The world's first Bluetooth multimeter - Released by OWON

[amirm]

My read agrees with yours.  You can't evaluate it or say anything negative about it.

I am pretty sure this is legal.  I have dealt with many products that had anti-review provisions.  This is a license to you and if you don't like the terms, you don't have to accept the license.  It is not free speech issue.

Says he as a non-lawyer who has spent a ton of time with corporate lawyers. 

[5ky]

My read agrees with yours.  You can't evaluate it or say anything negative about it.

I am pretty sure this is legal.  I have dealt with many products that had anti-review provisions.  This is a license to you and if you don't like the terms, you don't have to accept the license.  It is not free speech issue.

Says he as a non-lawyer who has spent a ton of time with corporate lawyers. 

Sneaky snakes.  I buy a product with my hard earned money, and in order to utilize it, you have to use their companion software (else it's just a bluetooth adapter that serves no purpose without something on the receiving end to receive the data), and due to a clause in their EULA, nobody is allowed to review it?  That's such horsesh*t.  Hopefully other companies don't jump on this bandwagon, else gone are the days of the informed consumer.

EDIT: typos

[amirm]

I should add that the provision is usually in there to stop a competitor from buying the product, testing it, then bad-mouthing it in their marketing material.  I doubt very much that anyone would knock on your door for evaluating the product as a person, not connected with any company.

[5ky]

I should add that the provision is usually in there to stop a competitor from buying the product, testing it, then bad-mouthing it in their marketing material.  I doubt very much that anyone would knock on your door for evaluating the product as a person, not connected with any company.

Hopefully not, but I'm not going to find out lol. 

They lost out on free advertisement.  (I've used it a little bit already and it seems legit)

[amirm]

Bought one of these when I saw this thread and it arrived a couple of days ago from China.

Good news.  It has a nice large display with good white backlight.  The selector switch is pretty light but very usable and I like that I can easily turn it.  Update speed looks good.

Not so good news.  The backlight has a super short timer.  And the continuity detector with stock probes is worse than horrible.  You can short the probes and half the time nothing happens.  The other half, it may latch in a second or two.  I suspect the probe is responsible for a lot of this as when you short them in ohm settings, it reads all kinds of values until settling down to one ohm or so. 

Anyway, I didn't buy it to have another multimeter added to my collection .  I wanted it for data logging remotely.  Went to look for the Android app and could not find it in the google play market.  Read the doc and it says it an .apk from their site!  Go and download the thing, override Android security to install it and the system shows a boatload of permissions it is asking for including my phone id!  And system access. No way as heck am I going to install some software from China that has not gone through audit of Google for malicious software.

I know it is some pain to go through Google and Apple certification but either do that, or cut down on the permissions it is requesting.  I think it had 6 to 8 things it wanted to access.  Little of that should be required to just talk to a bluetooth device.

I am going to find an old tablet to maybe use with it.  Failing that, it is going to sit in the drawer for now .

[3roomlab]

i think they are hyping up themselves based on the success of mooshimeter? they think that "kid" could do it, we are a bigger entity, we can make more waves? trying to use web trends to "create" a world first which isnt really a world first  . there are so many new users in WWW and it is so easy to dupe them into believing that they are seeing a "world first" ... 

*edit : so that APK did not go thru std google site, how much does a license costs to get it sitting on google play?

[amirm]

As far as I recall for Android it is just a $25 one-time signup fee.  After that, for a free app like this, there is no expense.  So there is no reason than not wanting to put in the effort to get it into their store.

[Hydrawerk]

The input protection looks poor. I seriously doubt it is 1000V CAT III. 

[Wartex]

Can they seriously not find a native English speaker to translate from Chinglish?

I have a theory on this:  They can but they just don't think it is important.

Interesting fact - there are more English speaking people in China than there are in Canada.

Interesting fact - there is more mandarin speakers in Vancouver than in entire china.

[codeboy2k]

Interesting fact - there is more mandarin speakers in Vancouver than in entire china.

I'm not sure about that fact.  It seems unlikely since 70% of the population of China speaks Mandarin(2013 data from [1]), and the population in 2013 was estimated at 1.354 billion people[2]. That means as of 2013, 947 million people speak Mandarin in China.  For Vancouver, we only have census data for 2011, but "In 2011, Metro Vancouver had a population of 2,313,328 living in 949,565 dwellings" [3].  So you either trolled me good or you've been mis-informed yourself

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/06/world/asia/china-400-million-cannot-speak-mandarin.html?_r=0
[2] http://www.worldpopulationstatistics.com/china-population-2013/
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_Vancouver

By the way, Vancouver has bilingual education in Mandarin/English starting at Kindergarten [4], and continuing bilingual Mandarin/English through grade school [5].  That page says it continues in high-school too.  There is also bilingual education offered here at our colleges [6]

[4] http://www.vsb.bc.ca/programs/early-mandarin-bilingual
[5] https://www.vsb.bc.ca/programs/mandarin-bilingual
[6] http://langara.ca/continuing-studies/programs-and-courses/programs/mandarin-school/

[simba15]

Bought one of these when I saw this thread and it arrived a couple of days ago from China.

Good news.  It has a nice large display with good white backlight.  The selector switch is pretty light but very usable and I like that I can easily turn it.  Update speed looks good.

Not so good news.  The backlight has a super short timer.  And the continuity detector with stock probes is worse than horrible.  You can short the probes and half the time nothing happens.  The other half, it may latch in a second or two.  I suspect the probe is responsible for a lot of this as when you short them in ohm settings, it reads all kinds of values until settling down to one ohm or so. 

Anyway, I didn't buy it to have another multimeter added to my collection .  I wanted it for data logging remotely.  Went to look for the Android app and could not find it in the google play market.  Read the doc and it says it an .apk from their site!  Go and download the thing, override Android security to install it and the system shows a boatload of permissions it is asking for including my phone id!  And system access. No way as heck am I going to install some software from China that has not gone through audit of Google for malicious software.

I know it is some pain to go through Google and Apple certification but either do that, or cut down on the permissions it is requesting.  I think it had 6 to 8 things it wanted to access.  Little of that should be required to just talk to a bluetooth device.

I am going to find an old tablet to maybe use with it.  Failing that, it is going to sit in the drawer for now .

Amirm,

Did you ever try a new set of Leads with this meter?

Also do you still have the apk from their site? the new Google Play version has some updates that are not desired. If so please let me know if you can upload a copy.

Is there a better meter with this same price/ features (bluetooth datalog)?

Thanks Tristan

[amirm]

Hi Tristan.  I loaned the unit to my brother so don't have it to test anymore. 

I did get a "Redfish" Bluetooth meter which works excellently other than the garbage probes which I replaced with Probemaster.  It is more expensive though so not sure if it fits your needs.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B013FBA2UI/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1