While doing some testing recently, I was surprised to find that my 34401A DMM was seemingly reading frequencies as high as 1.65MHz reliably(?) despite the manual specifying a maximum frequency range of 300kHz. Here's a sampling of readings across the range I tested - input from an HP3325A that's out of cal but generates stable and pretty accurate frequencies. The DMM hits a brick wall at 1.65MHz but reads stable frequencies very reproducibly for inputs of at least 0.05-5V amplitude and for sine and square waves. DMM was set to 6-digit high speed.
Is this surprising or unexpected? I thought there'd be some over-range capability but this seems a bit over the top. Are there some gotchas hidden away here somewhere? I didn't find anything on this question elsewhere on the web.
Input (MHz) Reading
0.1 99.99978k
0.3 299.9993k
0.5 499.9989k
1.0 999.9978k
1.2 1.199997
1.4 1.399997
1.6 1.599996
1.65 1.649996
1.7 1.5
1.8 1.2
2.0 1.0