Strictly abiding to CAT II standard, they may not pass, but hey, how many devices you plug into wall socket? TV, computer, whatever. Most of them only have a piss poor glass fuse, some have a MOV, some don't even have a MOV. Almost none have combination of PTC+ceramic fuse+GDT+MOV. So, how many time do you see anything blow up just because of transients? I've seen none in my entire life.
I consider CAT II an overrated standard that in real life, you are not going to see such magnitude of transients. Keep in mind that I now live in a suburban area where distribution lines are overhead, all exposed to lightning, and we have power loss every heavy rain or snow or slurry, or rarely for no reason. Even that, I've never had anything blew up just from mains fault.
You may argue that though rare, if it fail, it can kill. But that's not the case. Let's say every 10 years a transient kills some electrical appliances, and you plan to measure one minute per day on mains, and you want to keep electronics a hobby for 50 years, then you have 0.3% chance of having a multimeter blow up in your hand in the entire 50 years, and even if that happens, a low voltage, low energy arc over usually only give you a slight burn in face, and some smokey beard. I had this happened to me a couple of times, caused by gun powder accidentally ignited in front of my face, it really doesn't hurt much, though a smokey black and hair-less face may look funny and attract some laugh.
Your original comment was about the meters surviving CAT II 300V, which I provided what data I had. I can't comment about the frequency of failures on household devices from line transients throughout the world. I also can't comment if any of the IEC standards are over rated compared with real world. We can see from the meters I have looked at that are marked to meet these standards, while they may actually meet them many will not survive.
I would never suggest the standards are under rated and that there is little to no risk using a device that is not certified to for the environment you are working in. It just doesn't serve the hobbyist community and the professionals would laugh at me.
Just a little note. The EEVBlog meter is the BM235..
@baastrup - I can highly recommend the Brymen meters, and I would choose them over the Amprobe.
Until now I've got a BM27, BM235 (EEVBlog), BM257, BM869 and a BM089 - They are relative high quality meters for the price, if you ask me.
At least for the EEVBlog BM235 and BM869s, I agree. And while it may not matter to our above poster, these meters have been certified independently.
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