Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I have been using this little orange electron wrangler for a few months now and I have a few preliminary opinions formed. First off, this thing is pretty cheap, and I would not recommend it for a professional as a primary meter (obviously), or even the serious DIY'er. Mainly, it lacks range, overall accuracy, and true RMS functionality. However, for the home-gamer, or as a cheap backup to your Fluke, this little guy is pretty great. The good: The readout is clear and crisp, and the backlight works wonderfully. The lead wires are supple, and the ends do fit into household outlets once you remove the plastic CAT IV covers (duh). The included K-type thermocouple has a long (over 12-inch) reach, and it agrees to within 1 degree Fahrenheit with my other instrumentation up to about 400 degrees. The continuity test is pretty decent, and it has a light and a beeper, which is great in environments where hearing protection is required. The rubber case that surrounds most of the unit is grippy and seems fairly durable. It says the meter can be dropped up to a meter, which could get confusing, but I think I'll go with the metric interpretation in this case. The stand is pretty awesome as well; it pops out of the back and has rubber feet that effectively hold the meter in a good viewing position on most semi-level surfaces. Lastly, this meter is pretty feature-packed, having all the standard gizmos in addition to AC/DC current, frequency, duty cycle, thermocouple temperature, capacitance, and diode testing. It can do quite a bit, even if it can't do it as well as a $200 meter. Safety: This meter features two slow-blow ceramic fuses, which are the industry standard for safety, and will protect you from shrapnel should you accidentally touch the leads to a 1.21-gigawatt power source in continuity mode. Caveats: The HOLD function on this meter is a joke; you put the leads on the circuit, press the HOLD button, and the instantaneous reading is frozen in the display for you to read. Contrast this to Fluke's feature where you push the HOLD button and then hook up the leads and the meter gives you a beep and holds your number on the display once the readings stabilize. Maybe Fluke has a pending patent on this technology - it would be interesting to find out why other companies aren't doing something similar. Still, is this function worth the extra $150+ to someone who isn't a professional? Probably not. Next, the continuity/low resistance tester has a small amount of lag in it. That is, you must create a complete circuit for more than about half a second for the unit to beep, indicating low resistance. This may not be an issue for you, but if you find yourself dragging a lead across a set of pins trying to trace a short, you'll quickly find the lag in the continuity indicator to be a bit of, well, a drag. Still, some of the higher-end meters also have this issue, so it definitely isn't a damnable offense for this little guy to be lacking in this area as well. But, it is something you ought to consider before making your purchase. Overall: This is a decent little meter that can do 90 percent of the things a DIY'er will ask of it.