No problem. I just wanted to show that if you don't have a big budget you can still get something reasonable for very little money. Thanks for watching.
Thank you very much. I try my best to make interesting videos that are edited well and straight to the point with no fluff. It takes a lot of work to make a good video. Thanks for watching and thanks for the sub.
It's surprising how "perfectly adequate" most of the really cheap meters are these days. But, I agree that those auto-set meters can be pretty easy to confuse. Even a few quality steps above the one yo uwere messing with.
Yes, very good results for virtually no money. Electronics has advanced so much. I was not impressed with that auto function 'smart meter' at all. Imagine how annoyed you would be if you were trying to measure low level DC voltages and it all of a sudden switched to ohms and started injecting voltage into your circuit. Very bad.
17:30 I noticed you had a Farnell PSU in the background..... The last time I saw these was back in the early 80's in College. I always like them....... If memory serves, the switches on the Farnell don't look right, I remember them being big flat lever ones...... We had 20MHz Hameg and Gould CRO's too.....(Coooo 😏) What an eye opener when I went on to GEC Coventry and everything was either HP or Tektronix or Fluke.....(They had a 4 1/2 digit Fluke push button multimeter.....in 1983 ! ) must have cost a fortune) Nice review by the way Jazzy
The Farnell power supply was bought cheap off eBay and was known to have issues. The original flat rocker switches have been replaced with not very good quality toggle switches which have failed. This power supply will be a project for a future repair video. I don't think I can get the exact original switches but will try and get something similar. HP, Tektronix and Fluke is good stuff but very expensive. Thanks for watching.
If it's made with 1% resistors, even if calibrated dead on for one range, it could be 1% out on others, also, 1 or 2% accuracy is better than you could read on a traditional analog meter, even with a mirror scale
That's why I want to try the ready built unit that uses surface mount components that might be more accurate. Clearly the range resistors on the kit one are not great.
The more basic meters would be fine for amateur hobbyists, 2% accuracy is fine. I have several cheepo meters, my favourite is a UNI-T UT33D, which is currently about €15. I have used far more expensive meters, but that was when I worked in a professional laboratory, now I am a hobbyist!
Yes, this was all about showing you can get something reasonable for very little money. If you can afford it then something slightly better than these meters would always be worth having, as in anything. Thanks for watching.
Got the Aneng 850 for only €3 on Ali. Amazing price. You wonder how it's even possible. And I really like the large, clear display. Great throwaway meter.
They are so cheap that I wanted to see if it was worthwhile for basic low voltage hobby use. It appears they are good for this and at this price they are 'throwaway', as you say, when they go wrong. Ideal for a beginner hobbyist with a small budget.
I you did a consistency/endurance- test on these, I bet the conclusion would be that none of them are worth even GBP 5,- 😆 May I suggest that you look at the Uni-T auto-ranging multimeters. 😉 ( Like you say in the video + GBP 25,- is the minimum you want to spent. ) If you select something from their "better" line-up the Uni-T offer excellent value. Fx. Uni-T UT61A, UT61B, UT61C, UT61D & UT61E. ( Different features, Resolution, Precision and RMS frequency response. ) From a value perspective these Uni-T meters performs great and will last +10 times longer than GBP 7,- crap-o-meters from Temu. Btw. I'm an electronics engineer with +30 years of experience as a Pro. I use Hi-end equipment every day. A couple of years ago I bought the Uni-T UT61C as a gift and was impressed with the quality. 👍 ( I'm not sponsored by or affiliated with Uni-T 😂 I just want to save you from wasting GBP 7,- )
This was just an exercise to see if you could get anything really cheap that gave reasonable results, and some of them do. Only useful for some people who are on a very limited budget. I can imagine they will not stand up to constant use. For instance the input sockets are really poor quality. I am aware of the Uni-T meters and know they offer a very good product for the money. We will look at some of those in the future. I have a couple of Datron 1065's that need service and also a Solartron 7150. If I need anything better than that I have friend who has better still. Thanks for your insight and thanks for watching.
Flukes are very nice meters. This exercise was just to see if it was worth considering even buying them at all for a beginner hobbyist who doesn't have a lot of money. It appears it can be worth it just as a starter meter until they can afford something better.
There is a link in the video description as to where to buy it. It's currently out of stock though, but you can put your name down to be notified when they are back in stock again.
@@JazzyJane_uk the tester or a five dollar 5.000V calibration gizmo accurate to 0.0005V? ;-) pretty sure that's not gonna happen on the latter, and FNIRSI FNB58 is great for the former. The USB tester in question is NOT Stable enough itself to be able to discern a stable calibration test voltage. It Never arrives at the result text, I furgot what it says, sry. You Still ROCK!
best advice i can give from 35 years of experiance , anyone that can , save up for a fluke 17b plus or something of that quality level, youll never regret it. dont get suckered by "features" a classic is if its got transistor hfe test its complete crap! its vital to be able to trust your readings every day, every year and a real point i never see mentioned on youtube ,very relavent for a hobbyist , no matter how many times youve grossly overloaded it you can trust it 100% and also very important pay high for leads , how many times have you had to wiggle the 4mm jacks and dig in hard to a solder joint or copper trace to get a stable reading ? thats the crap leads dance , even the fluke 17b+ comes with cheap nasty leads through many sellers day one reviews are not long term stability reviews
A lot of people can't afford the cost of a Fluke, especially if they are just starting out. This exercise was just to see if really cheap multimeters were any good at all. Even at this very cheap price point they still give reasonable results. I don't recommend any of these meters for mains use because they have little to no protection but for somebody just messing around on a breadboard with low voltage these are fine, until you can afford something better. That was the whole point of this exercise.
I had a bit of a rant because I totally disagree with this kind of stance and I explained why, but now it seems I have to explain further, You take on responsibility to not missinform, look at People's comments, they are encouraged to buy one of these meters now, you chose to demonstrate static basic tests that don't expose why these are a waste of money they don't have, not being able too afford a good one is exactly the reason they need to save up because their purchase has to be a good consistent and trustable one, and last many overloads, the hard truth is.. £60 is the noise floor of meters, I realise the fluke is a big stretch so I revise my stance £60 is roughly the noise floor for meters but there's another choice, and much cheaper analog, it's much easyer to get a good cheap analog
This is only part 1. There will be more parts. A modern Fluke would beat these hands down, but a more expensive Aneng will come very close to a Fluke but will not have the same level of overload protection a Fluke will have. We may feature a Fluke in a future part for comparison. Thanks for watching.
Cheap multimeter comparison by "brand" is tricky because the differences are quite big even among the same models of the same brand. But usually price reflects quality very well.
This exercise was just to see if it was worth considering even buying them at all for a beginner hobbyist who doesn't have a lot of money. It appears it can be worth it just as a starter meter until they can afford something better. Thanks for watching.
They are capable of far more than that even at this cheap price. They are using old technology that would have been very good in it's day. Thanks for watching.
A lot of the time I still grab 'old faithful' which was a fairly cheap by the standards of the time Micronta from Tandy which was one of the then new and cutting edge LCD displays. It's pretty much indestructible and reads within 1 or 2% of my bench meter. I suspect that a lot of the cheap Chinese meters are still using the same chipset as my 30+ year old Micronta
Yes, I suspect there is an Intersil 7107 clone chip under that black resin blob on the PCB. You can still buy the full sized 40 pin Intersil 7106 (LED) and 7107 (LCD) chips. They are used a lot in the bigger cheap digital panel meter kits. Thanks for watching.
Too expensive, I bought three multimeters for less than one Euro... And all were nice.😊 If you have three multimeters, you are always in doubt. If you have only one multimeter, you are always in trust.😂😂
Awesome, I am the first thumb up. Surprised England has no Imperial values: My Alimeter shows Victorian Short Volts, my Temu has Opium style Long Volts, the Banggood meter shows Bahth Amperes, and my French Metre has Fried HOhmages. But Freestate Bavaria created a Robert Bosch Saegezahn Meter with Prussia measuring resistance in Siemens only. But Italy has the frog indicator. Now better ask Clive on how short the indications are in Scotland?
Seems strange to me, these obviously have a sort of CPU (and with a wee bit of RAM) theese could probably be calibrated before they leave the factory... But then again, with components that is far from their spec it could be impossible?
These are made so cheaply and sold so cheaply that nothing like calibration is done, but they are mostly still great value for money if you haven't got a big hobby budget. That is what this series is about.
I've had a couple of those DT-830B - type meters, they start off fine but a year on, after only occasional light use etc they go do-lally, displaying results "which can't be right".& are not. Even given no abuse & changing the battery. If anyone knows how to "reset" a DT830B, please post here, although I could afford a Fluke I just can't justify £££ on it
Not a great deal inside most of them to go wrong. Haven't had them long enough to see the problems you've had. Will be interesting to see if they do fail after a year or so. There is nothing you can do with them except maybe clean the rotary switch contacts. You could also check the solder joints on the input sockets in case they have broken and possibly get some better test leads as well. Otherwise I wonder if the main embedded IC under the solder blob is failing. Flukes are nice but I think they are overpriced. Something like a Brymen would be a good alternative to a Fluke. The more expensive Anengs (£20 - £40) are very good and very accurate. Then there's always the Uni-T meters as well. This whole test was just to see if you can get anything reasonable for virtually no money, which you can, but if they start failing after a year, maybe not.
@@JazzyJane_uk thanks for your input & I will try your suggestions. I used to use a kind of poor man's AvoMeter clone back in the day, it would still be running even now if I hadn't dropped it, the analogue types were a bit vulnerable of course
You can't get that for a fiver or slightly more, lol. Flukes are very good but seem overpriced to me. There are a lot of very good handheld multimeters that are just as good as the Flukes, like the Brymans etc.
These 830-Style DMMs are a very old design ( > 30 years?). Decent 4000/6000 count DMMs are way more better. Autoranging with manual override are handy. Also avoid these smart-meter trash. But to be be honest, a 830-Style DMM can do most jobs.
Yes indeed they are very old designs. I suspect there is an Intersil 7107 clone chip under that black resin blob on the PCB. This video was just to show that even for virtually no money you can still get something reasonable. The slightly more expensive Aneng's, like the red one I show in the video are very good and extremely accurate for the low price they cost. Thanks for watching.
Great review, looking forward to part 2!
The next set are from Amazon. Already have them. Just have to make the video.
Exceptional review of these cheap meters and the dm850 seems very nice, thank you for sharing!
It was just to show that if you don't have big budget for your hobby you can still get something reasonable for very little money.
I'll bet those 3 manual ranging meters share the same chip and basic schematic. Nice job on the review.
Yes I'm sure they do. More than likely an Intersil 7107 chip clone
Interesting, thanks for putting in the work for us.
No problem. I just wanted to show that if you don't have a big budget you can still get something reasonable for very little money. Thanks for watching.
best electro channel going
Thank you very much. I try my best to make interesting videos that are edited well and straight to the point with no fluff. It takes a lot of work to make a good video.
Thanks for watching and thanks for the sub.
It's surprising how "perfectly adequate" most of the really cheap meters are these days.
But, I agree that those auto-set meters can be pretty easy to confuse. Even a few quality steps above the one yo uwere messing with.
Yes, very good results for virtually no money. Electronics has advanced so much. I was not impressed with that auto function 'smart meter' at all. Imagine how annoyed you would be if you were trying to measure low level DC voltages and it all of a sudden switched to ohms and started injecting voltage into your circuit. Very bad.
hey ! Thanks for the video ! I just jumped in ! Greetings from Germany 🙂 I saved your channel, great yes 🙂
Awesome! Thank you!
The tests are very interesting. Just because it's cheap doesn't always mean it doesn't do its job. lol
Yes, even the cheapest meters are very useable.
17:30 I noticed you had a Farnell PSU in the background..... The last time I saw these was back in the early 80's in College.
I always like them.......
If memory serves, the switches on the Farnell don't look right, I remember them being big flat lever ones......
We had 20MHz Hameg and Gould CRO's too.....(Coooo 😏)
What an eye opener when I went on to GEC Coventry and everything was either HP or Tektronix or Fluke.....(They had a 4 1/2 digit Fluke push button multimeter.....in 1983 ! ) must have cost a fortune)
Nice review by the way Jazzy
The Farnell power supply was bought cheap off eBay and was known to have issues. The original flat rocker switches have been replaced with not very good quality toggle switches which have failed. This power supply will be a project for a future repair video. I don't think I can get the exact original switches but will try and get something similar.
HP, Tektronix and Fluke is good stuff but very expensive.
Thanks for watching.
If it's made with 1% resistors, even if calibrated dead on for one range, it could be 1% out on others, also, 1 or 2% accuracy is better than you could read on a traditional analog meter, even with a mirror scale
That's why I want to try the ready built unit that uses surface mount components that might be more accurate. Clearly the range resistors on the kit one are not great.
The more basic meters would be fine for amateur hobbyists, 2% accuracy is fine. I have several cheepo meters, my favourite is a UNI-T UT33D, which is currently about €15. I have used far more expensive meters, but that was when I worked in a professional laboratory, now I am a hobbyist!
Yes, this was all about showing you can get something reasonable for very little money. If you can afford it then something slightly better than these meters would always be worth having, as in anything. Thanks for watching.
Got the Aneng 850 for only €3 on Ali. Amazing price. You wonder how it's even possible. And I really like the large, clear display. Great throwaway meter.
They are so cheap that I wanted to see if it was worthwhile for basic low voltage hobby use. It appears they are good for this and at this price they are 'throwaway', as you say, when they go wrong. Ideal for a beginner hobbyist with a small budget.
I you did a consistency/endurance- test on these, I bet the conclusion would be that none of them are worth even GBP 5,- 😆
May I suggest that you look at the Uni-T auto-ranging multimeters. 😉
( Like you say in the video + GBP 25,- is the minimum you want to spent. )
If you select something from their "better" line-up the Uni-T offer excellent value.
Fx. Uni-T UT61A, UT61B, UT61C, UT61D & UT61E. ( Different features, Resolution, Precision and RMS frequency response. )
From a value perspective these Uni-T meters performs great and will last +10 times longer than GBP 7,- crap-o-meters from Temu.
Btw. I'm an electronics engineer with +30 years of experience as a Pro. I use Hi-end equipment every day.
A couple of years ago I bought the Uni-T UT61C as a gift and was impressed with the quality. 👍
( I'm not sponsored by or affiliated with Uni-T 😂 I just want to save you from wasting GBP 7,- )
This was just an exercise to see if you could get anything really cheap that gave reasonable results, and some of them do. Only useful for some people who are on a very limited budget. I can imagine they will not stand up to constant use. For instance the input sockets are really poor quality.
I am aware of the Uni-T meters and know they offer a very good product for the money. We will look at some of those in the future.
I have a couple of Datron 1065's that need service and also a Solartron 7150. If I need anything better than that I have friend who has better still.
Thanks for your insight and thanks for watching.
Glad to have my Fluke 87 series, served me very well over the years, good review but i definitely wouldn't be in the market for these😮.
Flukes are very nice meters. This exercise was just to see if it was worth considering even buying them at all for a beginner hobbyist who doesn't have a lot of money. It appears it can be worth it just as a starter meter until they can afford something better.
re. the voltage calibrator
One USB Tester out there Requires 5.000V input to perform calibration. where can one buy one?
You Rock!
There is a link in the video description as to where to buy it. It's currently out of stock though, but you can put your name down to be notified when they are back in stock again.
@@JazzyJane_uk the tester or a five dollar 5.000V calibration gizmo accurate to 0.0005V? ;-) pretty sure that's not gonna happen on the latter, and FNIRSI FNB58 is great for the former.
The USB tester in question is NOT Stable enough itself to be able to discern a stable calibration test voltage. It Never arrives at the result text, I furgot what it says, sry.
You Still ROCK!
best advice i can give from 35 years of experiance , anyone that can , save up for a fluke 17b plus or something of that quality level, youll never regret it. dont get suckered by "features"
a classic is if its got transistor hfe test its complete crap!
its vital to be able to trust your readings every day, every year and a real point i never see mentioned on youtube ,very relavent for a hobbyist , no matter how many times youve grossly overloaded it you can trust it 100%
and also very important pay high for leads , how many times have you had to wiggle the 4mm jacks and dig in hard to a solder joint or copper trace to get a stable reading ? thats the crap leads dance , even the fluke 17b+ comes with cheap nasty leads through many sellers
day one reviews are not long term stability reviews
A lot of people can't afford the cost of a Fluke, especially if they are just starting out. This exercise was just to see if really cheap multimeters were any good at all. Even at this very cheap price point they still give reasonable results.
I don't recommend any of these meters for mains use because they have little to no protection but for somebody just messing around on a breadboard with low voltage these are fine, until you can afford something better. That was the whole point of this exercise.
I had a bit of a rant because I totally disagree with this kind of stance and I explained why, but now it seems I have to explain further, You take on responsibility to not missinform, look at People's comments, they are encouraged to buy one of these meters now, you chose to demonstrate static basic tests that don't expose why these are a waste of money they don't have, not being able too afford a good one is exactly the reason they need to save up because their purchase has to be a good consistent and trustable one, and last many overloads, the hard truth is.. £60 is the noise floor of meters, I realise the fluke is a big stretch so I revise my stance £60 is roughly the noise floor for meters but there's another choice, and much cheaper analog, it's much easyer to get a good cheap analog
Nice test and review. It would have been good to see a fluke as a comparison.
This is only part 1. There will be more parts. A modern Fluke would beat these hands down, but a more expensive Aneng will come very close to a Fluke but will not have the same level of overload protection a Fluke will have. We may feature a Fluke in a future part for comparison. Thanks for watching.
👍👍
Thank you.
Damn, a PCW in the background!😁
Yes! We'll be taking a look at that soon. Thanks for watching.
Cheap multimeter comparison by "brand" is tricky because the differences are quite big even among the same models of the same brand. But usually price reflects quality very well.
This exercise was just to see if it was worth considering even buying them at all for a beginner hobbyist who doesn't have a lot of money. It appears it can be worth it just as a starter meter until they can afford something better. Thanks for watching.
Thank you for the review. Bangs for bucks, it's only OK to test some batteries and a car battery charging
They are capable of far more than that even at this cheap price. They are using old technology that would have been very good in it's day. Thanks for watching.
A lot of the time I still grab 'old faithful' which was a fairly cheap by the standards of the time Micronta from Tandy which was one of the then new and cutting edge LCD displays. It's pretty much indestructible and reads within 1 or 2% of my bench meter. I suspect that a lot of the cheap Chinese meters are still using the same chipset as my 30+ year old Micronta
Yes, I suspect there is an Intersil 7107 clone chip under that black resin blob on the PCB.
You can still buy the full sized 40 pin Intersil 7106 (LED) and 7107 (LCD) chips. They are used a lot in the bigger cheap digital panel meter kits. Thanks for watching.
The ZOYI Handheld scope is pretty darn beefy. I have not had a chancew to validate calibration, tho.
Too expensive, I bought three multimeters for less than one Euro... And all were nice.😊
If you have three multimeters, you are always in doubt. If you have only one multimeter, you are always in trust.😂😂
Only one who has true rms,!
Awesome, I am the first thumb up. Surprised England has no Imperial values: My Alimeter shows Victorian Short Volts, my Temu has Opium style Long Volts, the Banggood meter shows Bahth Amperes, and my French Metre has Fried HOhmages. But Freestate Bavaria created a Robert Bosch Saegezahn Meter with Prussia measuring resistance in Siemens only.
But Italy has the frog indicator. Now better ask Clive on how short the indications are in Scotland?
Seems strange to me, these obviously have a sort of CPU (and with a wee bit of RAM) theese could probably be calibrated before they leave the factory...
But then again, with components that is far from their spec it could be impossible?
These are made so cheaply and sold so cheaply that nothing like calibration is done, but they are mostly still great value for money if you haven't got a big hobby budget. That is what this series is about.
I've had a couple of those DT-830B - type meters, they start off fine but a year on, after only occasional light use etc they go do-lally, displaying results "which can't be right".& are not. Even given no abuse & changing the battery. If anyone knows how to "reset" a DT830B, please post here, although I could afford a Fluke I just can't justify £££ on it
Not a great deal inside most of them to go wrong. Haven't had them long enough to see the problems you've had. Will be interesting to see if they do fail after a year or so. There is nothing you can do with them except maybe clean the rotary switch contacts. You could also check the solder joints on the input sockets in case they have broken and possibly get some better test leads as well. Otherwise I wonder if the main embedded IC under the solder blob is failing.
Flukes are nice but I think they are overpriced. Something like a Brymen would be a good alternative to a Fluke. The more expensive Anengs (£20 - £40) are very good and very accurate. Then there's always the Uni-T meters as well.
This whole test was just to see if you can get anything reasonable for virtually no money, which you can, but if they start failing after a year, maybe not.
@@JazzyJane_uk thanks for your input & I will try your suggestions. I used to use a kind of poor man's AvoMeter clone back in the day, it would still be running even now if I hadn't dropped it, the analogue types were a bit vulnerable of course
Fluke 17 B plus LOL
You can't get that for a fiver or slightly more, lol. Flukes are very good but seem overpriced to me. There are a lot of very good handheld multimeters that are just as good as the Flukes, like the Brymans etc.
These 830-Style DMMs are a very old design ( > 30 years?). Decent 4000/6000 count DMMs are way more better. Autoranging with manual override are handy. Also avoid these smart-meter trash. But to be be honest, a 830-Style DMM can do most jobs.
Yes indeed they are very old designs. I suspect there is an Intersil 7107 clone chip under that black resin blob on the PCB. This video was just to show that even for virtually no money you can still get something reasonable. The slightly more expensive Aneng's, like the red one I show in the video are very good and extremely accurate for the low price they cost. Thanks for watching.
@@JazzyJane_uk No problems. Your videos (and audio!) are excellent! The DMM 830-DIY-kit was also a good idea.
If you have a $10 head, buy a $10 helmet
Same with tools