I finally got a cheap harbor freight multimeter to do what my fluke couldn't

So I was working on a Samsung fridge last week where the main board wasn't sending power to the ice maker. My Fluke 117 was giving me weird fluctuating readings on the DC voltage pins. I had a $15 Harbor freight meter in my truck that I use for rough checks, figured why not. I hooked it up and it gave me a solid steady 5.2v reading, which was exactly what the service manual called for. Turns out my Fluke was picking up some kind of ghost voltage or something from the board. I learned that for basic DC checks on appliance boards, the cheap meters can actually work better because they dont have as much sensitivity to noise. Has anyone else run into their expensive meter giving you bad readings on control boards?

3 comments

3 Comments

karencampbell1mo ago

Ha! So your hundred dollar Fluke got shown up by the bargain bin special. That's hilarious. I've had the opposite happen where my cheap meter just gave up and showed a flat zero on a live circuit. But honestly, sometimes those cheap ones are so dumb they don't get confused by all the electronic nonsense floating around. They just sit there and read what's actually there. Makes you wonder why we all spend the big bucks sometimes.

shane_hayes1mo ago

Kinda changed my mind reading this, not gonna lie.

jessica7071mo ago

I had a similar thing happen with my 87-V and a dryer control board... @karencampbell is right, sometimes the fancy meters just overthink things and the cheap ones keep it simple.