Was after a decent meter for under $100 and decided to go with a Fluke 17B from DealExtreme. They also sell the Fluke 15B and 18B there which are both pretty crappy meters. The 17B cost me $90.75AUD delivered which is a good price but actually quite expensive for a meter with this feature set. Other meters at this price point typically have backlights, true RMS measurement and a better frequency range than this meter. But none of those features are useful to me and I thought I’d give it a go anyway. It arrived today and I decided to give it a little review.
The low end Fluke models are made in China as opposed to the more expensive USA made Flukes. Has this been built down to a price? First impressions are that this is a real top quality meter. Its got a good weight to it and structurally it’s a brick! Grabbing hold and twisting this thing you get zero flex or creaking. Certainly the build quality lives up to the Fluke name.
The meter has all the normal features you’d need out of a meter these days. Go read the manual if you really want to know all the features. The hold button is the typical useless ‘freeze screen’ hold, not the touch hold found in the more expensive models. Basically a wasted button there. No innovative features here, just does all the basics.
Usability
Seems nice enough to use, the range switch and buttons have a decent feel to it but I reckon the tilting stand could be better. The stand keeps the meter upright okay but since there’s no rubber on the pop out stand, the meter just moves when you try and turn the range switch and really there’s not enough grip to keep the meter still. But at least it doesn’t fall over.
Continuity buzzer is typical of a meter of this price range, the response is fast but not latched so it gives the scratchy sound. There are advantages of this though, it does allow you to hear intermittent connections.
Thankfully this thing runs on 2xAA batteries and it was supplied with 2 Energizers already installed in the unit. Having the batteries installed in the unit is a bit daft; batteries do sometimes leak even branded ones. Interestingly they’ve even lubed up the battery contacts with some lithium grease to make installation easier.
Teardown
Battery cover is screwed in with a threaded metal insert, back cover held in with self tappers. Inside the unit the PCB quality looks pretty top notch, certainly head and shoulders above most meters in this category. The PCB does seem to be of the same quality as the more expensive Fluke meters but the thing you notice is that this has a ton of surface mount trimmers. Has all the input protection you’d expect from a fluke, nothing too surprising.
The main IC is just an ASIC covered in an epoxy blob. Not made from the conventional universal QFP DMM chips so won’t be able to mod this thing with RS232 or backlight.
Accuracy
I don’t really have that much lab equipment at home to check the accuracy so I couldn't really do extensive testing. But i I test it against a 5v 0.2% REF02 voltage reference and read 4.97 v. Claimed accuracy is 0.5% +3 counts basic DC volts accuracy so it just appears to be in spec. The accuracy I won’t be able to test properly until I bring this thing into uni and test against their HP/Aglient bench DMMs.
Verdict
Well its quite a basic meter compared to the competition. It does make up for it with the build quality but I’d imagine most people probably would rather a meter with more features. I’m pretty pleased with the purchase though, should be a nice meter that will last a long time.
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