Best Value Multimeter? - Brymen BM869S Overview

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I believe the Brymen BM869S currently represents the best value available for a full-featured, handheld digital multimeter. At the time of this video, the price is $216 on TME. TME is in Poland but they ship to the United States. This video was not sponsored, I bought the DMM with my own money, and I have no affiliation to Brymen nor TME.

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Greetings from Ukraine . I have had a Brymen BM869S for several years.
Brymen BM869S has many analogues, in one case these are other models and in some cases the Brymen factory itself produces a localized version for sellers in other countries
Example :
1. Sanva PC7000 (other case)
2. Greenlee DM-860A, green body
3. Metrel MD9060, blue case
4. Hellerman Tyton Brymen Toptronic TBM869
5. ELMA BM869 ( for Denmark ) salad body
6.EVM 869S (For Ukraine)

There is also an American version of a similar multimeter AM-140-A, AM-160-A
For these multimeters, a calibration procedure suitable for the Brymen BM869S is described.

СергійКучерак
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My BM869S stopped measuring AC within a year. Sent to service under warranty. They couldn't figure out what's wrong and said the meter needs to be shipped to Taiwan for further analysis and I will have to bear the shipping cost as its not covered in warranty. From my country(India), shipping two ways would easily cost more than what this meter is worth. Decided I will just use the rest of the functionality.

Within a month after that, the meter started showing 'InERR' in all the modes and its basically a brick now.

barathikasiraja
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got one two years ago, fantastic meter. two weeks ago I also bought a 789 from welectron: super fast, new features… I should say it looks like Brymen has learned a lot from the 869 by extending functionalities and bu fixing previos limitations (beep for diode check, for example) great video, indeed!

francomarianardini
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Dave Jones, MJMorton, KissAnalog, JoeSmith...these guys use multimeters constantly and know their stuff.
Everyone seems to think a lot of the Brymen products.
I just ordered the eevblog bm235 and I can't wait to use it. Great video!

paulb
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That continuty reaction speed is awesome.

EfieldHfield_
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The coolest feature for audio people is that it lets you read dBu directly on the display (switch it to dBm and hit range to select 600 Ohm), and the AC accuracy is great.

UnusualAudio
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I have several Brymens (also the EEV Blog branded ones) in daily use and they're fantastic meters. Very decent build quality and reliable precision. Absolutely happy with the ones I owe. I also have 2 yellow ones (87V and 117) because I wanted them ;) They're also pretty nice, decent, and feel good quality, but comparing with my Brymens I cannot see where huge price difference comes from. As you said: if there's no need to explicitly go for yellow, buy the Brymen. You'll never regret it.

markuskeller
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I have had a BM786 for a while now and works like a champ...I still want a 869S for the dual display and PC-Comm but other than that the 786 (I do have a bit of 789 jealousy (low-z and higher freq.)) does all I need as a hobbyist and home electrical system destroyer.

gabeeg
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I also have the BM869s and agree that this is hands down the best value. I bought mine from Poland also about 2-3 yrs ago and they shipped it to Canada for me. I own a couple yellow branded ones to but dollar for dollar the Brymen comes out on top. Great vid.

Mark-er
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It looks like the reaction time on this 869 is kinda slow.

africantwin
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Greetings from Poland. I bought myself one BM896S 3 years ago, after a looong extensive research and specs comparisons, as IMO the best value on the market right now. After these 3 years of use, i have only 2 complaints: beacuse it is so big, heavy and bulky, it takes a lot of space on the table, and is also unstable while standing. I found out that in fact i don`t need this much precision for a day to day use, and i would be perhaps happier with a smaller some model from brymen. For an all round the house use i cannot recommend enough the brymen BM037 clamp, i find the clamp an amazin feature to just clip it to anything nearby and VFD + precision DC/AC current clamp is another extremety useful tool for field electrician as me, you can hang it anywhere around you and it fits in the pocket, and finds broken cables and cables in walls. For bit more exact readings for precise electronics i recommend a separate DER EE 5000 for LCR (and miliohmmeter), beacuse precise voltage measurements and in fact rarely needed and something like BM231 is plenty enough. But hey, it`s you money and place in toolbox at the end of the day. I reccomend Brymen for value though, no matter what model you choose.

Cashlack
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I just bought this from Welectron in Germany for $201.99 US dollars, that includes DHL Express delivery. It was like $60 or $70 cheaper than TME.

Thejonnyz
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This is an insanely good DMM with an insanely low price for it's functions and precision.
One of the features I use is that it can log 5 times per second in 500k mode with the pc interface (and free 3rd party software), which is crazy; it must have a very precise and very fast AD converter.
So you can get pretty accurate derivatives of voltage (I use this to log Ah with a very precise shunt on high current rectifiers and faster datapoints means more accurate).
Normally only bench DMM's can do this but I take these measurements in the field.
The yellow meter that remotely comes close (well, a magnitude off and a slow logger) costs 4 times as much....

The only downside I can think of is that it uses a 9V battery and that it's battery life is therefore about 80 hours. Not bad for such a feature packed meter, but also not great.

mrpetit
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Thank you for the review. Do you mind to share the retailer you got it from. I'm based in the US and struggling to find it.

stiletas
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I also purchased my Brymen because of Joe 👍👍👍

fulltruckereffect
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I just can't imagine why and when I might need more than 3 digits after the decimal point. but i wouldn't want to do without a bargraph display anymore.

bluesonkel
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So I'm a bit torn and hoping to get some thoughts. I have an old Greenlee DM-20 that I've had for about 8-9 years and had been just fine for the basics uses I would use it for (checking some electrical items around the house, some continuity test/voltage readings on various electronics I would mess with). But I'm at the point where I'm ready for a substantial upgrade with nice features, and am willing to put up a decent amount to get something that will last me for many, many years. My hobbiest interest in electronics has only increased as I attempt various repairs on gaming devices, TV's, and audio equipment. Also wouldn't mind having a good meter to check various items at some Cellular sites when I visit for work on occasion (Not installing anything, more Field Engineering).

I have always known Fluke as top-of-the-line and started looking into them, but my recent research has led me to Brymen/EEVblog/Greenlee for getting about the same level of features for much cheaper (though there are some sacrifices with quality/ergonomics). I'm trying to find the right balance of getting more than I would need, but also finding a good balance of features. Every time I dig into Fluke meters, I really want to get one but always find that they're specific in their design for certain applications while dropping some features not needed for that specific use. So it's hard to pick one.

All that being said, my initial thoughts are that the Brymen BM869s/Greenlee DM-860A for $250 seems more than enough, but also could be a bit overboard and bulky. There's the EEVblog BM 786, which apparently only has different probes than the non-EEVblog one? Though, I can't even find the non-EEVblog one for sale, and the EEVblog website won't ship to US. So that one may be out of the question. There's also the BM789 that looks nice.

Anyway, just going down a rabbit hole of options and was looking for anyone else's thoughts/recommendations.

anthonycomeaux
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in model 789 they worsened the continuity test, I wonder why?

funcool
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That 1 kHZ on the continuity is pretty good, but I'm looking for a meter that i can use as a tweeter in an audio application. 🤣
Thanks for the Video!

Know-Way
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I think the Bryman 869s is sold in the USA as a Greenlee DM860a (in green boot, rather than red)

pamelahughes