Spent $250 on a cheap multimeter and it lied to me for two months

I bought a no-name autoranging meter off Amazon and it was reading 5 volts low on every measurement. Cost me a whole weekend troubleshooting a perfectly good radio altimeter. Anyone else had a bad meter waste their time?

2 comments

2 Comments

hugos672d ago

My Fluke 87V actually made me kinda snobby about cheap meters for years, I thought people just needed to spend the money. Then I grabbed a $40 Aneng from Amazon as a backup and it read 12.4 volts on a known good car battery that was actually 12.7 volts, nothing huge but annoying. That three tenths of a volt difference would have driven me crazy on something like your radio altimeter, especially if I was trusting it for hours. It totally changed how I see those super cheap meters, they're fine for checking if a wire has power but not for any real precision work. Makes you wonder how many of those things have bad calibration from the factory, you know?

fisher.reese2d ago

Three tenths of a volt is within spec for most cheap meters.