This meter really looks way to crippled to justify that price point...
Unfortunately I'm beginning to believe this. I was really hoping for a good general purpose bench meter, not something half way between a high end hand held and a systems meter. The reality is it is hard to find a good bench meter for the repair bench that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
In this sense a bench meter has to have a large digit display as the number one feature. The a reasonable range of features and performance. Honeslty I would have preferred one less digit and a $400 price tag.
Sure, they don't want to loose customers of the big toys to this cheaper alternative, but it just makes a pretty uninteresting product. If you can afford the little gap to the DMM6500 you definitly have a loooot more value for your money ;/
More like a worth less product. I mean honestly how many educational institutions will be buying this meter, especially on tight budgets. HPAK had two choices here, make a ≤ $400 meter or fully enable this meter as a replacement for an existing model. The high end can easily be managed by offering better specs and system meter features.
What bothers me here is that HPAK apparently already has the software done for many of the missing features. I hate to say this but they are effectively handing a very large market to the competition.
With that autoranging with open probes: If you go to lunch and accidentally leave the meter on the relays will be done before you get to dessert...
Obviously a partially tested meter.
Part of my disappointment comes from the reality that i really like a few of the concepts in the meter. The large display with big digits is very desirable. So far the actually panel lay out looks OK. But then you have a continuity function that you can't hear.
The B&K 2831E is a better meter at less than $400 for the educational market. Frankly it is a better meter for general use on most repair benches. for people that need the resolution and accuracy you would be going upscale by a significant amount so this EDU meter wouldn't come into consideration anyways.
So agree 100% big disappointment.