Hi - I'm sick of using £5 Chinese DMM's off ebay. They don't seem to last 5 minutes before the test leads break, and I don't trust their accuracy much. Is there a decent DIY level DMM - maybe around £40-50 - which anyone could recommend? I know I'm not going to get a Fluke for that, but I just want something sturdy & reliable. Testing requirements are mainly home (UK 230v) and car (12v), just ordinary stuff about continuity, resistance, volts and milliamps etc. Thanks PS - Have tried anglegrinder... :-)

You might have to approach it in a different way. Even my rather expensive Fluke came with what I consider poor leads - rather stiff PVC. So I upgraded them to silicone rubber ones. But they can cost rather more than many DVMs complete. It also depends to some extend the main use. If you're going to use it for car fault finding, an automotive one will usually be designed to measure higher currents. And have things like duty cycle and so on. Auto ranging, minimum and peak hold can also be useful, as is auto power off. You'll usually get much better value on one direct from the far east than a branded one bought locally. I bought one specifically for car use, similar to this one:- Snag is the design changes so often it's difficult to give an up to date recommendation based on actual experience. If I did have to choose, and just have one, it would be my Fluke. Maybe used, if I couldn't afford new. But again, I've heard reports they're not as well made as once.

Decent Digital Multimeter for DIY?

Apr 06, 2015 84 Replies

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Cursitor Doom 11 years ago

Yes, well, each to their own. YMMV.

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Mike Tomlinson 11 years ago

En el artículo , Cursitor Doom escribió:

Forms a probe to poke under the EHT cap

to insulate the chain of resistors and/or probe from the prober

Evidently also somewhat lacking in lateral thinking.

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Mike Tomlinson 11 years ago

En el artículo , Cursitor Doom escribió:

The link is broken over two lines. It's not exactly rocket science to piece it together and paste it into a browser.

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Mike Tomlinson 11 years ago

En el artículo , Cursitor Doom escribió:

Stupid, more like.

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Johnny B Good 11 years ago

My apologies to CD. I'm using Pan which I'm now 'panning' on account it unforgivingly line wrapped a web page address.

As you point out, it's not rocket science but all the same it is a damned nuisance when a news client fails to suppress the line wrap on web links.

Btw, Mike, what did you think of the meter? Just to give you an idea of the meter's size, the box dimensions are 135mm wide by 160mm long and

54mm deep.

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