Protek 6300 "5 in 1" DMM
So I accidentally left my old radio shack meter back at home and I'm 165 miles away at college.... and I needed a decent meter for my EE courses and I needed it fast.
I went down to Frys and found an interesting Protek 6300 DMM that pretty much does everything.
This thing is crazy.... it has the usual DMM stuff with some extra sensors inside it for temperature, relative humidity, lux and SPL. It can also use an external thermocouple, which was also in the box. The display is backlit with white LEDs and is very easy to see. Temp and RH are always displayed regardless of what function is selected as the top of the display has dedicated readouts for these built in instruments. Yes....you can have two thermometers going at once.
It has a frequency counter from DC to 40kHz, and can test caps up to 200uF (not great, but a nice addon anyway). Besides, for bad cap hunting, you need an ESR meter anyway. The blue and gray case is a little on the odd side
but it doesn't bother me.
As for safety features, it offers some interesting stuff. Each function will light up a ring around the correct lead jacks for that function and sound a beeping alarm if the leads are connected improperly. The fuse for the mA range is a polyfuse while the 10A range uses a one time fast blow fuse. This is great...it means my meter will probably be intact even if I let my lab partner use it. Its CAT III rated to 600V. The included leads are pretty nice as well. Only the truly ham-fisted will destroy this thing.
The accuracy is OK, pretty much on par with most other sub $100 3 3/4 digit DMMs out there. The SPL meter is a few dB off from a dedicated SPL meter that cost as much as my whole DMM, but its good enough for most things.
Oh and yeah....it runs on three AAA cells, which were also in the box with it. This is the first DMM I have used that used anything but a 9V battery.
In short, I'm happy with it and for $60, I can't gripe at all. Sure, I want an RS232 port and true RMS, but I'll get that this summer when I can afford it.
I went down to Frys and found an interesting Protek 6300 DMM that pretty much does everything.
This thing is crazy.... it has the usual DMM stuff with some extra sensors inside it for temperature, relative humidity, lux and SPL. It can also use an external thermocouple, which was also in the box. The display is backlit with white LEDs and is very easy to see. Temp and RH are always displayed regardless of what function is selected as the top of the display has dedicated readouts for these built in instruments. Yes....you can have two thermometers going at once.
It has a frequency counter from DC to 40kHz, and can test caps up to 200uF (not great, but a nice addon anyway). Besides, for bad cap hunting, you need an ESR meter anyway. The blue and gray case is a little on the odd side
but it doesn't bother me.
As for safety features, it offers some interesting stuff. Each function will light up a ring around the correct lead jacks for that function and sound a beeping alarm if the leads are connected improperly. The fuse for the mA range is a polyfuse while the 10A range uses a one time fast blow fuse. This is great...it means my meter will probably be intact even if I let my lab partner use it. Its CAT III rated to 600V. The included leads are pretty nice as well. Only the truly ham-fisted will destroy this thing.
The accuracy is OK, pretty much on par with most other sub $100 3 3/4 digit DMMs out there. The SPL meter is a few dB off from a dedicated SPL meter that cost as much as my whole DMM, but its good enough for most things.
Oh and yeah....it runs on three AAA cells, which were also in the box with it. This is the first DMM I have used that used anything but a 9V battery.
In short, I'm happy with it and for $60, I can't gripe at all. Sure, I want an RS232 port and true RMS, but I'll get that this summer when I can afford it.
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