After the previous "trashy" meter thread I was curious so I spent this month's fun money on some of Big Clive's favorite meter the Duratool D03047.
The meters cost me €3.78 each (+tax) but the only place I could find them was on Farnell where there's a minimum shipping fee of €14.
Oh, well. In for a penny, in for a pound... I ordered three of them to make the postage worthwhile. They arrived today:
The nicely-printed box they come in shows a yellow meter but they were black on the inside, just like Clive's.
First impressions are of a well made DT830 in a rubber boot. The dial is clicky, the printing on the front is very easy to read.
(Clive says the rubber boot gives it a "cheap, Fluke-like appeal" and he's right. I like the way it feels in the hand...)
Opening it up: The plastic case isn't what I'd call "thick" but it's thick enough. Certainly not eggshell thin like some other DT830s I've seen.
Inside we see more "DT830 done right". There's two ceramic fuses for the different current ranges, a beeper, and the quality of the PCB, etc., is very good apart from a bit of flux residue around the hand-soldered parts.
Little details stand out, eg. The 5A current shunt is sleeved for some reason. The strain relief on the battery cable looks good - I've see DT830s where the battery cable breaks off almost every time you take the back off.
The input jacks are solid tubes (not the rolled/split-metal type) and are soldered to a small daughterboard. They look quite sturdy. The daughterboard has the 5A fuse soldered to it. The 500mA fuse is clipped to the main PCB. The fuses are marked "500V".
The probes it comes with aren't the best (obviously) but they aren't the worst either. They're certainly a step up from the average DT830 probe.
They're fully shrouded and fit
very tightly in the meter (probably thanks to the solid input jacks).
The safety claim is "CAT I 500V". That seems
slightly overcautious but I'm not going to argue. I didn't buy it to work on mains AC.
The back of the meter has a batch number lasered onto it. A sign of real factory quality control processes?
I did a few function tests:
Volts was spot on
Amps was spot on
Ohms was about three counts too low on 10k+1k resistors.
Continuity is latched, medium-loud, not very fast.
The square wave function outputs a 50Hz, 2.2V square wave.
Diode test is ~3V open circuit, it lights up my big white test LED, no problem.
There's no backlight but the display is incredibly contrasty.
Power consumption is under 300uA so the battery should last for thousands of hours (plural).
The manual is surprisingly(refreshingly?) specific about overload protection on each range:
Verdict: I like it! I nominate this for "cheapest meter that's actually worth owning".
Could it replace my Anengs? Answer: Yes. The only thing I might miss would be auto-ranging on the Ohms range.
(it's also a lot smaller/cuter than most of them and costs a fraction of the price.
)
It's hard to believe they can sell this for €3.78 through reputable sellers in Europe.