I am considering buying a Keysight U1233A but never used a dmm with these orange displays/ backlights. How are they compared to the traditional ones, easy to read in dim - poor lighting or not?
Thank you for all opinions.
Joe.
Allthough it is impossible to capture the "real" backlight colour on a picture, you get at least an impression. The blue of the Fluke is not that bright, but good enough to read. To be honest: the red of the U1233A is not that good as the orange of the U1272A, but better than any Brymen having only a short timer!!!
The left U1233A has the lowest backlight brightness and the right one the highest.
In the settings of the U1233A you can not only adjust the backlight brightness from Low to High in seven perfectly distinguished steps...
...but also the timer settings, which I always disable and yes, it is possible having the backlight always on and manually switching off:
Backlight.Timer from 15 to 99 seconds. with E = enabled...
"b.15.E"
"b.99.E"
...or simply "d" at the end for disabled = backlight always on; the 15 to 99 number is unimportant with the "d" at the end:
"b.15.d"
In contrast to the Fluke 117/179/87V with a Keysight you always have a real settings menu with any option you need! In contrast to Fluke, Keysight AutoRanges in DC, when measuring A, but it does not keep the last setting compared with a Brymen.
*****Cheers!
***** Edit:In order to be more precise as far as the Fluke 289 is concerned, as it is my favourite handheld DMM, despite the bad display, I have to add some lines, as XMAS is near and I don't want to be responsible for a bad buy, because I also pay attention to any detail:
When measuring A, it also switches back to AAC, when you have chosen one of the submeasurements before, such as: "AC+DC" or "AC, DC" or "DC, AC"!
However, as long as you only use the normal A measurement, such as AAC or ADC - but only in these settings with single display - the Fluke 289 keeps either AC or DC while measuring A, when switching off and on again (as long as your batteries are fine and you don't have a leaking super-cap).
This "behaviour" of not keeping the "submeasurements with dual display mode" - Apple would call it a "feature", is definitely a disadvantage as it looses the benefit of doing recuring measurements while using the multiple display functionality!
By the way: for me the HMC8012 is the best alternative for a handheld DMM being always used on a bench, because it boots fast, has no fan and is therefore totally silent, has a perfect display contrast and readability and it always and forever keeps the last chosen measurement function, despite all saving-setting-possibilities you also have, when switching on again.
The Fluke 289 comes closest to this due to its extra power button, but with the disadvantages mentioned above; I don't like a benchtop DMM such as the Rigol DM3068, which always starts with DCV, because the benchtop DMM is ment to be used for recuring measurements, so that its annoying, to start with DCV while having the test leads in A and you need to load an A setting again and again...
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Also, I cannot stress it enough: The shown colours on the pictures are really not (!!!) the "real" colours: The U1233A is more like a darkish red, which is really sad, as the contrast between black and red is not that good as between orange and black, which makes the U1233A incomparable with the bigger brother's backlight and unfortunately inferior!!!
No matter, which brand you take, they mostly don't get it, that it is fine to make mistakes, as long as they change it as soon as possible, thus especially in this case it is absolutely no big deal to switch the LEDs with the orange ones and anything is fine, but they keep selling this shit over and over pretending it is the best solution - this behaviour sucks!!!
The END.