Wasted $400 on a cheap multimeter that gave me false readings

I picked up a no-name clamp meter off Amazon for like 40 bucks back in March. Used it for a few jobs, thought it was fine. Then I chased a phantom voltage drop on a 737 APU for 6 hours last week at the hangar in Phoenix. Turns out my meter was reading 2 volts low on the low range. My lead tech ran his Fluke on the same pins and found the real problem in 10 minutes. That cheap meter cost me 6 hours of overtime and a lot of frustration. Anyone else get burned by a budget meter that lied to you?

3 comments

3 Comments

amyh1210d ago

Chill out, it's a 40 dollar meter not a life or death situation. 6 hours is on you for not cross checking sooner.

iris_schmidt10d ago

Oh man, I feel you on this one. @amyh12 I actually had a similar thing happen with a cheap meter last year and it cost me a whole weekend of troubleshooting. What finally worked for me was keeping my old analog meter around just to double check weird readings, especially on continuity, because the cheap digital ones can be flaky. Six hours of frustration taught me to test the tester against a known source like a fresh battery before diving into a project, your mileage may vary but it saved me a lot of headache since.

wilson.olivia10d ago

Take it easy man, it's a 40 dollar multimeter not some NASA certified tool. Six hours on you for not double checking sooner lol.