Handheld meters under ~$200 with ultra fast resistance reading

[Mp3]

Hi everyone, well as far as it goes for handheld meters with me, it seems though my trusty & reliable Fluke 101 which I do love is an awful real time ohm-meter. When the value switches between ohms/Kohms/Mohms it is not easy to see, and for some reason drops out from time to time. I hate doing live readings on it.

Even my $3.80 (shipped!) DT-830B does a better job of an ohmmeter, though unlike the 101 you have to tell it what range to be in - not the worst thing ever... but i do end up using the DT-830B most often when i need to watch a resistance change in real time.

I haven't ever dipped my toes into the world of handheld meters above $50

I have a bench meter i love & it works great for me but i am looking to get something safer and faster to react than the DT-830B. I had a look at the Sanwa PM300 and Brymen BM235, and the PM300 looks pretty nice, but i couldn't get a good sense of live resistance update speed after watching a few videos on the Brymen BM235. It looks really fast but the tests I saw were all with a fixed resistance.

I've attached a video showing my Fluke 101 and my DT-830B reading live resistance on a 20Kohm pot. I'm not looking to replace it with anything that isn't significantly faster to update and more accurate than these.... https://streamable.com/6038ar

[rsjsouza]

I did a review of the PM300 a while ago and show the autorange speed (in portuguese, sorry).

Check 13:40 for the autorange from infinite to zero and, from 14:20 and on, I test various resistors.



The manual range multimeters are unbeatable, but then they do not have to sense and navigate through the ranges.

[2N3055]

For that kind of money you can get Brymen BM867 that is top notch meter...

[Mp3]

I did a review of the PM300 a while ago and show the autorange speed (in portuguese, sorry).

Check 13:40 for the autorange from infinite to zero and, from 14:20 and on, I test various resistors.



The manual range multimeters are unbeatable, but then they do not have to sense and navigate through the ranges.

No worries at all on the language. Just what i wanted to see, thanks so much! Looks like sanwa will owe you a commission

[Fungus]

Even my $3.80 (shipped!) DT-830B does a better job of an ohmmeter, though unlike the 101 you have to tell it what range to be in - not the worst thing ever... but i do end up using the DT-830B most often when i need to watch a resistance change in real time.

Manual range meters tend to be faster. Auto-rangers have to go down through the ranges to find the right one so they're really doing multiple readings.

The Fluke 101 is by no means a slow meter for Ohms, but if you're measuring something that jumps around then auto-ranging meters can be hard to read.

Most auto-ranging meters let you lock to a particular range and will read as fast as a manual-range meter as a result. The 101 isn't one of them though.

Brymen meters offer the best bang per buck if you're after a "serious" meter for a reasonable price.

[Mp3]

Even my $3.80 (shipped!) DT-830B does a better job of an ohmmeter, though unlike the 101 you have to tell it what range to be in - not the worst thing ever... but i do end up using the DT-830B most often when i need to watch a resistance change in real time.

Manual range meters tend to be faster. Auto-rangers have to go down through the ranges to find the right one so they're really doing multiple readings.

The Fluke 101 is by no means a slow meter for Ohms, but if you're measuring something that jumps around then auto-ranging meters can be hard to read.

Most auto-ranging meters let you lock to a particular range and will read as fast as a manual-range meter as a result. The 101 isn't one of them though.

Brymen meters offer the best bang per buck if you're after a "serious" meter for a reasonable price.

this makes sense, I may look into options for nicer non-auto range meters for when i'm not at the bench and need to keep an eye on quick transients., as I haven't decided what i would get for that purpose yet.

Kinda hard to beat the value of the 830B in that regard... (I set mine up with an internal fuse holder to be safe)

[2N3055]

Even my $3.80 (shipped!) DT-830B does a better job of an ohmmeter, though unlike the 101 you have to tell it what range to be in - not the worst thing ever... but i do end up using the DT-830B most often when i need to watch a resistance change in real time.

Manual range meters tend to be faster. Auto-rangers have to go down through the ranges to find the right one so they're really doing multiple readings.

The Fluke 101 is by no means a slow meter for Ohms, but if you're measuring something that jumps around then auto-ranging meters can be hard to read.

Most auto-ranging meters let you lock to a particular range and will read as fast as a manual-range meter as a result. The 101 isn't one of them though.

Brymen meters offer the best bang per buck if you're after a "serious" meter for a reasonable price.

this makes sense, I may look into options for nicer non-auto range meters for when i'm not at the bench and need to keep an eye on quick transients., as I haven't decided what i would get for that purpose yet.

Kinda hard to beat the value of the 830B in that regard... (I set mine up with an internal fuse holder to be safe)

You can fix range in autoranging meters.

[Mp3]

You can fix range in autoranging meters.

Just not on my 101, sadly.

My HP 3478A is VERY fast to auto range and react to resistance changes, although i assume it probably picks its range and sticks to it rather than constantly auto ranging every time the resistance changes like the 101 seems to. I'd invest in the Brymen if it gives that kind of reaction,

Man, i'd just use my  oscilloscope when possible if I could, to visualize the chanegs, but maybe the Sanwa is my best handheld solution for the money.

[2N3055]

Brymen BM867 and BM257 update 5 times per second. BM867 has 50000 scale, so if you fix it in 50k range, you still get quite good resolution...
Also both have bar graph display that updates 40 times per second (BM867 60 times/second), for analog feel...

[karamba]

All digital multimeters are a pain to use ( speaking of myself only) when you do a lot of measurements. Any old analog multimeter beats his digital counterpart hands down when it comes to the speed of registering the measured value in your brain. This should work for you: https://www.amazon.com/Hioki-3030-10-Manual-Ranging-Average-Sensing-Multimeter/dp/B008S0CCHI/ref=psdc_14244471_t1_B0032ALSHY

[Berni]

Yep Analog meters are best for seeing transients.

But i have rarely needed one in years. You can get digital meters with 7.5Hz update rate and that's plenty for me. Tho if anyone knows a handheld DMM that is as fast as a Keyithley 2015 bench DMM i would love to hear about it. I do love the 100Hz update sometimes and autoranging from 100Meg to 1 Ohm is pretty much instant.

I mostly ended up using bench DMMs in general because they work better (But also carry hefty price tags).

[CDaniel]

Usually simpler autoranging 4000-6600counts meters are pretty fast , if there is a separate microcontroller and analog chip , then implementation could suck and the speed is low ... you have to research which is good . Update speed is not telling how fast the autorange works .

[2N3055]

Yep Analog meters are best for seeing transients.

But i have rarely needed one in years. You can get digital meters with 7.5Hz update rate and that's plenty for me. Tho if anyone knows a handheld DMM that is as fast as a Keyithley 2015 bench DMM i would love to hear about it. I do love the 100Hz update sometimes and autoranging from 100Meg to 1 Ohm is pretty much instant.

I mostly ended up using bench DMMs in general because they work better (But also carry hefty price tags).

Brymen BM869/867 update bargraph 60 times/sec...
But you are correct, both my DM3068, and Yokogawa 7562, when set to shorter integration time autorange instantly, and are faster than any handheld I saw..
What bothers me is that many of the handhelds have fast, bargraph converter results at very fast rate, that is good enough to use for ranging purposes, but all of them use main, slow, converter.

[maginnovision]

The U1242C can update at 40/s. I'm not sure about the autorange speed as it's been a while since I used it but the update rate is pretty good.

[edigi]

I've made a quick comparison between BM869s and UT171B regarding resistor measurement.

https://youtu.be/9bFuDTztC8g

My points:
- It's the auto ranging that makes the measurement slow (so you may want to switch it off for ultra fast reading)
- The bargraph is of little help here (but you can check it in the video)
- Even in the manual range the speed of the measurement is far from the LCD refresh rate to become a limiting factor
- A meter fast/slow in continuity/resistor measurement mode may not be that fast/slow in the other mode

To my last point: A handheld (or generally any) mater that is very good in everything (or almost everything) can be insanely expensive, so in many cases it's better to buy different tools that excel in different areas than to aim a single tool that excels in (close to) everything. You have to check reviews and pick the one(s) that fills your need.

Btw. both meters shown in the video have many strong points and few weaknesses in different areas. Different meters may have different strong points and different weaknesses.

[HKJ]

In my reviews I measure how fast a meter can measure a 100ohm resistor, this includes autoranging.
https://lygte-info.dk/info/DMMReviews.html
But you have to go into each review to check, it is written something like this: "Ohm needs about 3.2s to measure 100ohm "

[Fungus]

To my last point: A handheld (or generally any) mater that is very good in everything (or almost everything) can be insanely expensive,

eg. Hioki DT4282, which will measure a resistor twice as fast as a Brymen 869s.

Not sure if DT4282 counts as "insane" (it's not in Gossen price range) but it's not cheap.

[edigi]

eg. Hioki DT4282, which will measure a resistor twice as fast as a Brymen 869s.

In my above video comparison I did not accidentally show the UT171B. It's among the few handheld DMMs (especially if we consider only ones that have more than 4 digit resolution) that can do a sub-second resistance measurement.
However the Brymen 869s excels in continuity check (where the UT171 series not so much)...
The Hioki DT4282 is also pretty good in this but significantly more expensive than the UNI-T (and is also not in the price category of the OP).

[rsjsouza]

@Mp3, a while ago when the 121GW autorange speed was being discussed, I also did another video (below) that compared the ohmeter and autorange speed of various testers.

One important thing is that update speed and settling time are not related. I have two Keysight meters that have a quite high update speed but take time to stabilize the reading.

Here is the video
https://youtu.be/sLUdt6Bwx2c

[Mp3]

I'm very thankful for everyone who contributed to this thread and also those who let me know that i'm not just crazy and that bench meters can easily be in another higher tier of update speed! And yeah, for the record, as amazing as the DT4282 looks, it's much more than I'm willing to spend 

I've made a quick comparison between BM869s and UT171B regarding resistor measurement.

https://youtu.be/9bFuDTztC8g

My points:
- It's the auto ranging that makes the measurement slow (so you may want to switch it off for ultra fast reading)
- The bargraph is of little help here (but you can check it in the video)
- Even in the manual range the speed of the measurement is far from the LCD refresh rate to become a limiting factor
- A meter fast/slow in continuity/resistor measurement mode may not be that fast/slow in the other mode

To my last point: A handheld (or generally any) mater that is very good in everything (or almost everything) can be insanely expensive, so in many cases it's better to buy different tools that excel in different areas than to aim a single tool that excels in (close to) everything. You have to check reviews and pick the one(s) that fills your need.

Btw. both meters shown in the video have many strong points and few weaknesses in different areas. Different meters may have different strong points and different weaknesses.

I've noticed it looks like you made this video just for this thread?! I am truly appreciative, I owe you a beer for certain!!!! And yes, I was starting to realize it's likely better for me to get a few different handheld DMM's as opposed to trying to use one for every purpose. The video also made it very clear how much time is wasted at auto-range if i prefer to be locked to a certain range. Definitely putting those two meters on my "heavy consideration" list.

All digital multimeters are a pain to use ( speaking of myself only) when you do a lot of measurements. Any old analog multimeter beats his digital counterpart hands down when it comes to the speed of registering the measured value in your brain. This should work for you: https://www.amazon.com/Hioki-3030-10-Manual-Ranging-Average-Sensing-Multimeter/dp/B008S0CCHI/ref=psdc_14244471_t1_B0032ALSHY

Haha, I was wondering if an analog meter is what I need after all, I was hoping I could get away without one though.... 

In my reviews I measure how fast a meter can measure a 100ohm resistor, this includes autoranging.
https://lygte-info.dk/info/DMMReviews.html
But you have to go into each review to check, it is written something like this: "Ohm needs about 3.2s to measure 100ohm "

I've spent a lot of time on your site in the last two days and never made it to this page! Thanks for this! I did notice you hate the DT-830B very much. Haha 

[Fungus]

I'm very thankful for everyone who contributed to this thread and also those who let me know that i'm not just crazy and that bench meters can easily be in another higher tier of update speed!

Bench meters can simply clock their CPUs much higher because they don't have to worry about batteries.

And yeah, for the record, as amazing as the DT4282 looks, it's much more than I'm willing to spend 

Join the club.

[fanOfeeDIY]

I also have done videos of comparing auto range speed of multimeters.
Not cheap 50,000 models.

121GW, TY720, Hioki DT4282,Fluke 87V.


After firmware update for 121gw, and adding keysight U1241B,Hioki DT4256．


Honestly when the value of resistant is changing, I prefer manual range multimeter,
is using auto range one with manually setting the ranges like I do in the other videos.
And I still use analog multimeters too.

[edigi]

Just a quick note: When this kind of comparison is made it's good to use the frame stepping of the player, in case of YT it's < and > (above , and .).