How about FLUKE-15B, would you buy one if the price is right?

I bet there are other people that are in the same situation as I am.

I am using one quite old multimeter inherited from my brother, most of the times it works OK-ish but sometimes I really doubt in numbers it is showing me so I am thinking how nice it would be to have a good quality multimeter that you can rely on. Unfortunately my hobby budget is limited and since I am not electronic expert I can't justify spending that cash on a multimeter while on other hand I do not want to buy cheap generic no name 20$ multimeter since my situation would probably not gain much from that, if any.

GB recently listed quite a few new measurement tools (go to new arrivals for March 05) such as Fluke 17B and Fluke 15B multimeters (among others) so I contacted them and inquired about the price that they could offer for BLF members that would be interested in upgrading their measuring setup :)

I would not expect revolutionary discount but no one is giving free cash this days so I'll take what I can get, 10-15$ is enough for one or even two small lights (just yesterday I received Uniquefire UF-T20 paid ~13$.

soooo...
anyone interested?

I’m interested but is there any way to confirm if they’re 100% genuine FLUKE?

The same unit sells for ~$90 in eBay from very reputable sellers…

I’d be in for the 17B if it’s a good deal

me 2

I recently bought a craftsman clamp meter..

http://m.sears.com/craftsman-digital-clamp-on-ammeter/p-03482369000P

If you can tell me why the fluke 17b is better and it's worth it I'd buy one.

I have a fluke 117 and sent it in for repair and it has been 6 month and still don’t have it back yet. Has literally put light modding on hold.

Probably in

I will consider if it is 17B+ model.

Don’t you mean Banggood?
I would probably get one if it’s genuine.

unit price + shipping ?

Here are the links to both meters on GearBest:

Weird, typing Fluke in the searchbox at Gearbest and pressing enter renders no result.

BG carries some Fluke models also

Sirius9…what about asking BG or GB for a group buy or coupon code?

Would love to have a Fluke dmm, but am concerned about gray market/warranty issues. Are GB or BG authorized resellers? Would something from China even have a US warranty? (“where to buy” on the US site doesn’t show Chinese resellers… google translate of the Chinese site didn’t yield anything I could understand.)

Looks nice, but a little pricey.

I’ve been using a “Innova 3320” DMM I picked up on Amazon for about $20. It works pretty well, and I checked its calibration last week against a recently-certified Fluke 8846A. At 1.000V it’s dead-on, and at 4.20V it reads about 0.006V high. So if I multiply its Li-Ion readings by about 0.9986 it’s just about right.

I can’t really complain about my cheap 3.5-digit DMM being 0.14% off. However, I can definitely complain that every single Li-Ion charger I’ve ever used terminates at a different voltage and none of them stop right at 4.20V. I’ve seen anything from 4.11V to 4.26V, and I settled on one that does 4.18V (in order to get a good charge without going over 100%).

What are the benefits of a Fluke like this over something more pedestrian like my $20 DMM? It looks to me like it offers slightly more resolution (4 digits up to 4.000V instead of only 1.999V), some extra functions (frequency, temperature, min/max/hold, LED test), higher-quality internals, and probably tighter calibration. Did I miss anything?

I had the same experience, but if you look through New Arrivals, like the OP mentioned, they are on the first page.

Apparently the 17B and 15B models were intended only for the Chinese market.

I'm also looking to upgrade. If the price is right, I'm interested.

Agree about the price. And I would like to know the benefits also :-)

To answer some of the raised topics:

Are this 100% genuine FLUKE products?
I doubt that anyone except engineer or maybe sales manager from FLUKE that really knows their product can answer this question but I sincerely doubt they would bother replying, for 20 or 50 pieces, or they would just say “buy from element14” or something like that. Chinese are excellent in copying things but in most cases their interest is to sale products and not to have them seized by customs and then destroyed so they make subtle changes like naming the product “Floke” :stuck_out_tongue:
Maybe this are models intended for chinese market like Woody mentioned but who can confirm what are the differences, is it “Chinese version” because the box and user manual is in chinese language or they used cheaper materials to build them (doubt that) or the package is poorer than in European or US version (if there are such versions ) to make it more affordable.
Many if-s and not much facts to answer this question but I will forward this to GB and see what they have to say. I believe they are, at best, the second hand in supply chain as: they buy this gear from authorised Fluke dealer. Maybe the best way to check would be to ask EEVBlog Dave but that sword has two blades, for him DMM under like 500$ is not worth considering.

I will consider if it is 17B
I am sure they can add this model to the deal. They probably get all Fluke equipment from the same supplier so, as long as they can get quantity discount from their supplier they will be able to offer us lower price.

craftsman clamp meter vs fluke
As I mentioned I am not an expert, I just want good quality equipment that I can rely on and Fluke is No.1 in the world. If you just bought new meter (dmm and clamp) and you are satisfied with it, don’t have any issues then, by all means, I don’t see the need to spend more money on similar equipment. As I understood, Craftsman is Sears brand name, they found OEM manufacturer from China and ordered several thousands pieces with “Craftsman” logo! Right?
Anyhow, I found this short video comparing Craftsman and Fluke clamp meter and If I were only to base my decision judging on this video, maybe I would buy Craftsman because of the budget but I would certainly wanted to get Fluke :slight_smile:

group buy or coupon code
Aren’t this two the same? At the end you get the code that you apply when purchasing… As long as the price is acceptable i’ll play the game :slight_smile:

warranty issues
I would say that it is safe to assume that, as with all products coming from China, there is no warranty, i.e. you would have to return the product to the supplier (GB in this case) and apply for refund or replacement product.

Are GB or BG authorized resellers?
LOL, I am sure that, by now, we all know there is no such thing as authorised reseller in China. To be authorised means to conform to manufacturers price policy or as we know it “MAP” which means keeping the prices at the higher level which will in turn result with lower sale because not-authorised dealers will be able to offer lower price and sometimes even one (1:money_mouth_face: buck can be enough to draw the customer, we saw this too many times. They may be authorised for selling some genuine Chinese products like electronic cigars or power banks because this will give the manufacturer a way through to world market but this is Fluke we are talking about, remember what they did to Sparkfun.

What are the benefits of a Fluke like this over something more pedestrian like my $20 DMM?
For me, benefits are higher resolution and accuracy as well as repeatability of results and I would like professionally calibrated, reputable device. When I pull the battery of a charger and measure it with the DMM I want to know that it is exactly x.xx(x) volts, I don’t want to ask myself who is lying me, charger or DMM (or both) if I see different numbers.
I am not forcing anyone to “play this game”, I don’t get free DMM or any other free stuff/benefits from this except maybe opportunity to pay less for this multimeter as any of you guys.
So, I you don’t see any benefits from your current setup then, by all means, use that money for other, more productive purposes that will bring you better costs/benefit ratio.

Also, it is worth to mention that on the Fluke website, this two products are “discontinued or reclassified” doesn’t seem to affect their price, at my local market cheapest Fluke multimeter is Fluke 113 (no consumption (A) measurement) with price of about 160$, Fluke 115 that can measure Amps consumption costs ~250$ and Fluke 117 mentioned by user downlinx is ~300$

P.S. There is one more option that I am personally considering and that is Mastech MS8229 and will check if GB would be willing to source it.

:beer: all :wink:

FWIW, the clamp meter and traditional DMM differ in some pretty huge ways. For one, a clamp meter can measure high amperage but not low amperage, while a regular DMM is the opposite. If you want to find out how much power your triple-XP-L build is using on turbo, use a clamp meter. If you want to measure the moonlight mode (or pretty much anything other than high currents), use a regular DMM.

One other thing to note about cheap DMMs is that they are much more dangerous when used incorrectly. Like, my Innova 3320 has no fuse on its 10A circuit, and has a pretty crappy fuse on its lower-current circuit. So, not only is it much more likely to fail (especially if I try to measure current for more than a few seconds), but when it fails it’s much more likely to smoke or even explode.

With a nice DMM, user error is fast and uneventful and means “oops, guess I’ll replace the fuse”. And the other functions often still work even without fixing the fuse, since they’re totally independent circuits. With a cheap DMM, an accident can damage it partially so it keeps functioning but gives bad results, and when it finally fails it’s time to buy a whole new DMM. And hopefully nobody got hurt in the process.

OTOH, my cheap DMM is still pretty good for its price, and surprisingly accurate for voltage measurements (which is most of what I need). I just have to be careful with it, and only measure current up to about an amp (anything above that is really inaccurate and increasingly likely to kill the thing).