Wasted $60 on a capacitor tester that straight up lied to me

Bought this cheap Chinese brand called 'MeterPro' off Amazon for about 60 bucks. Tested a few caps on a power supply board, it said they were all good, but the board still wouldn't work. Finally pulled out my old multimeter and learned the hard way that three of them were dead as doornails. Anyone else get burned by a bad tester or meter before?

2 comments

2 Comments

sam_scott591mo ago

Well I've been in almost the exact same spot and it drove me crazy. What finally worked was just sticking with one brand of meter and learning how to test capacitors the right way. I bought a cheap ESR meter years ago that would say a capacitor was fine when it was really leaky or had high resistance. The trick I figured out is that you can't just test them in the circuit unless you really know what you're doing. Half the time an in-circuit reading is useless because other parts mess it up. Now I always desolder at least one leg to isolate it before testing, and I use a Fluke 77 that's been reliable for twenty years. It cost more but saved me way more than that in wasted time and frustration.

claire9581mo ago

Wait, you've had the same Fluke 77 for twenty years and it still works?