On 2007-09-15 22:05:45 +0100, robgraham said:

£203 I've just priced that meter at.

Really? You must have tried very hard to find one that expensive.
They are less than half that in the U.S.



When you can get a perfectly
adequate meter out of Maplin for a fiver or less, that does somewhat
beggar belief that that amount of money was spent without seemingly
understanding the uses and characteristics of the instrument.

It depends on what you want to do.

I have a Fluke 87 that I bought in the U.S. over 10 years ago (IIRC).
This was one of the earlier version 4 true RMS ones and I think I paid
around $200 for it at the time including a bundle of accessories such
as thermocouple probe and adaptor and a current clamp.

During that time it has behaved perfectly - leads are still good,
calibration reports fine, switches are solid and so on. It's rugged
enough that if it's accidentally dropped it survives unscathed - not
that I've dropped it more than twice. Even so, it's normally kept
carefully and used as required on projects.

I've also had a succession of the £10-20 jobs that are typically used
in the workshop for rough work that doesn't need a better device.
They are OK for what they are, but accuracy is not great and there is
quite a bit of variation with temperature for some reason which I've
never investigated. It's the flimsy little leads that let them
down the most and I've found that the switch usually becomes
intermittent or causes errors. Fortunately, the errors seem to be
gross enough to be obvious.



I do quite a bit of home electronics and would love to have spare
money to buy quality instruments like that.

You can get quite a long way with these meters as long as you realise
the limitations and are prepared to throw them out when they become
troublesome.



Actually on the basis
that 'quality' in my book also includes 'value for money' I'm not sure
I would buy one.

The two are not really related that much. Quality is all about
whether the product does what it is claimed it will do and continues to
do so for a period of time represented by the price paid. It's
therefore fairly well defined.

Value for money is about the degree to which the product does what you
are looking for it to do and that varies by person and application.

Thus if you want to do a set of things that can be achieved by one of
the Maplin superspecials and you are happy to buy replacements as they
fail or become unreliable, then they are good value for money for you.
Equally, if you want to do some things for which a higher spec. meter
like the Fluke is needed or can be relied upon to do for longer without
buying a new one, then the Fluke is good value for money and the
Superspecial is not.