Extech EX430 multimeter teardown photos

[Medo]

I took liberty to take apart EX430 multimeter (http://www.extech.com/instruments/product.asp?prodid=272).

One curious thing that I noticed on board was existence of two beepers. It is either that or I am going crazy (or both)...

Here are the images if anyone is interested.

[Lightages]

Thanks for the pictures. It looks like it is made completely different than some of the other EX series. How well does it work?

It is obvious that it has minimal input protection. It certainly does not match its CAT ratings according to the latest CAT requirements based on the fuses.

[retiredcaps]

On the one I had, the backside of the COM jack already had a solder ring crack.  It is hard to tell from the photos here, but mine was obvious.

The EX430 overshoots a lot.    When measuring a simply 9V battery, it would show 17.xy, then 9.06, then 9.05, and then finally settle, correctly, on 9.03.   This would take 3 or 4 seconds.

The local Canadian electronics store lists it for $109.99 CDN MSRP.

[Medo]

I personally have mixed experience.

I bought one for $60 on Amazon, which I think is quite a good price for what you get. Unfortunately, most probably due to really awful packaging, it arrived semi-dead. It acted funny while measuring temperature (room was freezing according to F and boiling according to C) and it didn't measure current at all. I returned that one and borrowed second for few days.

Second unit is one on pictures and I was quite satisfied with it. Most of stuff I dealt with those days was on 3.3/5V and I haven't noticed any large overshoot. Maybe few counts but nothing as retiredcaps. All voltage measurements were spot on (within 1 count, compared to Agilant A1232) and current seemed close enough (I did some troubleshooting on live project so it was very had to get any stable reading).

Capacitance was fairly close (based on sample of two) and frequency was much better than spec (at least on 4 MHz I measured it on). Temperature was within specs but with 3%+3C I have broken thermometers with better accuracy.

There are few annoying things. Voltage/Common socket was ok, but I had feeling that probes would fall out from A/mA ones. They were just annoyingly wiggly inside. That is something I noticed on both devices I had. It is unstable when on tilting bail and screen gets all washed out. For me that one wasn't an issue since I almost never use titling bail but someone might mind. Backlight was just weird and it made display look very pixelated but that is probably quite subjective.

All in all, I had dealt with better multimeters but I have dealt with worse also. I think that for $60-$70 it would be a good buy (assuming that it survives shipping).