That expensive fluke multimeter finally paid for itself today

I spent $180 on a Fluke 117 multimeter back in 2019 and honestly felt stupid for dropping that much. My old $30 one worked fine for basic stuff. But today I had a weird power issue on a server PSU where voltages were all over the place. My cheap meter was giving wild readings and I couldn't trust it. Pulled out the Fluke and it showed a clean voltage drop right away. Turned out to be a bad capacitor on the input filter board. That one find saved me from replacing a $1,200 power supply. The build quality and reliability of a nicer meter really shows when you're troubleshooting something tricky. Anyone else have a tool purchase that felt like too much at first but proved its worth later?

2 comments

2 Comments

nora_park722d ago

I read somewhere that a lot of cheap meters can't handle true RMS, so they give you garbage readings on anything with a weird waveform like a switching power supply. That makes me wonder how many times people chase ghosts in their systems because their tool is lying to them.

olivia_morgan82d ago

Your tool is lying to them" - jeez, that's a disturbing thought. Never considered how many hours people probably wasted chasing problems that didn't exist because their meter was feeding them bad data.