first impressions of a 12 year old (?) meter

[golftango]

i have no need for such a meter since although i'm a 55 year ham and been tech-adjacent my whole life i'm now outsourced and retired and i can no longer see good enough to work on modern circuits with their tiny components. but i'm still studying and experimenting and my electricity in this crap house justifies having test equipment for that at least.

in any case, i hadn't bought a new meter in decades and still use simpson and triplett analog voms so when i saw a very futuristic one on amazon with a color screen and an intriguing /auto/ mode i bought it (kaiweets km601) and got sucked down the rabbit hole. i want to claim in advance i've beta tested my whole life and i tend to find the negative things and bugs before i get to the positive things.

i had settled on the 87v max before i came across a 28-ii on ebay and came to realize that there were only minor difference. i got the 28-ii in yesterday (in nearly like new condition with box & accessories for $200-250 less than a new 28ii or 87v max) and first impression was not positive as i wanted to replace whatever batteries were in there with duracells and found the battery compartment door an infuriating design. one spring is in the compartment and two springs are on the inside of the door and i'm still not sure i got it to fit together properly as the seams aren't flush although the gasket inside seems fine. needless to say, not at all impressed with this design which i've seen in none of the hundreds of battery-powered devices i've bought over the years.

anyway, my next big huge disappointment was to find that two of the features i was looking forward to the most which are toggled on with a power on sequence are not persistent. what genius determined that? if i take the trouble to turn them on then i want them on--i don't want to have to turn them on every single time i power on the meter. the smoothing and the higher resolution are the ones i'm talking about, but indeed it doesn't look like any of them are persistent except the ºF/C setting so they at least understand the concept. perhaps i'm missing something, but the manual is very detailed and thorough and i'm sure would have mentioned it.

on the positive side, i suspect the neighbors kids could use this thing for soccer practice--it's a beast! by far the most impressive piece of test equipment i've owned. oh, and despite it being bought used and iffy origins judging by the documentation and batteries, it registered fine at fluke. also, i called them to ask some questions and quickly got a very friendly english-speaking technician and we chatted so long i managed to find my answers before he got around to looking them up. very impressed.

/guy (73 de kg5gt | wqpz784)