Agilent U123xA series

[PetrosA]

I saw these last night while browsing Agilent's pages and it occurred to me that these (especially the U1231A) are some serious competition for the Fluke Chinese meters, especially for electricians and technicians. For $100 you get a DMM that's TRMS, can use a clamp attachment, has datalogging and can be connected to a PC. And, it's not a gray market product. Granted, you don't get the calibration sheets that the higher end Agilents get, but I'd be curious to see how they perform in real life - especially after reading through some of the Fluke 17B stuff I've seen here. Anyone used one and can comment?

[Wim_L]

Got a U1233A at work, not a U1231A, but they're somewhat similar. The deciding factor in favour of the U1233A was that it has a flashlight built in, as it was bought for work in a lab where full room lighting isn't always available (sensitive optical components), but you do need some local lighting to see what you're doing. The flashlight probably is the most frequently used function.

General comments: nice, compact, fits well in the hand, good rubber holster with probe holders. Battery compartment opens with one screw into a metal insert. Good fuse on the amps range (rated for breaking up to 30kA). Flashlight intensity is adjustable. No full manual included, just a quick start guide, but it can be downloaded from the Agilent site. Several features of the meter can be configured through a menu system.

Clearly an electrician's meter though. For one, it has no mA range. It does have a microamps range, specifically for flame sensors, which gives some idea of where the real target market is. Included probes have somewhat fat tips with only a few millimetres of exposed metal, and CAT IV 600V rating, higher than the meter itself. The noncontact voltage sensor seems to work well.

Definitely not the fastest autoranging ever, but functional. The continuity detector is a bit odd. It can't seem to decide between nice solid latched beeps, or the scratching sound often heard from cheapies. One interesting thing is that you can set it to either beep when the continuity check succeeds, or to beep when continuity is broken. I suppose that could be useful in some cases. The min/max feature is also handy on the less stable signals.

[saturation]

Competing with the 117 Fluke series:

http://www.amazon.com/Fluke-117-Electricians-True-Multimeter/dp/B000O3LUEI/ref=sr_1_3?s=hi&ie=UTF8&qid=1320783712&sr=1-3

http://www.fluke.com/fluke/usen/Digital-Multimeters/Fluke-117.htm?PID=55996

[Kiriakos-GR]

I would also love to play with one U1233A, but about comparisons , my small sized UNI-T, it will loose hands down... 

Wim thanks for your comments, they are the first ever posted on the EEV about those new Agilent units.

[FenderBender]

No one believes me but the new Amprobe "Industrial" meters are also really good competition at the pricepoint. I did a teardown here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/index.php?topic=5379.0

It was designed as more of a field use/electricians multimeter but it has many of the features you would expect in a lab DMM. And you can get one for $20-30 less than a 117...and quality is pretty damn good.

[PetrosA]

@Wim - I'm curious how the U123x series is set up for using a clamp since the only one I have (an older Fluke) puts out mA and doesn't really work on the A or uA scales. The U1231A actually has the clamp plugging in to the V jack since it doesn't even have a current jack at all. Maybe the Agilent clamps are designed differently, but that would also make the DMMs less compatible with third party clamps.

@saturation - I'm not sure how a $180 Fluke can compete with a $99 Agilent Once you get up to the U1233A, maybe it's a closer run for your money but even then the Agilent offers slightly better AC bandwidth accuracy, 60 MOhms vs. 40 MOhms and the IR port for $15 less.

@FenderBender - I haven't seen or used the Amprobe, but it looks very nicely made. It does look an awful lot like a Greenlee I had, especially the IR interface. That was buggy at best with a bunch of cables and adapters and virtual COM port issues. Hopefully your version has those things smoothed out.

Overall, since I have a 1272 and the USB cable, I'd be more inclined to add to my collection within the same brand just to keep the software and cables simplified in my life. I was hoping the new clamp meters would have IR ports, but it doesn't look like that's the case so a $99 meter and a clamp might just be what the doctor ordered.

[Wim_L]

I haven't used a clamp with it myself, but the meter measures on the V setting, and then has a scale function that can be used with a set of fixed conversion constants to convert from V to A or temperatures. From the manual, the full set of scale factors that can be configured are:

Code: [Select]

1000 A/V, 1000 °C(°F)/V, 1000 V/V, 100 A/V, 10 A/V, 1 A/V, or 0.1 A/V
So it doesn't look like a clamp with current output will work well here.

[PetrosA]

I haven't used a clamp with it myself, but the meter measures on the V setting, and then has a scale function that can be used with a set of fixed conversion constants to convert from V to A or temperatures. From the manual, the full set of scale factors that can be configured are:

Code: [Select]

1000 A/V, 1000 °C(°F)/V, 1000 V/V, 100 A/V, 10 A/V, 1 A/V, or 0.1 A/V
So it doesn't look like a clamp with current output will work well here.

Looks like you're right. The U1583B (only one they have at the moment...) outputs mV/A.

[saturation]

Hi PetrosA,

You're right, I was using it to compare against the 1233A.    But I agree fully, in this whole line, the Agilent's have an edge in more functions for the same money.



On the low end of the line, the Agilent is a better bang for buck compared to the Fluke 114, both having no amp range. 

A tie breaker could be the ergonomics of using them.

@saturation - I'm not sure how a $180 Fluke can compete with a $99 Agilent Once you get up to the U1233A, maybe it's a closer run for your money but even then the Agilent offers slightly better AC bandwidth accuracy, 60 MOhms vs. 40 MOhms and the IR port for $15 less.

[PetrosA]

On the low end of the line, the Agilent is a better bang for buck compared to the Fluke 114, both having no amp range. 

A tie breaker could be the ergonomics of using them.

For me the tie breaker is that the Agilent can use a mV/A amp clamp. There are plenty of times when it would be helpful if I could monitor current on more than one phase at a time, and this seems like a good way to do it with the added benefit of being able to do datalogging. If only they would bundle the DMM with a clamp for a decent price...

[saturation]

Yes, concur again.  Given the affordability of this line, particularly for hobbyists level over something like a UniT, maybe Dave can review them to see how it compares against the 87V or even the 1272a?

On the low end of the line, the Agilent is a better bang for buck compared to the Fluke 114, both having no amp range. 

A tie breaker could be the ergonomics of using them.

For me the tie breaker is that the Agilent can use a mV/A amp clamp. There are plenty of times when it would be helpful if I could monitor current on more than one phase at a time, and this seems like a good way to do it with the added benefit of being able to do datalogging. If only they would bundle the DMM with a clamp for a decent price...

[Wim_L]

As a main meter, it would compare quite badly to those more advanced models. Somewhat lower accuracy (though still good enough for many things), and even more importantly, no milliamps. That may be fine for an electrician, but for electronics use you'd really want a meter with milliamps capability.

Of course, you'd also want multiple meters. If you already have a good one with a milliamps range, this could be a useful secondary meter.