You specifically mentioned 1.7V lithiums. I guess you are going to discharge them a bit or put a schottky or germanium diode in series with them. Because some meters like Brymen 235 don't accept them. At least they'll not leak.
I didn't know that Brymen meters had problems with Lithium batteries. I'll check back with Brymen and ask them if those are okay for that meter.
I haven't used many meters personally but a few meters that I have used so far that have high input impedance can do that trick (shows higher voltage when input jack is connected to phase than to the neutral).
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention that in my humble opinion, it is always best to use fused probes like Fluke FTP with industrial mains regardless what meter someone is using.
I have noticed that too but not sure if I would trust this to work reliably every time - sometimes the readings are pretty similar. My favourite trick so far was remove the leads from the DMM touch one of the terminals with a disconnected lead and then use the NCV against the lead to detect the phase. While that works, the brymen's single probe voltage detection is more convenient. Of course it is not an indispensable feature, you could also always use a regular DMM + one of those
flim-flam-sticks, I really like the swiss-army-knife nature of that particular brymen model it just replaces a lot of dedicated tools.
Sorry about that. I used it only as an example and suggested only for industrial work. There are a few other manufacturers in Europe offering fused probes, fused leads and even small fused attachment that connects directly to the meter and accepts normal probes.
Thanks for mentioning it I've never thought about fused probes. As you said those are probably well suited for industrial high energy work. For regular CAT II/III stuff it is probably overkill plus those probes can also be a safety hazard if you are not super diligent with testing your equimpment before
every measurement. If the probe fuse is open circuit and you think a circuit is not energized when it is still live there might be an upleasant surprise around the corner.