Cheap, reasonable quality, cheap sound level meter ?

[Boo]

Hi,

Question as title:  I've put the important factors for consideration there too 

Just looking for a reasonable quality, but must be cheap, sound level meter and wondered whether anyone here happens to know whether any of the many variants available on eBay etc are better than the others ?  Application is hobby music use and nobody's life (or hearing) depends upon it.  I have an Android "Decibel" app on my phone but obviously it's not calibrated so the numbers it gives are basically meaningless.

There seem to be two types, a wall-hung disply type and a handheld type, anyone have experience of both and able to comment on the respective accuracy?

Because the mfs are generic for devices at this level, it would be helpful to post pix as well as names so Ican find the equivalent type in the UK.

Many thanks,

[tszaboo]

I have the UNI-T UT353.
It's nice construction, reasonable quality. You can improve it by opening it, and replacing the internal IL7660 (or similar) IC to a Linear Technology one, reduces the baseline noise by 2-3 dB as I recall.
I don't know how accurate it is, as it's my only meter.

[Kean]

I have the UNI-T UT353.

Same

I don't know how accurate it is, as it's my only meter.

And same 

I bought the set of 3 a few years ago: UT333 (temp/RH), UT353 (sound), UT383 (lux).  They get used infrequently, but are handy.
I have a bunch of other temperature and light measurement devices, but nothing else for sound except an iPhone app (which now bombards me with ads).

[EC8010]

Once upon a time, the go-to cheap SPL meter was the Radio Shack handheld SPL meter. I still have (and use) mine, so there may be others floating around. It's really about the sensitivity of the microphone, so you might be able to make something using a readily available microphone capsule. There was an article in Practical Electronics (Sept 2024) about calibrated measurement microphones.

[mendip_discovery]

eBay,
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305736129565
Tenma 72-860


Pretty good. Has an inbuilt cal check. Even better, there is a jack plug on the side which you can hook up to a freq counter to get the main freq.

[Conrad Hoffman]

Go to Alibaba and search on "sound level meter" and about a dozen will turn up starting about ten bucks. Should be something sufficient for your application. For something better look specifically at the products from https://www.hzaihua.com/products_cont.html?id=106

[Boo]

Thanks for all the replies, the UT353 sounds like it will work for me and is cheap enough so I will likely go with that.

Thanks again,