Excuse me for bringing this up. It's getting a bit confusing to understand which Aneng models are just new&shiny and which ones are actually improved.
Currently, I have a 7$ worth multimeter and I feel it's often slowing me down because it has a manual range switch, no auto off, and no separate inputs for current measurements (oops, accidental shorting of a project is not good).
So, which of all these Anengs is the most appropriate for the following requirements:
- no intention to work with mains; under-12V projects only; occasional hobby-level use
- has auto range with manual range option (many cheaper meters have only one or the other)
- separate input for current
- good continuity check (I've seen from reviews that some Anengs can be worse than others)
- precision - enough with what you usually need for Arduino-type projects
- does not eat batteries too fast
- no all-screen - those just look too fragile to me and are very likely to eat batteries fast
- not exactly a pocket unit but also not unnecessarily huge - every square cm counts on my desk
From the very first search hits, I found AN870 which seems to be very popular still. But Aneng store has made a sneaky move. The price of AN870 is 30 EUR with a nice assortment of all kinds of probes... but the cheapest tracked shipment costs 18 EUR! So, it's 48 EUR (VAT included). And for that price, I can get UNI-T UT139C from a local online store (but with basic probes only).
AN8009 also has higher shipment, so it's 21 + 12 = 33 EUR total. Other Aneng models offer tracked shipment under 10 EUR. Q1 and AN9002 seem to be the bestsellers there. However, if you do more search outside of "Aneng official store", there are actually cheaper options from "Aneng favourable store" and "ANENG01 Store". Go figure, who's the real Aneng there
Is AN870 still worth it or "nothing special" and I can pick Q1, AN8009, AN9002 instead? Or any other model that's even better? I don't care much about Bluetooth on AN9002.