Why is a decent benchtop DMM more expensive than a scope?

[joeqsmith]

Chauvin Arnoux/Metrix 3055 has used latching relays.    After seeing that top notch German engineering using them, I'm skeptical.   

[bdunham7]

As a lifelong Mac user, I actually share your sentiment. My desktop is a 2008 Mac Pro, and one reason I haven’t replaced it (despite the desperate need for an upgrade) is because nothing they sell now actually really checks all the boxes. (Why are they so against internal drive bays?!?)

It kills me when people presume that I'm anti-Mac because I don't know anything about them.  I've been using them since the Apple II, but have abandoned them as they simply wouldn't do what I needed.  My wife is also a life-long Mac user and while she survived the trauma of having to ditch all of her expensive G4 stuff, she's finally switching to PCs.  I did everything I could to maintain working Macs, including building a Hackintosh that she used for about 5 years, upgrading the last version of the Macbook Pro that had an optical drive and replaceable SSD/memory, but now things are just impossible.  Piles of adapter dongles, active cables for Thunderbolt data rates that nobody should need externally, restrictions on what monitors will work with what. And then the OSX updates that break external adapters designed to overcome these shortcomings. It works for some people, I suppose.

[Fungus]

Despite the 87IV and its subsequent numbers 187/189 work well, I still suspect there was something else (parts availability, manufacturability, some inherent design flaw) behind these models for them to have been retired relatively quickly.

It would be good to know the insider story of the 87IV - both design and demise.

The only meter we really know the story of is the 8060A thanks to D. Taylor who occasionally hangs out here.

[Fungus]

As a lifelong Mac user, I actually share your sentiment. My desktop is a 2008 Mac Pro, and one reason I haven’t replaced it (despite the desperate need for an upgrade) is because nothing they sell now actually really checks all the boxes. (Why are they so against internal drive bays?!?)

It kills me when people presume that I'm anti-Mac because I don't know anything about them.

I've also been accused of not knowing Macs in this thread... despite several of the posts being typed on one.

[bdunham7]

It would be good to know the insider story of the 87IV - both design and demise.

We can speculate.  Design--perhaps some input from Tektronix engineers?  Marketing it as an 87-series I explained as the New Coke syndrome.  Demise--perhaps they used Maxim? Or perhaps the 289 was another New Coke and it didn't taste bad enough to fail in the market.

[Markus2801A]

The Hioki DT4282 is worth a look if you want something with Japanese build quality that feels like a stable bench DMM in a portable package.

It looks very promising! pricing is approx. 600€ - availability is a little bit a hassle.
IMHO Fluke 289 and also the Gossen Series are very high end and well built DMMs but cost to much for what they offer. Brymen and also maybe Uni-T, CEM & Co seems to fill in the gap (maybe also surpass them feature wise) between the high end well known brands and the not so good cheap china type dmms

A decent benchtop would really be nice. I'm considering buying Keithley, Keysight, Siglent maybe something else?

[mawyatt]

As a lifelong Mac user, I actually share your sentiment. My desktop is a 2008 Mac Pro, and one reason I haven’t replaced it (despite the desperate need for an upgrade) is because nothing they sell now actually really checks all the boxes. (Why are they so against internal drive bays?!?)

It kills me when people presume that I'm anti-Mac because I don't know anything about them.  I've been using them since the Apple II, but have abandoned them as they simply wouldn't do what I needed.  My wife is also a life-long Mac user and while she survived the trauma of having to ditch all of her expensive G4 stuff, she's finally switching to PCs.  I did everything I could to maintain working Macs, including building a Hackintosh that she used for about 5 years, upgrading the last version of the Macbook Pro that had an optical drive and replaceable SSD/memory, but now things are just impossible.  Piles of adapter dongles, active cables for Thunderbolt data rates that nobody should need externally, restrictions on what monitors will work with what. And then the OSX updates that break external adapters designed to overcome these shortcomings. It works for some people, I suppose.

Also had an Apple II and the IIe, developed a DSO, AWG and SA for these way back when they first arrived. Later we got the original IBM PC where we developed some CAD tools for circuit analysis to do transforms based upon the Central Limit Theorem, and stayed with the PCs thru DOS and Windows era using arrays of PCs for advanced IC design. However was getting more and more frustrated with the Blue Screen of Death and finally flipped for the 1st Retina Display MBP, then a few years later a Mac Pro (Trash Can type). Learning the Mac OS from the PC experiences was trying at times, but in the long run well worth the effort.

Never an issue with upgrades, went with a larger SSD on the MBP and then added another SSD to the Mac Pro. Have 4 Lacie Thunderbolt drives, 3 are large dual hard disks, and one dual SSD drives, have 2 USB drives that run Time Machine with alternate drives. Also have dual 27" 4K monitors, 1 Apple and 1 Dell. The TB hard drives were refurbs that were refitted with larger Segate HDs, one was fitted with dual SSD. All are RAID type configured directly from the Mac OS without any need for 3rd party software, and Time Machine does it's thing in the background without any supervision or fuss.

All the OS upgrades have not had an issue except that the 10 year old non-monthly-subscription version of Photoshop and Lightroom we paid for no longer works, and I have no intention to move the Adobe subscription base PS anytime soon as GIMP is a fill in. If we start doing the serious ultra-resolution chip imaging again, we'll probably need to bite the bullet and pay Adobe again

BTW our early IC development work migrated from an array of PCs & Sun workstations, to HP Unix machines and finally to custom hardware running Red Hat to support the Cadence tool sets and other software.

Disclaimer, we do have a MBP, Mac Pro with paid Windows 10 installed via Bootcamp, and a PC laptop for use with devices that don't support the Mac OS, however all our "Serious" work is done on the Macs.

So the Apple stuff just works for us without any fuss, and no need for any anti-virus or other 3rd party software, however YMMV!!

Best,

[james_s]

It kills me when people presume that I'm anti-Mac because I don't know anything about them.  I've been using them since the Apple II, but have abandoned them as they simply wouldn't do what I needed.  My wife is also a life-long Mac user and while she survived the trauma of having to ditch all of her expensive G4 stuff, she's finally switching to PCs.  I did everything I could to maintain working Macs, including building a Hackintosh that she used for about 5 years, upgrading the last version of the Macbook Pro that had an optical drive and replaceable SSD/memory, but now things are just impossible.  Piles of adapter dongles, active cables for Thunderbolt data rates that nobody should need externally, restrictions on what monitors will work with what. And then the OSX updates that break external adapters designed to overcome these shortcomings. It works for some people, I suppose.

I feel very similarly. I like my work Macbook quite a bit, but there are just enough limitations that I cannot see myself ever investing my own money in the platform. The dongles are such a pain, every other laptop I can think of has more than just a few USB-C ports to connect peripherals. I really don't like the soldered in memory and storage either. It's thinner than necessary and makes too many compromises to achieve that and the selection of hardware that supports the OS is much too limited so no sale, but I'm not going to fault people who do choose it if it works for them.

[rsjsouza]

The exact point I made a few posts ago... For six, seven years they have been duping their customers with impractical and limiting design decisions.

The mac I use the most is a pre-dongle era Macbook Pro from 2015 with real USB3 and HDMI ports.

[rsjsouza]

Chauvin Arnoux/Metrix 3055 has used latching relays.    After seeing that top notch German engineering using them, I'm skeptical.   

After seeing your posts about the Gossen, I never understood the real reason to use relays on a battery powered meter - although they give the absolute lowest leakage possible, they seem wasteful w.r.t. power consumption, not to mention mechanically fragile.

[rsjsouza]

Despite the 87IV and its subsequent numbers 187/189 work well, I still suspect there was something else (parts availability, manufacturability, some inherent design flaw) behind these models for them to have been retired relatively quickly.

It would be good to know the insider story of the 87IV - both design and demise.

The only meter we really know the story of is the 8060A thanks to D. Taylor who occasionally hangs out here.

Indeed it is a mystery. With a track record that does not evidence any functional shortcoming, another theory could be a managerial change that decided to ditch the product in favour of another with more "differentiation" (MBA wording, naturally).

The background that David Ryan Taylor provided about the 8060A design is precious.

[Trader]

Chauvin Arnoux/Metrix 3055 has used latching relays.    After seeing that top notch German engineering using them, I'm skeptical.   

After seeing your posts about the Gossen, I never understood the real reason to use relays on a battery powered meter - although they give the absolute lowest leakage possible, they seem wasteful w.r.t. power consumption, not to mention mechanically fragile.

https://www.electrical4u.com/latching-relay/

[tooki]

Why?  The 28 II is still available.

So why does the 87Max exist? It's just a 28II in disguise, why confuse the 87V buyers? 

That's a good question.  The 87 Max appears to be a 28II with a high resolution mode.  I haven't done any kind of deep comparison between them.  This smells like a marketing trick to me, and may actually be related to the nature of the problems of certification and acceptability to institutional customers (like government).

The 28 II has the high res mode, too. As far as anyone can tell, there are zero differences between the 28 II and 87V Max.

[tooki]

As a lifelong Mac user, I actually share your sentiment. My desktop is a 2008 Mac Pro, and one reason I haven’t replaced it (despite the desperate need for an upgrade) is because nothing they sell now actually really checks all the boxes. (Why are they so against internal drive bays?!?)

It kills me when people presume that I'm anti-Mac because I don't know anything about them.

I've also been accused of not knowing Macs in this thread... despite several of the posts being typed on one.

Probably because of a factually incorrect statement you made, one which is a common refrain among Mac haters: that you are restricted in what software you can run. That’s simply untrue: you can run whatever software you want, from whatever source. Yes, in later versions of Mac OS you have to change the default settings to run unsigned/unnotarized software, but it absolutely will let you do it.

[joeqsmith]

Chauvin Arnoux/Metrix 3055 has used latching relays.    After seeing that top notch German engineering using them, I'm skeptical.   

After seeing your posts about the Gossen, I never understood the real reason to use relays on a battery powered meter - although they give the absolute lowest leakage possible, they seem wasteful w.r.t. power consumption, not to mention mechanically fragile.

https://www.electrical4u.com/latching-relay/

I don't know anything about the 3055's French meter outside of asking about the relays.  With the Gossen, they have no way to detect the state of the relay.  If they are in the wrong state, the meter may not read correctly.  We end up with cases where potential lethal levels are present at the input and the meter shows a few volts.  The relay can be controlled remotely (BLE interface).  This also seems like a really bad idea.   

[HKJ]

After seeing your posts about the Gossen, I never understood the real reason to use relays on a battery powered meter - although they give the absolute lowest leakage possible, they seem wasteful w.r.t. power consumption, not to mention mechanically fragile.

Power consumptions is not an issue, it is set/reset relays, i.e. they only need power to change state. This is also the issue Joe is complaining about: A strong magnetic field may change the relay without the meter knowing it.
The strong magnetic field can be from a magnetic hanger for the DMM (If placed at the most sensitive location on the DMM), i.e. if you use a magnetic hanger you DMM may show a wrong value. Personally I do not see it as a big issue because I have never needed a magnetic hanger for my DMMs.

[kcbrown]

All the OS upgrades have not had an issue except that the 10 year old non-monthly-subscription version of Photoshop and Lightroom we paid for no longer works, and I have no intention to move the Adobe subscription base PS anytime soon as GIMP is a fill in. If we start doing the serious ultra-resolution chip imaging again, we'll probably need to bite the bullet and pay Adobe again

Well, then you're lucky.  Or, more likely, I'm unlucky.  I've had a problem of one kind or another with every major upgrade of MacOS.  And Windows.  And Linux.  Such upgrades always break something I rely on.  Most of the time, such breakage is an annoyance.  Sometimes it's critical.  But it's consistent.  So I've basically stopped doing upgrades on bare metal hardware except when I have no choice in the matter.

Instead, I now use virtual machines for everything I do save for gaming.  With a virtual machine, I can snapshot the thing and perform whatever upgrades I want, and if those fail I can simply revert back to the snapshot.

And I use Linux (the Unity interface on Ubuntu) for almost everything, because when things break I at least have some hope of being able to fix it myself, and it hasn't limited what I can do with it for quite some time (save, again, for gaming).  And it, too, doesn't need an antivirus program or some other kludge like that in order to keep going safely and reliably.

[james_s]

Probably because of a factually incorrect statement you made, one which is a common refrain among Mac haters: that you are restricted in what software you can run. That’s simply untrue: you can run whatever software you want, from whatever source. Yes, in later versions of Mac OS you have to change the default settings to run unsigned/unnotarized software, but it absolutely will let you do it.

That is super annoying, and it seems to re-enable itself after a while when I have disabled it. The biggest issue I have with that particular feature is I don't trust Apple to not make it more restrictive in the future. Already I cannot find a way to permanently disable the OS upgrade nag. There are few things in modern technology that irritate me as much as forced update and update nags that I can't disable. I will upgrade MY devices on MY terms, period, this is not negotiable. I'm not interested in being lectured about the risks.

[kcbrown]

And that doesn't clue you in on why Fluke doesn't do major changes to their existing models, and instead releases completely new models?

I'm not asking for major changes to anything, I'd be quite happy with a completely new model. Right now they're not doing either.

Where's Fluke's technological tour-de-force?

Well, more precisely, they're not doing a meter that targets the market you're in.  Based on what you've said here in this thread, what you seem to be looking for is a handheld meter with bench capabilities that sips batteries and doesn't cost what a top-tier bench meter would cost.   That, it seems, is what you mean by a "technological tour-de-force".  Of course, if you mean something else, then you should describe exactly what you mean.

Whatever they produce as a "technological tour-de-force" would quickly be obsoleted due to technological progress.  Which is to say, the "technological tour-de-force" you pine for wouldn't remain one for long (certainly not for the amount of time most of their meters remain in production), unless it were truly exceptional in some way that is very difficult to replicate (such as precision, which requires temperature stability), which would make it too expensive to sell into the market you're in, which means it wouldn't be worth producing for that purpose.

The problem here is that "exceptional in a difficult to replicate way" almost automatically means "expensive".  The sole exception is a truly novel breakthrough that they could patent, one which would give the meter some capability that nothing else has.  But expecting that is quite obviously unreasonable.  Breakthroughs like that don't happen on demand, and in any case the very first product such a thing would likely be put into would likely be a top-tier meter, i.e. something near the top of the price range.

And in any case, bench meter capabilities will always command a minimum of a bench meter price.  How can it be otherwise?  A bench meter doesn't have some of the constraints that a handheld does (like power draw), so to put bench meter capabilities into a handheld will require a compromise.  And if you're not going to compromise on the capabilities, then you're going to have to compromise on the price (i.e., pay more).


So no matter how you slice it, what it seems you're really asking for here isn't something that Fluke will deliver.  Why should they?  They don't play in the "latest technology" product market, at least for handhelds.  I don't know that they ever have, really.  They build durable, functional meters for the long run, ones that can be depended on for decades.  That's what they've built their reputation on.  Why would they want to change that to satisfy what is likely a tiny market (a handheld with bench meter capabilities that would wind up commanding a minimum of a bench meter price and thus not sell very well)?

But if it's really a bench meter you want, then Fluke has you covered with the 8845A or 8808A.  What's wrong with those?

[Fungus]

.... unless it were truly exceptional in some way that is very difficult to replicate (such as precision, which requires temperature stability), which would make it too expensive to sell into the market you're in, which means it wouldn't be worth producing for that purpose.

Not necessarily. We now live in a software world, a meter could have an internal temperature sensor and be calibrated for a range of different temperatures (eg. at 5 degree intervals), then interpolated. That could even reduce the BOM by reducing the need for components with very high temperature stability.

More digits is nice but not necessarily a goal. I've already mentioned some areas where the 87V is out of date. A "tour-de-force" meter would be able to measure more than a 10mF capacitor and would have more than 20hKz AC bandwidth.

Auto-ranging could also be instant, or at least "Damn, that's fast!" speed. I've got an Aneng that can measure a voltage faster than the continuity test on some other meters. You can literally tap the probe on the wire as fast as you can move your hand and you'll have a hard time not getting a reading.

Really small resistances, really small capacitances... another area where a "tour-de-force" meter could shine.

In short, I'm not imagining a smartphone with a new model every six months, just the best possible "Fluke-like" meter using today's tech.

(And the ability to select DC current mode as default)

The problem here is that "exceptional in a difficult to replicate way" almost automatically means "expensive".

Simply not true. Fluke currently sells a $100 multimeter with roughly the same build as an 87V. It use the same fuses, the same type of case, pretty much the same everything. Our Joe torture tested one and it hold up perfectly to the tests both electrically and mechanically.

OK, it doesn't have the same laser-trimmed resistor thingy inside it, but the difference in BOM makes doesn't justify a $350 markup.

They don't play in the "latest technology" product market, at least for handhelds.  I don't know that they ever have, really.

 

Of course they have! Back in the day Fluke innovated more than just about any other company. How do you think the 8060A and even the 87 came about? That was Fluke pushing the absolute limits with custom silicon, etc.

The last 25 years? The phrase "resting on their laurels" comes to mind.

(the 8060A still thrashes the 87V on many specifications - speed, AC bandwidth, accuracy... it only does volts/ohms/amps/continuity though)

[bdunham7]

Simply not true. Fluke currently sells a $100 multimeter with roughly the same build as an 87V. It use the same fuses, the same type of case, pretty much the same everything. Our Joe torture tested one and it hold up perfectly to the tests both electrically and mechanically.

Which one is that??

[Fungus]

Simply not true. Fluke currently sells a $100 multimeter with roughly the same build as an 87V. It use the same fuses, the same type of case, pretty much the same everything. Our Joe torture tested one and it hold up perfectly to the tests both electrically and mechanically.

Which one is that??

15B+

(OK, Joe tested the slightly more expensive 17B+ but the internal build is the same...)

[bdunham7]

15B+

(OK, Joe tested the slightly more expensive 17B+ but the internal build is the same...)

Oh please!  'Roughly the same build'--OK it has 4 jacks and some yellow plastic.  The 17B+ does seem like a decent buy even though it is gray-market here and unsupported--just like Brymen.  But hardly on par with the 87V.

[joeqsmith]

17B+ is not TRMS and not the same resolution.  Still it's one tough meter and held up to my life cycle test better than any other I looked at.   

[james_s]

TRMS is mandatory to me. I got by for a long time with an averaging meter (Fluke 29) but I it couldn't properly measure the output of modified sine inverters and UPSs, and it couldn't accurately measure the current of HID lamps.