[Review] FNIRSI FNB48 || A USB Meter w/ Many Advanced Features

The USB meter was sent to me by FNIRSI for review.
Product's link: FNIRSI FNB48 USB Meter

Here's the specification sheet taken from the manufacturer's listing.



T
he USB meter comes in a tin box.



The meter is seated into foam for added protection during shipping.



The FNB48 comes with a nice 1.77' LCD color display.



The main input and output of the meter is a USB 3.0 Type-A (male, female)



Of course, a variety of other input and output ports are available as well.
The back cover lists all the available ports and control buttons.



The upper side of the meter contains the following:

  • Micro USB port for connecting the meter with your PC
  • Bluetooth on/off switch
  • Navigation wheel
  • Back button



The lower side of the meter integrates the following:

  • USB Type-C input
  • Micro USB input
  • USB Type-C output
  • PD COM



The navigation in the FNB48's menu is done through the navigation wheel and back button.
The navigation wheel can be rotated left and right for scrolling though screens as well as pressed inwards to act as an OK button.



The USB meter can be easily disassembled.
Removing the front cover reveals that the LCD display is protected by a thick acrylic piece.



By default, the USB meter will power on at its basic screen, which displays the Voltage, Amperage and Wattage.



A great feature of the SNB48 is the fact that it uses an accelerometer to automatically rotate the screen.




Swiping to the right, a more advanced UI is presented.
Other than the basic info, this UI also includes Min/Max/AVG measurements as well as some info for the total Capacity and Energy for the selected group.



Holding the scroll wheel to the left will list the available groups (10 in total).
Holding the scroll wheel to the right will navigate you to a capacity calculation utility.
Long pressing the scroll wheel will bring up a prompt for deleting the recorded data for the current mode group.



The next screen is responsible for listing and triggering the charging modes.



Holding the scroll wheel to the left will show the available mode triggers.
Here's the modes that the FNB48 can trigger:

  • Automatic detection
  • Qualcomm QC2.0
  • Qualcomm QC3.0
  • Huawei FCP
  • Huawei SCP
  • Samsung AFC
  • PD Trigger
  • PD Convert
  • VOOC/WARP 5V
  • SVOOC 1.0 10V 5A
  • SVOOC 2.0 10V 6.5A




Holding the scroll wheel to the right will list a set of available monitoring tools:

  • PD Listener
  • Read E-Marker cable
  • Read DASH cable
  • Enable Soft DASH
  • Enable Apple 2.4A



The next screen is used for graphing the Voltage and Amperage.
Holding the scroll wheel to the left/right will decrease/increase the monitoring interval.



And finally, the last screen is used to measure cable resistance.
In order to measure the resistance, you first need to connect the USB meter directly to the power source.
Pressing the navigation wheel inwards will get your reference measurement.



Afterwards, you need to connect the cable you're measuring between the power source and the USB meter.
Pressing the scroll wheel will grab another measurement and will print the cable's resistance.



Additionally, the USB meter allows the user to configure a variety of settings.
The settings menu can be accessed via holding the scroll wheel to the left while at the first screen.




Using another USB meter I've got, I went ahead and measured the actual resistance that the FNB48 introduces to a circuit.
As you can see, while running 4.82V and 1A through it, the observed voltage drop is 0.02V, which brings the total resistance to 0.02Ω
Such resistance numbers are excellent.



As you can imagine, the FNIRSI FNB48 is a very nice and capable USB meter.
It supports pretty much all of the modern charging modes, it has a large LCD screen and integrates a lot of advanced features.

Note: The manufacturer also includes a Android APK for accessing and controlling the USB meter of Bluetooth, but I haven't yet got the time to play with it.
I'll make sure to include any updates as soon as I get to set everything up.

I bought the FNB48 meter a few months ago, but unfortunately FNIRSI AliExpress can only ship to my country using DHL which costs US$56 (shipping costs much more than the item)

Thus I looked around and found a different online shop where I bought the FNB48 from. However, they do not have the Bluetooth version of FNB48, so mine doesn’t have Bluetooth function.

I wonder if it’s possible to add Bluetooth functionality to an existing FNB48?

FNIRSI has a website and the support page: software / firmware update / manual can be found here:
http://www.fnirsi.cn/support

There’s a newly released firmware version for the FNB48 just a couple of days ago. (Updating mine now to firmware v2.30 …)

On checking, it also appears there is now a PC software for the FNIRSI USB Meter (it’s still on v.0.0.4 so more like a ‘beta’ version, and has very basic functions, hopefully they’ll continue to improve it)

I’ve been looking for a more advanced USB tester. Nice review!
d-t-a, This seems to be available on Amazon US site:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08QMWFQ2H/ref=nav_ya_signin?\_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&
$36 for the regular on, $46 for the Bluetooth version.
Not sure if that does you any good…
All the Best,
Jeff

What is PD COM?

I’ve got the FNB38 and it’s pretty nice. Despite having a “logging” function, I can’t find any way to export data off the darn thing. So I’m curious how the bluetooth functionality works on this one. Particularly if you’re able to get data or a graph for the entire charge cycle. I use mine for checking the built-in charge function of flashlights for reviews and I find myself wanting more than the basic summary info that the FNB38 provides.

Yeah,
Getting an output of some kind that could be plugged into some software for data logging is what I’d like also.
All the Best,
Jeff

The Windows software might work to export data; I haven’t explored that yet (as I use Linux, I only launched a Windows VM to update the firmware from v2.20 to v2.30).

It looks like the unit shown here has the same issue as I do where temperature is wildly inaccurate (negative 80 degrees Celsius‽).

Is there a temperature calibration step? The manual v0.6 doesn’t seem to mention one. And I’ve seen an older review ( FNIRSI FNB48 USB Meter Tester UPM Review – USB Charging ) where the temperature appears accurate. I’m debating contacting support (which I don’t expect to be the most fun) - I don’t really care, but it’d be nice to have if it’s supposed to be working.