11-06-2018, 11:04 AM
Another reason for wanting a bench multimeter is the convenience of mains operation and the thing always being where you left it! Plus, some have nice, bright LED or VFD displays, rather than LCDs, which can be a bit murky and have viewing angle restrictions.
There are plenty of bench multimeters with hand-held specs. The Fluke 45 is one I'd recommend - these can be quite cheap (mine was about £80), and have a nice crisp VFD display. These displays are prone to fading with age, so inspect the pictures carefully before buying. In terms of specification, it's similar to the top of the range hand-held Flukes, which is arguably rather more than is needed for most service work, but it doesn't hurt to have extra precision if you know how to interpret the results.
It's also worth saying that most bench multimeters allow you to change the displayed resolution. The Fluke 45 has 3 modes - fast, medium and slow - and the more digits you need, the longer it takes to make the measurement. Even on slow, it's still as fast as a normal multimeter.
Another meter worth investigating s/h is the Fluke 8050A. Make sure you get one with a good LCD, as they are prone to failure at this age. This is a tiny little meter, but still has plenty of useful features. It is manual ranging though. Some have internal NiCad batteries (which need to be present and in good condition for the unit to work correctly); others are mains only.
New, the UNI-T UT804 might be worth investigating. It costs around £200, and appears to have a lot of functionality for the price. I've never seen it in the flesh, but will say that the quality of UNI-T stuff appears to have improved in recent times. The UT803 is even cheaper, but comparing them, I'd say that it's probably worth going for the 804 if I had to pick between them.
In short, I'm sure you can improve on the old Maplin meter. You might not need to go for a bench multimeter specifically to get what you're after - although you might still fancy one for various reasons - perhaps let us know a bit more about what you have in mind...
There are plenty of bench multimeters with hand-held specs. The Fluke 45 is one I'd recommend - these can be quite cheap (mine was about £80), and have a nice crisp VFD display. These displays are prone to fading with age, so inspect the pictures carefully before buying. In terms of specification, it's similar to the top of the range hand-held Flukes, which is arguably rather more than is needed for most service work, but it doesn't hurt to have extra precision if you know how to interpret the results.
It's also worth saying that most bench multimeters allow you to change the displayed resolution. The Fluke 45 has 3 modes - fast, medium and slow - and the more digits you need, the longer it takes to make the measurement. Even on slow, it's still as fast as a normal multimeter.
Another meter worth investigating s/h is the Fluke 8050A. Make sure you get one with a good LCD, as they are prone to failure at this age. This is a tiny little meter, but still has plenty of useful features. It is manual ranging though. Some have internal NiCad batteries (which need to be present and in good condition for the unit to work correctly); others are mains only.
New, the UNI-T UT804 might be worth investigating. It costs around £200, and appears to have a lot of functionality for the price. I've never seen it in the flesh, but will say that the quality of UNI-T stuff appears to have improved in recent times. The UT803 is even cheaper, but comparing them, I'd say that it's probably worth going for the 804 if I had to pick between them.
In short, I'm sure you can improve on the old Maplin meter. You might not need to go for a bench multimeter specifically to get what you're after - although you might still fancy one for various reasons - perhaps let us know a bit more about what you have in mind...
