eevBLAB 91 - Why Are Fluke Meters So EXPENSIVE?

hi a common question that gets asked in the test equipment industry is why do fluke multimeters cost so much money and like how can they still sell them at the massive prices that they do well the reasons might actually surprise you now if you compare fluke with almost any meter on the market let's take the 77.4 here and compare it with the brimen bm 786 which i sell on my store this fluke 77.4 is more than double the price of a like a really good quality matching one you can see that they're prank like same shape form factor everything the over molded case um in fact this one has practically better everything really than the fluke 77 so why is this more than well over twice the price of a competing product which pretty much beats the pants off it in terms of bang per buck and features is it because fluke meters are more accurate than other meters on the market nope is it because they have better input protection than other meters on the market nope is it because they're like more rugged than other meters on the market no not really and there's a lot of people out there who will use those three reasons why flukes are better and why they cost more than other meters but that's not the case they're not the actual reasons now the reasons that i'm about to tell you why flukes cost more than everything else on the market you may not agree with these and that's fine these reasons may not be you might think that that's just dumb why would anyone want that well hopefully i'm going to explain but these reasons won't be for everyone in fact fluke do not make meters for the hobbyist market they make it for the professional market and it's not just because it's the professional market there are other reasons that go into it now these may not be reasons that you would decide to buy a fluke meter and i'm certainly not trying to shield a fluke meter i think this is better in every way i think you should buy this or another meter it's much more bang per buck than a fluke meter but i'm just going to tell you the reasons why in the industry you may not be aware of why these meters actually cost more even if it doesn't make any sense to you first of all these have a lifetime warranty i'm not sure if and please correct me in the comments down below if another manufacturer does offer a lifetime warranty on meters but i'm not aware of one and yes i am aware that has a little asterisk next to it but still you know essentially a lifetime warranty it's better than almost every other meter on the market and that costs money next up they're made in the united states of america uncle sam usa usa i'm only aware of one other manufacturer and that's klein tools who are do make some meters in the usa once again please correct me down below if i'm wrong but i believe they're basically the major manufacturer of multimeters in the usa and that is a big deal for a lot of government military and other requirements for example they may have uh purchase requirements once again you may not agree with it but they might have purchase requirements that hey we can only buy us usa made products or we prefer to buy usa made products now of course just having a lifetime warranty and made in the usa is not reason for more than double the price not by any stretch of the imagination so let's get into the more reasons the next reason is longevity of production this particular model well the four that the three in this uh form factor look and feel form factor has been available for i think over 20 years 21 years at least for this particular model and if you go back to the fluke 70s like the 70 series 1 and series 2 before that we're talking way back into the 1980s name another meter on the market that's been around for that length of time now of course you're probably thinking why does that matter at all um what's the big deal about that well it's a huge deal for huge corporations military government and things like that that have uh procedures in terms of like the military is absolutely massive say the us military they've got all these procedures in place for how to use these particular meters and this is why they don't want them to change because just the cost in the logistics of changing all the documentation on how to use this product to test you know this little this access point in this submarine or on this ship or on this plane or in this tank or whatever it is right they've got count i don't know anyone work in the military and know how many documents they would have test procedures and other uh instructions i would have that are specifically written around a particular meter and if you change the meter then you have to change all of the documentation across everything so someone like the military is not just going to go and buy this meter and save half the price because they'd have to spend all that time money and effort updating all of their documentation it just doesn't make sense for them so they're always going to continue to buy this and longevity of production is important to them how important is it to someone like the military and how important is it to fluke that they keep these customers happy well name another manufacturer who would actually produce a specific multimeter like this essentially to meet this exact requirement i've told you about longevity of production and so that they don't have to change the documentation fluke produced this fluke 27 series 2 multimeter you've seen me drop test the 28 series 2 multimeter they produced the 27 series 2 multimeter specifically for customers who had the requirement that they didn't have to change their documentation because all their documentation all of their test procedures were written around the original fluke 27 meter and how it was an average responding multimeter instead of true rms and they can't just buy the new fluke 28 series 2 multimeter because that's true rms they needed a backward compatible meter like this fluke 27 so fluke actually produced this nobody else i don't think in their right mind would buy this fluke 27 series 2 multimeter over the fluke 28 series 2 which i believe is basically at the same price this one is just average responding instead of true rms but there's a huge market out there who will buy this particular meter and producing this and having it for sale manufacturing it and doing everything else that's involved in releasing and selling and supporting a product like this um there's a lot of cost involved in that and they're not doing it for anyone else in the market except those specific customers who have that specific need not to change their documentation and test procedures now the next reason follows on from the longevity of production because these meters have been around for decades and decades and decades and people have been using these companies organizations government military everyone else they have built up trust in these meters and what's called measurement confidence and this is a specific term in the metrology industry in uh calibration of test equipment and any serious large organization or company is going to have a metrology department whose sole purpose is to calibrate mises trace them over time and everything like that okay so this meter here well under half the price it's got more bang per buck more features everything else absolutely fantastic trustworthy meter but it doesn't have the same measurement confidence as this meter that you've been proven that works for the last 20 odd years and you've got the metrology data to back that up now of course for the average user and the average company and just using buying their multimeters they don't care it doesn't matter if rats ask about this measurement confidence stuff you might if you know if you're serious you get it calibrated at the recommended interval every uh 12 months or two years or whatever um your company stan you might not have a company standard so you just follow the manufacturer's standard oh yeah let's just get get it calibrated at least we're i don't know keeping some pencil pusher happy that it's calibrated right but if you take your metrology and your measurement confidence seriously then you'll have to understand that every single time you use this meter right it could have been calibrated yesterday but today it could fail that means you've got to have measurement confidence in this meter that the calibration sticker on the front this doesn't have one but you've got your traceable i've done a video on that i'll have to link it in what is traceable calibration and what is calibration very important um great video by the way so when you take a measurement with this meter and it might be a critical measurement it might be a measurement on a you know probe going to pluto that you're just about to send and it's got to be right okay you've got to trust this meter you've got to have measurement confidence in this meter and you only get that based on the history of this particular meter and tracking its calibration over time and also you build up measurement comments with other identical meters that you've got as well and their traceable history and the history of all of them together over many many years many many decades does that mean you can only get it with the fluke and you can't get it with some other brand meter no of course not but if you switch brands then you have no traceable history of this brand or this particular meter or this particular series of meters you've got you've got to start from scratch so essentially you've got you know if you take your metrology seriously and your measurement confidence seriously you've got no measurement confidence in this unless you've built it up over time and this can include how the meters are drift over time as well because anyone's serious about metrology will be tracking that sort of stuff they won't just be going oh yeah it's with inspect you want to track like it's drift and stuff like that as well if you're absolutely serious about this stuff and like like i said for most people you know it doesn't matter a rats ass but fluke are famous for the stability of their meters you can buy a 30 plus year old fluke on ebay and if it works it's almost certainly in spec in fact it's pretty much bang on probably to the least significant digit and some people might say well why not just get two cheaper meters and take the measurement twice and compare them and then you can be like even more confident than this one perhaps well yeah maybe you could make that uh sort of argument but when the legal people come sniffing around that oh show us the traceable calibration history of uh these instruments that you're using for this you know 100 million dollar contract we've got with you and prove that you know everything's hunky-dory they're not going to risk they're buying a cheaper meter they are going to go with something that they have the metrology history for over decades it's just not worth the risk to them you don't want to be in breach of some contract terms and conditions somewhere because you bought a cheap meter and this comes back to like original ad which i think they had in the late 80s or even early 90s a fluke ad that they put in the magazines and stuff how to beat the high cost of cheap meters and i was all actually upset about this here's a shot of it because the meter i had the saw brand multimeter i had the first digital multimeter i ever owned was in there all beat up and stuff and i was like yeah okay so the marketing may have worn off of me but as i've worked in the industry over the decades i've realized that there's actually real reasons and meaning behind all this and integrated into that of course is the consistency of the quality and construction the meters fluke are because they're very high priced they're also very high quality construction as well and they do as little as possible to change their processes and everything else over time because they want you to have confidence in these meters that's the point and that costs money they don't go tweaking things willy-nilly next up fluke also maintain world-class calibration and standards laboratories almost practically well apart from keysight who else in the multimeter field actually maintains their own and produces their own calibrations and standard labs no nobody everyone else is using a fluke calibrator to calibrate their multimeters now of course this might not have much to do with the individual meter itself that fluke sells but maintaining and doing that sort of business and standards business that actually costs the company money so they have to make sell higher price tools to pay for all that as well and fluke got into this business by being basically the pioneer in handheld multimeters in the industry and as such they became the de facto standard they made high quality made in usa multimeters and everyone came to trust them and build up that measurement confidence and then production longevity and then they got all the huge orders from the military and the government and everyone wrote their test procedures around them and their measurements and everything else around them and flukes simply don't have to make low-cost tools even though they do they do make some low-cost tools and yes some of them are made in china and other countries as well but all of the high-end meters they're all still made in the usa and they're made to strict production standards and speaking of calibration before fluke actually uh release calibration uh procedures and manuals to the test houses for um all of their equipment and then it ties into their fluke test equipment as well and they'll provide all this information most other manufacturers no no okay do brymen do that i don't think so you might send your brimen away to a test lab and they'll go oh yeah we'll calibrate that but you know we don't have like specific rigid procedures in place for testing this specific uh brimen meter for example or insert any other brand there but they will have those procedures strict uh tested verified procedures in place for calibrating the fluke meters and of course fluke provide schematic diagrams for these as well service information also you know adjustment information all sorts of stuff once again all that stuff doesn't come for free and fluke have all sorts of maintenance plans service plans and all that sort of stuff that you as a large company or organization can sign up to all this sort of stuff like involves more personnel and more expense and everything else like more operating costs for the company because they're providing these higher level services even if like a majority of uh you know multimeters out there just don't need any of that sort of stuff it doesn't matter there are companies who will use and demand those sort of services and the company like fluke offer that and that costs money like everything so there you go that's a list of reasons why fluke meters cost more than others on the market much more and why there's a huge market of people out there who still buy these things because it's about measurement confidence trust and all that other stuff that if you haven't worked in a large strict corporation if you haven't worked in the military you haven't worked in government and other really strict organizations that take their metrology and their measurement confidence and everything incredibly seriously then you won't understand why they're more than happy to pay two or three times the price for less features for this meter and it's not because they're more accurate it's not because they're more rugged it's not because they have better input protection or something like that although you know these are really rugged things you can you know beat the crap out of them they have a you know really good reputation for that but that's not why people buy them it's about measurement confidence longevity and trust in the product so there you go i hope you maybe learned something there and like i said you may not agree with this thing and most people like these are not reasons that they have this is why i sell this and i don't sell this it's because this sells into a specific market this is way better bang per buck than the fluke yeah i'm a bit of a fluke fan boy i've always liked their tools but this is not like shilling for fluke this is just explaining some of the reasons you may not be aware of that there's these requirements out there in the industry that you may never need you may not never come across and you didn't really know about so there you go that's why i think these things cost two to three times the price of everything else there might be some other reasons too if you've got them leave them in the comments down below what meter do you buy do you only trust a fluke meter do you only trust brimen meters now do you only trust insert uh brand here or you go i just don't care i just buy the cheapest heap of crap i can get that's you know built down to a price and does the job she'll be right no worries anyway i hope you enjoyed that found it useful if you did give it a thumbs up um and watch that i'll link it up here and down below that metrology video that's a keysight video talking about calibration and metrology if you want to know more about the standards and measurement confidence side of things catch you next time [Music] you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 263,295

Keywords: eevblog, video, eevblab, fluke, fluke multimeter, metrology, calibration, digital multimeter, true rms, best multimeter, best multimeter for electricians, best multimeter for electronics, best multimeter for hvac, best multimeter for automotive

Id: ay9wFQAW19Y

Length: 17min 48sec (1068 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 15 2021