Hot take: Shelling out $600 for that Fluke DMM was worth every penny

I mean, back in the day I used to get by with a $40 multimeter from the auto parts store, but after chasing a weird intermittent fault on a Garmin G1000 display, I finally caved. The Fluke 87V caught a voltage drop that my old meter just couldn't read, and it saved me from swapping a perfectly good screen. Has anyone else found that spending real cash on a good meter actually pays off in the long run?

2 comments

2 Comments

parkerkim1mo ago

Oh man, totally agree with you on this. My buddy talked me into grabbing a Fluke 117 a few years back and I was honestly mad at how much I spent at first. Then I had this boat that kept killing batteries and the cheap meter from Harbor Freight showed everything as fine. The Fluke caught a tiny voltage leak on a corroded ground wire that explained everything. Definitely paid for itself in less than a week. Sometimes the cheap stuff just can't see the little details that matter.

flores.tessa1mo ago

Heard a similar story from an electrician buddy about finding a bad splice that way. The cheap meters just dont have the sensitivity for stuff like that. Good tools pay for themselves in the long run, no question.