I agree this feature is now beyond annoying, it's been overdone. Batteries must cost a year's wages in china, or they don't last at all, filled with air?
It wails and beeps before shutoff as a warning, then it wails and beeps when it's done.
"APO" icon to the LCD is where this seems to have climaxed, what a stupid idea and waste
I'll never buy a multimeter having that stupid annunciator.
It's also annoying the backlight timer is just as in your way. 15 seconds? 99 seconds? Then fumble around in the dark to turn it back on. That pisses me off.
A decent powersave timer should retrigger on any button press or rotary switch twirl, or maybe non-static readings, if activity is present- restart the timer.
With the single-chip DMM's, e.g. Dreamtech chipset stores auto power off and backlight timer period in EEPROM. So it's a hassle to change. The one-time disable power down timer is still too much hassle, 6 beeps.
Power off timeout set in 1 minute increments 1-255, default 15 minutes. 0xFB=0x0F
Backlight timeout set in 1 second increments 1-255, default 15 seconds. 0xFC=0x0F