The ST42 would cost me about 140€ at Aliexpress.
Can someone tell me in a nutshell what it can/do better than other SMD tweezers?
The ST42 is really being hyped in this forum.
You could simply buy a pair of measuring tweezers for your existing LCR, which would be much cheaper.
I think the magic word is in-circuit measurements.
Determining the values of components without having to desolder them.
You can do this with a very low measurement voltage, if at all.
That's why I bought a pair of SMD measuring tweezers from Mastech, with adjustable measuring voltage down to 100mV.
The results/differences compared to a measurement with "normal" voltage in a circuit were sobering.
Since the ST42 can't do "magic" in this respect either, I assume that it won't be able to achieve any advantage there either.
So why should you buy such (comparatively) expensive measuring tweezers?
It can't be the 0.1% basic accuracy, because the vast majority of C or L components have tolerances of around 5...20%, so that would be throwing pearls in front of swine.
In addition, SMD measuring tweezers can only measure SMD components, normal sizes cannot be measured with them.
So what is the reason for buying?