Kaiweets HT208D, Review After Use In The Field

Hey guys, I'm stuck in the shop today because my van is in the shop, but I thought I would finally do a video on this meter that Kai Wheat sent me. They were real nice about sending me the meter to review. I've been able to use it out in the field and I'm gonna go over some of its capabilities, what it can do, and some cons about it. So if you're thinking about buying this meter, you're gonna want to see this. Before I get started, I apologize for the messy shop. You're going to see it i do HVAC work this is my office i basically do everything so there's nobody to clean so uh my apologies for that here we go all right i'm gonna jump right into this this is a meter that i have used in the field multiple times so i can give you a good review there is only really one negative thing i have to say well one negative thing i have to say about this but most of all this is a very nice meter with nice capabilities i wanted to tell you it has a nice feel in the hand this is like a rubberized grip here and the display is really nice multi-color light display similar to that of like a cell phone and that also was the negative thing i wanted to tell you about but i'll show you in just a second these amp readings here both the amp reading and the voltage have the capability are tuned for variable frequency drives and i wanted to show you it starts out on DC when you're reading amps and reading DC amps is a nice add but you have to switch to AC and it's auto ranging and if you have um it looks like if you have a amp draw that's high enough you can read hertz and there's your option for the variable frequency drives and then it has an inrush that's a nice add for HVAC but i have found when you switch to voltage as you see here it's um reading millivolts DC it's auto ranging and as you see when you plug up your leads sometimes it's reading some ghost voltage and i have actually seen where that can read up to like 100 millivolts you know just very temporarily or something and that can be a little awkward actually if you switch it to the low Z right here that ghost voltage basically goes away and i'm going to pull this to a outlet real quick and show you the accurate readings that it has and here i'm going to try to leave this where y'all can see it i'm going to you see it's reading those millivolts just in the air but i'm going to measure voltage and 120 volts so the measurement is accurate there's my hertz it does have a low Z or to get rid of the ghost voltage that you're seeing right here when it's reading millivolts and you're seeing that little bit of ghost voltage sometimes it's been as high as there you see that it might be better to switch it to the low Z and once again it's it defaults to DC but you switch to AC and you see that ghost voltage kind of goes away in fact it's reading all zeros and here we're reading hertz and voltage at the same time so i have found that if you're reading voltage that this right here is actually better you can read just hertz it'll give you the hertz and up here is duty cycle which is a nice add for an HVAC meter. It is something that we use sometimes when we're doing the variable frequency drives. And here we have ohms and this is continuity. That's a really nice loud beep and you have a visual display right there which is nice. And here I think we're doing diodes and here the microfarads. I have measured microfarads with this and compared it to other meters and it's accurate here is where you can see the onboard temperature it defaults to celsius on the big display but up here you can see that's where you can read your fahrenheit at other times for example if you're reading voltage this up here this onboard temperature is reading in celsius but being able to have a temperature reading with no temperature no k-type thermocouple hooked up if you're out on the job having a temperature reading right there is very useful and something that we'll use in HVAC. When it comes to the temperature as you can see here I have a k-type thermocouple hooked up to a fluke meter 72 degrees and 72 degrees but I have also noticed that i have reviewed one of their other meters and these were not at a standard distance and i couldn't use them now that's reading a little bit of a different temperature maybe i had my hands on it there we go down to 75 there we're reading at 72 but i'm showing this because this fits into the fluke those temperature readings are not far off and fluke makes an adapter that looks similar to this where you can plug any k-type thermocouple for example pipe clamps into this meter or this one the other meter i reviewed from them i think it was a km601 or something these were not at a standard distance so you couldn't use other name brand k-type thermocouples on this one you can so that's a nice add i wanted to go over the um non-contact voltage as you see right here i'm not really close to anything but it's going off it's reading that monitor right there if there's voltage close by sometimes if you're in an active atmosphere that may be a little bit too sensitive and here that's picking up 24 volts on a thermostat and that's a wall outlet so everything i've shown you is really nice the um defaulting to dc seems like it's made more for auto mechanics instead of HVAC but the variable frequency drive and some of the other functions like temperature make me think it's made more for HVAC. The defaulting to DC and Celsius aren't deal breakers for me. I can deal with that and I've learned to use the low Z on the voltage but I'm going to show you something I did have a little bit of a problem with out in the field here we go that problem that i had out in the field is this it can be hard to see that display in sunlight we move over to the shade and it's a little bit better and even at an angle in direct sunlight you can't hardly see it at all it can be hard to see i have found sometimes that if i can't see it i'll hit the hold button and get to where i can see it a little bit better you know maybe do like this and then just release the hold button but i don't know if that's a deal breaker for you but it can be hard to see out in the sunlight a couple things i wanted to mention before i wrap up is as i just alluded to there's a hold button here on the side you hit it once and it holds your measurement hit it again and it clears it has a place to store your test leads and even if you use different leads you can use those to test voltage with both hands and still be able to see your reading which is kind of nice it also has a light if you press and hold this button you have a pretty bright light right there and it stays on unless you turn it off or press and hold the button again to make it turn off so y'all forgive the dirtiness and messiness of my shop but um that is a very capable and nice meter some people do work in places where they're not really out in the sunlight very often so that may not be a big deal for them for um hvac guys we do work outside a lot so think about it this video isn't just for HVAC people, it's for people thinking about that meter so if you like these kinds of videos i do videos or multimeters kind of frequently but i mostly do HVAC videos, thanks for watching and i'll catch y'all in the next one