On 9 Apr, 00:25, Owain wrote:

They are too likely to fail dangerous and hurt somebody, and too likely

Owain

I've read this before - any links to this actually happening? Surely
B&Q wouldn't be selling them for £1.99 if there was anything more than
a very remote possibility of someone electrocuting themselves through
"proper" use of the tool. Failures to the extent that are likely to
harm must be incredibly rare.

Of course, that completely ignores the false negative potential for
them, and that is the real problem with them. Though again they
aren't sold with warning flags all over them. Meters can be just as
dangerous for ignoramuses like me - when I first bought a meter I
would always check the result that I saw with a neon screwdriver as a
few times when I first used the meter I used the wrong settings and
got a false negative, and the screwdriver was useful to help me out
with that.

I'm more confident now that I use the right settings on the meter (its
not that hard to put it on AC 200v really is it???), but I still
keep the screwdriver to hand just in case.

Matt