Finally gave in and bought a decent multimeter instead of my $15 harbor freight special

For years I was that guy who swore a cheap multimeter was fine for checking continuity and basic voltage on washers and dryers. I figured why spend $150 on a Fluke when my $15 meter could tell me if a part was dead or not. Then last week I had a call at a house in Oakville where a GE front-loader was tripping the breaker randomly. My cheap meter kept giving me weird fluctuating readings on the heating element. I swapped to a borrowed Fluke 117 from another guy on the crew and within 5 minutes I found a partial short that the cheap meter just couldn't catch. So I bit the bullet and ordered a Klein CL800 off Amazon for about $100. It arrived yesterday and already helped me diagnose a bad capacitor on a fridge compressor that I would have misread before. Has anyone else here had a similar wake-up call with a basic tool they thought was fine?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_sam8d ago

Honestly, did you ever read that forum post where a guy tested his cheap meter against a Fluke on the same circuit and found the cheap one was off by like 15 volts? I remember seeing that a while back, and it stuck with me because I was in the same boat as you. Tbh, I thought a multimeter was just a multimeter, you know? Then I tried to test a start capacitor on an AC unit with my old one, and the readings were all over the place. Ngl, swapping to a better meter saved me from swapping out a perfectly good compressor. So yeah, you're not alone on that wake-up call thing.

sammurray7d ago

Yeah I remember that post. Crazy how much difference a cheap meter can show, especially on something like a capacitor where the reading is super sensitive. That AC story is wild too, glad you caught it before you junked a good compressor. I read something similar from an HVAC tech who said cheap meters can throw off the microfarad reading by like 20% or more on start caps, which basically makes you think everything is bad. He said he fixed three units in one week just by using a Fluke instead of the harbor freight special. Makes you wonder how many people have wasted money on parts they didnt even need.

grace4198d ago

Bought a used Fluke 87V on Craigslist years ago after my cheap meter almost made me replace a perfectly good condenser fan motor. It was reading the cap as bad but turns out the meter just couldnt handle the load. Never looked back.