I’m sure everyone is very familiar with this good old cheap multimeter on the market. I first bought my DT-830B digital multimeter wayback in 1995 when I was still in first year college. That was my first multimeter in our home and I was quite super excited to the point that I measured the resitance of every resistor I have on my cabinet. My DT-830B’s brand name is Xinle (made in china) and it cost around 800 pesos circa 1995. Today, I have seen alot of DT-830 Bs with different brand names, some are KYK branded
and others doesn’t even have a brand name but all that was
printed on the casing is DT-830.
These testers can be bought for as low as 100 pesos on those chinese discount stores. From my experience, the only problem I encountered with the chinese made DT-830Bs is that they have low quality probes and it is quite
useless when measuring low resistance parts such as wirings.
The internal resistance of the free probes is just too high for
low resistance measurement. The build quality is just
average and I haven’t encountered a bad unit yet after
using 2 of them for almost a year.
March 2nd, 2008 at 10:11 pm
Thank you for your product reviews. These reviews will surely help our young electronics experimenters in making intelligent decisions when it comes to choosing the right equipment for their own use. Let me share my view on this particular topic.
I am aware that DMM prices had been steadily falling, but I did not know that these low cost DMMs are now selling at a hundred bucks a piece. I could now guess that sooner or later, the 9V energizer battery you will need to power these stuffs will cost more than the DMM itself.
Not too long ago, I also bought one cheap DMM from Raon. At that time, they are priced at something like 300 pesos each, much cheaper than the already low cost Taiwan DMM models. I bought one, not for the want of it, but to satisfy my tickled curiosity. Somehow, I sensed that this unbelievable low price has to have some catch in it, and this one I would like to test to find out.
I can no longer remember if my DMM got the same model number as your DT-830B. Neither could I say if it came from the same manufacturer, as these cheap DMM usually do not carry the tag of their respective manufacturers (this already tells me something).
I checked my cheap DMM calibration using a Keithley Model 2430 SourceMeter. This is not a calibrator instrument, but is just as good – it was a just recently calibrated source that has a reassuring rock stable output down to the last 6th (least significant) digit.
On test, it instantly revealed my DMM calibration is anything but good. But it is not the initial calibration that really scared me, it is the repeatability. This 3-1/2 digit DMM could not decide what to show on its two least significant digits, they just keep changing. It has the precision of a 1-1/2 digit DMM! After it flunked this initial yet very important qualification, I find it pointless to proceed any further.
To be fair, be aware that these ‘test results’ may not necessarily apply to your DT-803B. Maybe, and I do hope, these newer and cheaper models now do better than the one I had. But I felt less hopeful when you yourself had noted that this DT-803B DMM is practically useless when measuring low resistance.
Now think about this, this basic but very important diagnostics tool will be your eye and ear whenever you poke at your circuits. Would you use one that you know could be lying to you? They may be cheap, but are they worth the money?
Cheers!
April 3rd, 2008 at 1:43 am
I need to buy 5000 dt830band put my logo on them. Anyone know a company that will do that for me?
February 12th, 2010 at 11:39 pm
DT830 is one of the first DMM made in China, the original brand is UNI-T. They had stop the production of 830s model, due to many fake and copied of other manufacturer. UNI-T still producing DMM, thier product is one of the best in China, they had been producing some model of Fluke before.
Up to now my DT830B is still running, but i’m not using anymore. Because now i’m using higher model from UNI-T