mattg889 that’s what I have been saying all along. Make the battery bigger for more capacity.

Did your wife tell you that? LOL

@@ihatesmartphones YES YES YES. And stop this nonsense of building the battery in so that you can't replace it without returning the whole phone to the manufacturer.

Apple and all the follow-me companies must be making a killing from the parents of self-obsessed teens who buy these wafer-thin phones to stuff in their butt pockets to look sexy, and then sit down and bend them all to hell. I'm also tired of non-replaceable batteries, and worse the "battery bloat" that makes the foil encased battery packs to act like pneumatic pillows and blow the phones apart while charging. I'll gladly take a slightly thicker phone to accommodate a battery with a structurally rigid case so all sorts of bad things don't happen. Form follows function every time.

@@BrianG61UK A removable battery of course is also useful for a good ol' hard reset, which I've needed to do more than once. Bad apps can temporarily brick a phone to where the power button doesn't even work, but popping the battery does!

If you aren't living life on the edge you are taking up too much room

And mixing it up with rechargables... life is fun.

Very apt considering pretty much everyone in Australia lives one the edge (of Australia).

Barry Allard well, it's not all that rubbish. It could, theoretically, make a heck of a boom.

Mixed brand too... dave needs an exorcism

Umm... You mean like a transistor?

Nah, I'm just fucking with Dave. I meant his nemesis: The Batteriser.

1.05V?

South African?

Already done, search for energy harvesting devices.

Indeed! I would think Fluke wouldn’t go using something that didn't work well, but be careful, lest You offend the pen lite battery fan boys! 😆 AA’ and AA’s have their place, but I prefer a Fluke with a 9 Volt battery. Lees chance of leakage, and the argument on availability and price; Are You kidding me? Try looking on the Internet! And once You start adding BT and all this other junk, You really aren’t talking a practical dependable Multi meter, are we? Appreciate Your comment!

I wish more meters used AAs. Modern meter chips can work on 2.5V or less, which makes 9V batteries quite wasteful. Replace LDOs with micro-power switching regulators and you can get another 30-40% extra battery life from a 4xAA pack.

is it not the best choice you can think of? the worlds most common battery cell

The energy density difference between 9V and AA makes it a no brainer in my opinon. Didn't even need to look at a single graph to know that :)

Not just the most common, also the cheapest per watt-hour among primary cells. 2.5-3X the capacity for slightly more money and bulk than comparable quality AAA.

And you get 8 AA batteries for the same price as one 9V battery. At least over here.

this meter is literarly perfect for use with nimh, 1,05v cutoff and good capacity with even number of cells (important for some chargers)

Bluetooth hasn't proven to be 100% reliable in development, and apparently that's normal...

EEVblog Which is a bit sad when one realizes that Bluetooth has now been around for nearly 20 years, though it does not help that it is yet another technology crammed into a very crowded 2.4GHz ISM band with so many sources of interference that can momentarily jam it. My first PDA, a Compaq iPaq Pocket PC running Windows CE, included Bluetooth back in 1999-2000, which was actually pretty reliable back then, but then there was not much in the way of WiFi and other 2.4GHz devices at that point and Bluetooth was literally its wireless network connection at up to whopping 1Mbps.

Where abouts do you live? In Australia alkaline AA and AAAs are the same price, and for Lithium primaries AAAs are usually slightly cheaper.

@@1ohtaf1 same here AAA and AA are the same price, tho AA has almost three times the capacity. but i dont mind AAA batteries, if device doesnt draw much its okay, but in this case his battery choice is good, especially they made it in the way it discharges untill 1,05v, which is excellent if you want to use rechargable batteries

I guess Dave has early onset Alzheimer's. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/mZ96esmgsd66c6M.html

The cheap ones almost never use individual encapsulated AAAA cells - just a simple stack of rectangular wax-coated cells with a piece of cardboard between them.

Alkaline batteries will probably use cylindrical cells, to contain the electrolyte, whereas carbon-based ones will usually contain cheap rectangular cells.

They aren't Alkaline.

Wikipedia shows a picture with both zinc-carbon and alkaline rectangular cells inside 9V batteries.

welll... im quite a fan of AAA, for remote controlls for example they use so little and i really like them not being heavy. triple A lasts about two years or more in my tv remote anyways

ArthurMagno haha i used 2 nokia batteries in series and put 2x tp4056 on each battery and i charge them 1 by 1 and not similtaniously works great 😂

I would really like if there were some sort of standard for lithium rechargeable batteries. All modern cellphones have their own format, it would be really nice to get off-the-shelf batteries for a wide range of phones and even devices like multimeters...

check out jesy j7, 4100 mah, radio walkie talk, infrared controller and a badass unbreakable case, all running android 6.0

Philips Xenium phones were cool, with 60 days standby.

you forget that a lot of smartphones have removable batteries and have had for a long time

Slot1Gamer That is something very quickly going away in the name of "water resistance"

yep, like radios once used pp9s which are the giant version of sucky and expensive, i had a radio that needed 2 of them, it sucked

Be aware that by doing this you likely seriously compromised the safety of the meter. Not an issue if you only ever use it for ELV work but a big problem if you ever use it for mains work.

its lazy enginneering and less parts costs for voltage lines, not an improvement, my cheap chinese clock uses 4xaaa, and taps off at a couple of points to steal different voltages

Never said it was 'better', just that it exists.

It would be harmful for the battery lobby. They want us to run everything on batteries **Tin foil hat on**

I was thinking more along the lines of this: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nJNnatum0dGmj4k.html :P

twocvbloke because there is an option to power it with a mr. Fusion

Increases shipping costs

TEM's could be deployed publicly, at least there's no technical reason why they can't. But well any old joe can turn that kind of Plutonium into a bomb, that's why we don't have them. It's not a technology limitation.

There are 2S Li-ion battery packs in 9V format. Voltage is high enought for practically any device using this format and 550-600mAh capacity at 7.4V nominal (4.3Wh - roughly 2x of AA Alkaline at 200mA load - 2.2Wh)

Ease of high voltage, no issues with people mixing and matching batteries, and very low currenct draw. It's the right choice.

EEVblog that makes sense. I suppose in a device designed for safety it guarantees matched cells.

Zylon FPV There are a fair number of smoke detectors which use AA batteries in certain segments, the 9V batteries are most common as backup power sources in the hardwired AC powered smoke detectors as they do not ordinarily need a lot of sustained power since they spend most of their time mains powered. But in the non-hardwired and wireless model smoke detectors as well as CO, explosive gas, and heat detectors (an option to smoke detection in environments that do not lend themselves to typical smoke detectors, like garages, attics, or crawl spaces) you will encounter greater use of AA batteries due to their much greater capacity versus 9V batteries.

1.0-1.1V per cell is acceptable cutoff voltage for LSD Ni-Mh. It has barely 5% capacity below 1.1V per cell and barely 1% below 1.0V per cell.

it was a mechanical meter i guess, the battery was only used when you did resistance mode, other modes are powered by the load, thus you can live with no battery in it some times

I was going to offer a behind the scenes video for backers of the project.

EEVblog2 would it be available afterwards for the rest? I am particularly very curious on the time frames and the whole "trap for young players: from idea to shipment".

As far as I can see, the product seems to be ready for quite some time, so I am just wondering what's missing... Tests? Manufacturing? Certifications?

Better buy some NiMH accumulators unless you really need hundreds hours of uninterrupted work.

The tricky bit is you can't use a regular wall-wart directly because the insulation on it's output cable is not adequately rated. So you either need an isolated DC-DC or a custom mains power supply.

I hacked in a standard barrel plug connector from an old ADSL router (fits 9-12 volt DC adapters) to one of those cheap yellow chinese multimeters. Nice thing about the barrel connector is that it has a builtin switch which is triggered when you plug it in. It worked fine, except there was some jitter in the measured value, most notably when measuring zero it would flash the minus sign. A small SMD ceramic cap from a dead fluorescent light bulb took care of that. Drilled a hole on the side of the case of the appropriate size near the LCD screen. I do not use it for mains stuff powered that way, of course. Just checking batteries, resistances and such. Earlier than that I did something even more crude: Two cables soldered directly to the battery contacts. A non-rechargeable battery will, in fact take something of a charge, so by feeding the other end of the cables >9 volts for a few seconds I get a few minutes of use before the low battery warning and inaccurate measurements.

Juan Herrero be VERY careful with this, as if you happen to use the meter on something with high voltage in it (say you are repairing a photo flash, which has a 400V capacitor) and you touch the barrel plug (negative or positive doesn't matter), you WILL certainly know you did by screaming in pain *because you WILL get a shock, given the battery in multimeters is NOT isolated* from the probes!

18650 is a 'now' battery, even tesla dont use an 18650, they use their own size they reckon is better for overall power density in the thousands they use in a car, better to stick with aa

Jusb1066 What on earth are you talking about, 18650s are the most common form factor for lithium-ion batteries. There exist many other less common form factors like 26650s or whatever format Tesla is deciding to use now, although they used to use 18650s, regardless, why does Tesla have any bearing on what battery is suitable for a multimeter of all things? Also: wtf is a 'now' battery?

No, it's not about linear regulators, it's about the terrible capacity of a 9V battery compared to AA's at the 5mA constant current being used.

they vary according to load, at low load such as clocks, they have maybe over 3000mah , at high loads, nimh give their stated capacity and alkalines lose half of theirs

Still very valuable consumer information. Most products are required to state their 'quantity' on the packaging. Why did battery manufacturers get a waiver?

It would not be valuable, it would just be confusing. Alkalines have a much higher ESR than NiMh and Li-Ion so it doesn't make sense to use a mAh figure.

If you use AA batteries for capacity and not "getting into shelf life territory" i would rethink using them. A NiMH cell costs like 4-5 times more than a alkaline and lasts more than 10 years. So if you drain a Alkaline battery in less than 2 years or maybe one it was wasted money in fact. Multimeters run years and years on alkalines, would be interesting to compare the aging/self discharge with the real energy use over this period of time :D

Still, "professional" gear in different fields seems to use 9 V while a large part of consumer stuff uses AA. And as an exception confirming the rule, I've got a neatly engineered AOR handheld scanner that takes 4 AA cells without sacrificing any external dimensions. The only downside is that Ikealoops won't fit.

Did anyone else notice the 1.7 Ohm series resistance at 1kHz for that 9V battery? That's poor.

RWBHere I think it says 1.700 m-ohm which should be mili but I might be wrong?

BigClive did a test of various brand AA's. Duracell were the worst. Interesting how the Ultra Power graph is the same as their standard version. It seems they established themselves as the leading brand in the 1980s and knew that the consumer would never bother comparing discharge curves. The brand identity is very strong.

yep I agree I live in America and won't buy them either

By definition: a 6LR61(9V) battery consists of 6 (!) LR61(AAAA) batteries. 😛

tohopes yes, that is also the question that I am thinking of. I am sure Dave will have checked this option and surely has a good reason not doing it. Maybe he will explain ?

tohopes Possible reasons: * Might introduce noise/error? * Long term life is poor. * Dave previously bought a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 😛 I'd like to know too. To me, it seems odd to not have a rechargeable device in this age. But maybe there's a technical reason not to.

Because AA cells are available literally everywhere, even places without an electrical grid. Also it takes 3 minutes to swap in a new set of cells as opposed to 3-4 hours to charge a LiPo or Lion cell.

Abe Lincoln That depends on the implementation, there's certainly no reason it couldn't contain user replaceable lithium cells just like AAs, also just imagine you're data logging and notice oh crap I forgot to replace the low batteries in there, well no worries with rechargeables, I'll just plug in the charger or a power bank so it'll keep going, seems better and makes more sense to me than having to stop, find batteries and replace them...

Agreed, I can see how a rechargeable unit would be advantageous in a lab situation, however I would think twice about charging a unit while it was taking measurements. If I have lots of electrical outlets to charge the thing I'd likely be using a bench meter anyhow. To my conception hand held units are for field service, hence my preference for lithium 9v.