Yea. I kinda find the 87v to be junk for the price. I hate the old school battery holder and much prefer the 117 or 289 battery compartment design. The fuses also lack access port.
About the battery compartment, excluding the size and batteries cells required of course, the 280 design definitely has it's own advantages, with only finger nail you can access the fuses and replace the batteries. Also since its separated, if there is any batteries leak, it will be sort of isolated from the main DMM circuit, and should there is any nasty liquid spillages from the leak, they will be contained and separated in the compartment physically separated from the main DMM board space.
But remember, this 287/289 compartment design is only possible because it's humongous size and volume inside, don't think it is easy to have that similar design at other mainstream sizes DMMs like 87V does.
Different tools for different purposes.
+1 Agree, they're just like different species and can not be compared straight away like that. I own 287 and 87V, the fat and tall 287 with it's better accuracy, logging/chart + all it's bells & whistles is more suitable to be called handheld benchtop multimeter
. While 87V is more for general purpose and also more suitable for field work than 280 series.
My analogies, 287 is like current state of the art cell phone with sleek design, big touch screen based with all those cool features, while 87V is like those pre smart phone era metal cased cellular phone, which has physical buttons and used only for calling/answering phone + minor texting.
Btw, at Fluke 280, the yellow rubbery jacket is molded permanently together with the meter body and can not be separated, while 87V is detachable.
Attached foto below clues about the size & volume of Fluke 280 series vs 87V, quite significant imo, and especially for 87V owners, just imagine it without the yellow protector jacket.