. IMO, fast update is a hugely desirable feature.

alm:
Fast sampling rates have always been the domain of the system/bench meters. Even a 1981 HP 3456A will do 120 readings per second with auto zero or 210 without at 5.5 digits of resolution. A modern Agilent 34410A will do 10k readings per second at 5.5 digits. I guess the main reason is that these specs are especially important in system applications, where reading rate is directly proportional to throughput. For example if you want to characterize a part at all possible combinations of parameters. Not much point in hundreds or thousands readings per second if the purpose is just to display them for the user, since the human brain is unable to process information that fast.

Not sure why the handhelds are unable to sample at something like 10 readings per second, I find a meter with a faster update rate much nicer to use. So I use $100 bench meters instead of paying an order of magnitude more for a handheld with similar specs. Maybe the power budget and parts count of handheld meters makes it hard to increase the reading rate? Or maybe they just don't care.

Resolution is not the important spec, I care more about accuracy. What's the point of a 5.75 digit meter if the accuracy is the same as a 4.5 digit one? But for most applications, usability issues like display quality (LED or VFD is much nicer than LCD) and reading rate are much more important in my opinion.

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