Mastech Meters, Good/Bad/JustOk ?

[MrAl]

Hello there,

What do you think about Mastech meters, like multimeters, clamp meters, and upper end bench meters?
I see the pricing is very good for some of these meters.

[Fungus]

Are they being regularly discussed here?

If not ... it's because nobody's buying them.

[tooki]

They’re low end stuff. Work fine I guess, but wouldn’t use them on mains (in that I wouldn’t trust any CAT ratings).

I have a manual-ranging Mastech someone gave me, and I’ll use it if all of my Fluke, Keithley, Keysight, and Aneng meters are already in use. (So almost never.)

[rsjsouza]

Mastech is an older brand with original multimeter designs, which I give a lot of credit when compared to the copycat business so popular these days. Their current product line is comprised of several meters with nothing exceptional w.r.t. specifications.

In the past they created the M830B that spawned the swaths of clones around a multitude of brands and used to have a below average track record. However, nowadays they have heaps of products with ETL/Intertek certification, therefore are well above the average of the more popular (at least around EEV) brands.

I have a couple of their meters and the last one I got is much better built than an older one.

[AVGresponding]

I have a Mastech MS2108A AC/DC clamp meter, and am heavily outnumbered by Uni-T 210 users here... I was pleasantly surprised therefore to see Ian Johnston using one in a recent video!

I own Uni-T 139C, and many and varied Flukes, HPAK's, Brymen, Gossen etc, and I'll say it's at least as good (in terms of build quality) as the Uni-T, if not on a par with the premium brands, and has pretty good accuracy.

[Martin72]

At home I got a LCR-Tweezer from them, with frequency up to 10khz and switchable testvoltage.
It´s usable, nothing less but also nothing more.

Martin

[mwb1100]

I used to have a Mastech meter (I forget the model - it looked similar to the MS8340A).  I think I paid $35-$40 for it.  It was fine.  From memory it had above average protection (though almost certainly not to Fluke or Brymen level).  Its display update was pretty slow and the analog bar graph was kind of a joke - it updated about the same rate as the numeric display.

It was really all the meter I would ever have needed, but the siren call of more precision than I could ever use, features I'll never need, and better brand names drew me in...  I donated the Mastech to a high school robotics club.  I don't know what they had been using, but they seemed pretty happy to get it.

[themadhippy]

I've a my64 and its been a good little meter for what i paid for it.

[joeqsmith]

Because Harbor Freight carried them, this is the brand I use for working on my bikes and cars.   The last one I bought has a photometer and I think maybe a sound meter.   Loaded with features.   

I've tried to run them before against my tests and they always have done poorly.  In normal use, I expect a few year out of them.  The display and switch will then start to fail.

[coromonadalix]

They had an "old" model at 22000 counts, it had the 2  hrc fuses and was well designed, good input protection, big battery door to access them

A later model had one of the 2 fuses removed ?


this is the later model.  not to be confused with an bench one  ms3040 "B"

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32668190294.html

and this one i can't vouch for it   haven't seen a teardown

And strangely  some of their models  look like an rebaged Uni-T  meter ??

[MrAl]

Hey thanks for all the great replies.  Good to hear what other people are using and what they like and dont like.  That's exactly what i was hoping for when i asked about this.

I asked because for one thing i have an upper end Mastech bench meter 50000 count and a clamp on meter 6000 count.
The only thing i dont like about they BOTH is that there is no way to turn of that blasted beeping.  When you turn the clamp on meter on it beeps, and for every click of the range set dial you get another beep, and when you press any button another beep, etc.  It's very annoying.  Many microwave ovens are like that too.  Dont they realize that people dont want to hear constant beeping for so many reasons?

I did check the cal on the bench meter with a standard reference of 4.096 volts and it read 4.0961 and a friends $500 BK meter read 4.0960 so i figure it's not all that bad for $250 USD.  The Ohms goes down to 0.01 Ohm which is really nice for checking test leads.  I didnt want to have to pay the usual $400 and above for a meter with 50000 count so i gave this a try.
Funny story though, a friend bought one the same time i bought mine and his display did not work even though the guts did, as shown on his computer.  He had to send it back and that's when he decided to get a BK with the much higher price tag.  It's also 50000 count but it doesnt have cap check, the Mastech does.
I think the Mastech has 55000 count though just dont remember that well now.  It has "self calibration" built in but i dont know the aging factor for that.  i could just keep checking it now and then i guess with a standard voltages reference.

I did see a Mastech hand held for something like $45 USD and it was 20000 count.  I really wanted one but i think they stopped making them or something so i never got one.  I figured that maybe they were not very good so people kept sending them back and so they stopped selling them, but dont know for sure what happened.  Dont remember the model number offhand.

[rsjsouza]

The only thing i dont like about they BOTH is that there is no way to turn of that blasted beeping.  When you turn the clamp on meter on it beeps, and for every click of the range set dial you get another beep, and when you press any button another beep, etc.  It's very annoying.  Many microwave ovens are like that too.  Dont they realize that people dont want to hear constant beeping for so many reasons?

This is a common feature of low cost multimeters - I can think of just a few exceptions. The constant beeping is very annoying indeed.

[GloryToGowron]

Want a down and dirty review from an abusive mechanic?

I use the Mastech MS2115B for locomotive work and overall they have worked quite well. We've been using them for probably 6-7 years now and generally get 3-5 years out of each one before they start acting wanky. It's usually just dirty/worn switch contacts but we had 1 fail completely during this time. For the price (currently $86USD on amazon), this issue is acceptable to me. These meters get the living crap beat out of them physically with very harsh hot and cold temperatures thrown in, so I figure they'll break eventually anyway. The display certainly doesn't like being heated to about 150F, but it recovered just fine after cooling down. Oops!

AC clamp metering works fine, and I think DC is fine as well but it jumps around quite a bit. I know DC clamps are hard to get right and I don't have any other meter to compare this to. I usually only measure high DC currents anyway and for that it is acceptable for our use. If it's +/- 10A at 500A it really doesn't matter for my application. With lower DC current its accuracy is questionably, but will at least give you an indication if current is flowing or not.

These claim 750VAC and 1000VDC input rating. I have not carefully studied the inside to see if it's safe or not, and I'm not a qualified judge anyway, but I can say with confidence that I have had more than 1050VDC on these poor things more than once and they did not explode. I have no idea how high the voltage really got, the display just stops at 1050. I absolutely don't trust these china companies enough to hold the unit in my hand with that much voltage on it, especially when my leads are only 600V rated, and I would never attempt to set up this test live. For this specific test I can set it up with the circuit dead, leave the meter hanging where I can see it, then walk over to the control stand and make the locomotive load. Even if it does explode I'd be out of range of the arcs, possibly get hit with shrapnel, and the locomotive will stop loading on its own if something too horrible goes wrong and high voltage contacts the frame. Good enough for 'murica.

I frequently use these on our 110V mains as well and haven't had any issue with that either. Diode check and continuity work fine, but continuity buzzer is slow. Resistance and capacitance measurements are accurate as far as I can tell.

The frequency counter gives me trouble. The displayed Hertz on the Hz setting and on the VAC setting differ dramatically, and measuring Hz from within the VAC setting is definitely more accurate. I never cared to look into why this is, I just know it's a problem and always use VAC instead of Hz. We use the frequency counter to calculate engine RPM based on the alternator frequency so this needs to be accurate to properly set the engine speeds. We should have a laser tachometer for this, but that costs money, and since we're using cheap meters it's probably self explanatory why we don't have a dedicated tach.

It does beep each time you rotate the knob or push any button which annoys some people. For me it's fine because sometimes I bump the rotary switch on accident and I like to be warned when they happens. I really wish it could default to DC without pushing the FUNC button each time. Looks like most other meters operate the same way, so everyone else gets this wrong too. Defaulting to AC is probably fine for most people, but 99% of what I do is DC so this is very annoying. The rotary switch doesn't stop at OFF and can continue to rotate into no-man's land and cause some strange issues so watch out for that.

Next time I take one of these meters out of service for being worn out I'll probably send it into the mailbag and see what Dave thinks about it. It would be nice to get a professional opinion, and since these can successfully handle over 1050VDC they shouldn't be a total disaster inside.