I know this topic isn't much talked about, but I thought it could especially be useful for people who do reviews? perhaps.
Currently I only use a 5m tape measure for 5m, 10m and 15m distances.. but its a little annoying to do. So I was considering looking for a digital distance meter.
But like with any kinds of tool, there are expensive, good tools. Cheap, garbage tools, and budget, good tools. I'd like to know if people use these digital distance meters, and how accurate they are, ease of use, etc...
I still have (somewhere… :person_facepalming: ) a few ultrasonic rangefinders, and they were surprisingly accurate, at least at big objects. Indoors, they were accurate to a fraction of an inch.
I could ping the opposite wall, and with a slight change in “aim”, ping a cabinet or wall-unit, and it’d reflect the shorter distance.
I mainly used them just to play with, but I was hella impressed how accurate they are, especially hearing the faint click-click-click as it’d calculate the distance after locking on.
Was also fun to confuse it by slowly waving it closer/nearer/closer/nearer/… and hear it clicking away but not getting any consistent reading to lock onto. Almost felt bad for the critter.
Cheap ones are quite okay. depend what accuracy you want.
I have to take measurements between 2 aluminium bars, and cheap ones cannot do that. Something to do with reflective surface I guess.
Well, that’s my experience with them.
They were not consistent in measurements and sometimes gave weird measurements.
Also many times they gave different measurements of same distance if material was different. Don’t know why.
Maybe you have some better units
With laser units I usually don’t have any problems and are cheap.
After some reading I’ve bought this one : LOMVUM 40M - 40m for 15$ - 10 days delivery and reasonable price, I’ve checked it inside the house and it works well and accurate.
I have this one. I think it was around $15 from eBay. It’s a little off sometimes on very short measurements (like under 5 inches), but I mainly use it to measure longer distances, so it’s not a big deal.
Not exactly budget friendly but since I also do some home improvement I use a Bosch laser which is pretty accurate and measures to 135’. They do make one that does 165’ as well.
Oh wow, after running out of flashlights to buy I’m on the verge of getting one of these too. I’ve also heard that the ultrasonic ones don’t work so well. Just wondering what range to get. 50 m might be too short outdoors.
I don’t think they’re expensive at all. I have one with a red laser level I bought over 10 years ago. You put a reflective card at your target if need be, and with the tinted glasses it looks like a shiny white dot… Though with the reflective card you don’t really need the glasses. We used to shine laser pointers at street signs as kids, and even in the daytime they’d light up with their reflective surface.
- laser ones are very precise. Never met people who can measure 10-20m using tape measure with same precise.
more expensive models have more features for fast calculations. For internal usage, I would prefer models with micro-switch that can determine if it should add tool length to the measured distance (sometimes you forget to choose right option manually).
Bosch/Makita/Hilti etc. sell their meters but they are overpriced IMO. If you don’t want to play lottery with Ali no-name brands, you can check uni-t/masttech/proskit.
I saw a Leica disto a3 second hand for about $50 but their might be other ones that are "good enough" at $20. Next week I'll double check all mentioned ones and prices on different websites.
- 10 days delivery and reasonable price, I’ve checked it inside the house and it works well and accurate.
