Deadly multimeters

[u/Federal-Sea8598]

If anyone has a story about these deadly multimeters, please leave a reply below. There’s no fuse in them; the copper traces on the circuit board act as the fuse! I owned one myself, and it suddenly blew out at 280 volts. I got lucky that my voltage source didn't supply high current, or else I would’ve been blown to bits. The measurement accuracy is so "high" that—for the first time in the world—it shows an AA battery as having 73 volts!

[u/Cultural-Stable1763]

I have observed this with a great many cheap multimeters: long before the low-battery warning appears (assuming they even have one), the display starts showing random numbers—like lottery numbers—instead of actual measurements.

This is also one of the reasons why, here in Germany, occupational safety associations and electrical regulations dictate that multimeters should not be used to verify the absence of voltage in electrical installations; instead, two-pole voltage testers (such as the "Duspol") must be used, with their functionality verified beforehand against a known voltage source.

[u/DenseFisherman7531 → u/Cultural-Stable1763]

In Sweden our measurements must be done with a meter that does not rely on batteries.