Southwire16020N Compact 3-in-1 CAT IV Multimeter

This meter has performed very well over the years. I bought it because I needed a meter that was safe (this has proper isolation cuts on the board and is UL certified, see video tear-down reviews) and cheap enough that if I lost it or someone needed a meter, I could give it to them and buy another. This is the 4th one of these meters and I will continue to buy them and Southwire meters in general. It's not a Fluke but is a lot less likely to develop legs on the job site and go wandering to a new home.

Helps get the job done. One thing, I would add a magnet, (and I did).

Compact & easy to use

Serves its purpose - easy to use if you can read instructions

too little

This very small multimeter is just fine for general controls work. It's missing a clamp-on meter of course, so you can't measure AC current draws - for that you'd need a separate meter. The built-in flashlight is surprisingly handy, as my eyes age and more light helps, and the non-contact voltage detector works well too and is quite sensitive. (It doesn't sound a tone, but the red light that illuminates is plenty visible. It also has frequency, pulse-width, and capacitance measurements, which are not commonly used, but if you need them, they're nice to have.But the nicest feature to me is that the ammeter fuse automatically resets! IT seems that every controls electrician I know either has a non-functional current range, or is one of those rare well-prepared people that has spares, because it so easy to forget that you're on a current range when you go to measure a voltage. With this meter, there's no fuse - the electronic protection automatically resets. Even most Flukes don't have this feature. The flip side of this is that the maximum current range is pretty low - 200 mA, but for a lot of controls work that's enough.My sole complaint about the meter, and it's minor once you get used to it, is that both the voltage and current ranges start out in AC - there's a MODE button to switch it to DC. For the sorts of things I do, I wish it started out in DC instead, but that's purely a personal choice, and it's only a single button push to get to the correct mode - I just do it automatically now. Also, as mentioned above, there's no clamp-on ammeter, but the whole thing is less than five inches long, so it fits in my smallest tool bag. It seems to be reasonably durable - it survived a four-foot drop to concrete without any problem, and it is CAT-IV (600V) rated.I bought my first one at Lowes, but I like it enough that I've bought another one here on Amazon, for my truck tool-kit.

Didn't work out of the box. Pulled it apart and found one of the battery contacts/springs on the board was bent back, fixed that and then 5 or so days later the continuity beeper got stuck on. Returning it to amazon.