Hi. This is the vendorable Unity Ut61e Multimeter. Not to be confused with the 61 A, B, C and D models. They're all very different.

Anyway, the Ut61e was probably one of the best bang per buck meters like under 60 Yankee Bucks in terms of general features uh, accuracy and uh, performance. and the fact that it had a 22 000 i count uh display. It'll be better than your usual uh, 5 000 or 6 000 count meters in this, uh price range. So yeah, I've recommended this one for years.

A lot of people recommend it as you know, a good meter under that price point. It's got our Rs232r optical interface uh as well. Of course. it never really had a good reputation if you wanted a, uh, you know, a robust, safe meter for like, high energy or mains measurements.

Um, this really wasn't the meter, uh for you. But you know, for a general purpose electronics meter, it was pretty hard to beat for like under 60 Yankee bucks. Anyway, what they've gone and done is Ta-da They've introduced a new meter here. it is the scene.

They've called it exactly the same. the 61e Plus and as you can see, it's a little bit bigger. It's got a bigger display. It's got a couple of extra features and stuff like that.

Whereas this one was sub 60 us dollars, this one's now about 88 us dollars, so it's substantially more expensive. Is it worth the upgrade? Well, let's take a look at it. So the old one was, actually, you know, a nice little sort of ruggedy uh thing, you know it. just looks and feels kind of like, you know, a little brick.

This one feels. ah, Mace. only a smidgen less rugged. But I I don't think there's anything in it.

really. it's probably my imagination and as far as dropping them goes, both of them are. the range switches are exposed like that. and yeah, it's still, uh, exposed.

They're probably not as much because this actually does have the raised rubber around there, which is improvement over the previous design. So yeah, that's worthwhile upgrade. One of the significant upgrades, uh, comes in terms of, uh, the battery. Well, for a lot of people.

Uh, Anyway, so you take this off and we've got four, uh, triple A's instead of the Nine Volt we had before. I know there's a lot of fun Nine Volt fan boys out there, but I think, um, you'll find that the majority think, uh, that going to Triple A's would be a positive. Anyway, yet they've got a captive metal, uh, threaded screw. They're nice.

We've got the same a Usb Uh interface that we had before. although we'll look at the teardown, it's actually got a transmitter and a receiver. Um, in this. Uh, whereas the only one had a transmitter.

And curiously, we've got a threaded insert on the back. What it's like, is that like a tripod mount? Well, my smallest tripod mount doesn't really fit and neither does my large one. So I'm down. well.

Okay, someone's going to find that useful, I guess. So definitely one of the benefits of the new model is that you can access the fuses. You don't have to screw off the case like you had to on the previous E model. Nice.

So the annoying thing about these uh, Bs 1362 fuses is that they're not the same length as your regular, uh, high voltage thousand volt multimeter fuses. So um, in theory you're not supposed to or you can't actually replace them with a higher voltage fuses, you're stuck with the 250 volts. Unless you can find one in that size in a thousand volt range. I don't know.

Leave it in the comments. I don't know offhand, like it's probably neither here nor there. Once again, like, if you're buying this meter, you're not buying it for its like huge thousand volt input. Uh, fuse rating right? You're just buying it for its bang per buck and stuff like that.

So as long as it's got the uh ceramic fuses in there, you're good to go. All right, let's see if we can, uh, crack one of these fuses open. See what's in there? Well, there we go. Oh, that was fun.

Um, it is filled with sand. It's filled with stars so that's what you want. And it is filled. Sand filled.

So yeah, they haven't skimped there. It's not some fakie. Okay, one of the huge differences of course is the display here. They've gone from 13 millimeter digits to big ass 20 millimeter ones and well, yeah, that is very nice.

Uh, much bigger count here on the bar graph, whereas before it was a tiny little font, you could barely read it in there. So yeah, that's a big improvement for not much more in height. The new model does sit, uh, substantially higher than the previous one, only because it's got the uh, probe holders on the bottom. You either like those or you don't.

Now you can see the difference between the two meters. The uh, older one does, actually. uh, tilt back a little bit more, but because I'm getting a bit of glare there, I'll just move that, uh, forward. They both have, uh, you know, really good, uh, tilting bales on them nice and wide.

At the bottom, there's a smidgen, ah, thicker, and, well, a fair stands up a fair bit. uh, higher at the top side here. Given that the holders are on there, they've got exactly the same Usb interface, but as we'll see in the tear down, this one actually has a receiver. and this one doesn't.

It's just a fakie. It's only got a transmit lead. They've changed the arrangement of the input jacks here. instead of the straight arrangement.

like this, they've actually staggered them. It's neither here, nor their rating is exactly the same. Cat for 600 volts, Cat 3 a thousand volts. But as we'll see in the teardown, the input protection isn't as good as uh, you know, properly designed meters.

But as they say on here, it's only uh, 250 volt rated and they only have 250 volt rated fuses in there. This one actually claims uh, 20 amps max as opposed to 10 amps max here. So they're probably upgraded the input shunts and or connections. And I've got to say, at this angle, um, the new display is, uh, you know, easier to read than what it was before at this back angle.

Oh, there's not much in it. Maybe the fact that these are bigger, slightly better. Maybe at an angle? Yeah, it's well, it's definitely as well as being bigger. It is an improved display for sure.

Button arrangement is slightly different. Rel and peak are in the same place, except they actually have min max written on it, but it had min max. Uh, before hold is in the same place, selectors in the same place, different shape buttons, but now it has a backlight. Yay! Um, yeah, it's not great is it? Geez.

Even if I turn off all my studio lights here, yeah, it's You know, it looks okay on camera, but it's actually pretty piss week. And the range switch here. Well, it is, uh, significantly changed. I do actually like, uh, the new styling with the uh, like, you know, the raised rubber around here And I do like the rubber feel on the range switch.

The range switch feels very similar. It's got to be the same mechanism really? so yeah. but I just like the rubber baby buggy bumpers on there. I think that's a nice touch.

And the font is nice and bigger. You know it's larger, you can really see it, you know, big bold fonts and you know it really is quite nice. So styling wise, it is actually a much better uh meter. But now we've actually got separate uh, Ac volts and Dc volt switch positions and you'll either like that or you won't.

But there's actually reasons for that is because uh, you can then do auto ranging better on Ac signals in the presence of Dc signals and stuff like that. So anyway, I won't go into details on that, but it is better. And they do have uh, separate millivolt, uh ranges like that. We've got ohms, uh, diode continuity but the capacitance is on here whereas we had our capacitance separately before and they have Hertz exactly are the same.

The same resolution. um but here is to for my mind like the big what the fail on this thing Hfe transistor measurement. Why uh well like I know that the uh this Ut 60 series actually had a model with I think it was the like the A or the D or something had like the transistor tested but it shows they don't understand their target market. Nobody wants to measure transistor gain anymore and they provide you with the Um which they have on.

I believe it's standard on like other Uh models that have the transistor tester, this huge big transistor adapter. You've got the through-hole uh ones here, but you can put like surface mount transistors in there, but like yeah, okay, kind of. but no, no, no, no, no. if your multimeter has a transistor tester in it, it's uh, it's bordering on a toy.

It's clearly it's clear that the manufacturer doesn't know what their intended market for this meter is. It's just nuts to have that on the E model which is designed to like be a replacement for this. No, I know if you don't want to use it, just ignore it. But no, they wasted a switch position on it and just the inclusion of it just rubs me the wrong way.

And a huge oversight, especially when you start talking near 90 us dollars is the lack of temperature measurement. If this thing had a temperature measurement instead of the Hfe, I probably would have upgraded my vertex of this thing saying oh, it's probably a reasonable upgrade, but because it doesn't have temperature, it's got a useless transistor tester eyes? No, no, no. Anyway, uh, current ranges are all are still the same, but we have a non-contact voltage detection now. Beauty? All right.

So let's compare it to one of the best uh Ef built-in Ef detection meters on the market. The new Bm786 has got two ranges that defaults to the high, so let's just try the high first. and uh, the non-contact uh detection is. The little tab is on the side here, so let's put just a non-loaded mains up There we go.

One bar, two bars? okay, no worries. And the unity? Um yeah, um. Bueller Bueller. Oh, we got one only because I was moving it like no, no, that's just no, that's that's a fail.

And even if I set it to low range here, we're still actually going to get it. Hang on, I was able to get it. Oh geez, it's gotta be really close. Don't know what's going on before, but oh geez, and the red trying to match the red up there? That's uh, the red case.

Um, no. so it does kinda sort of work thing. One bar, two bars, three bars. I just like.

but yeah, no, it's it's not very good. Bribeman will detect the light switch. This one won't detect anything. Not a thing, not.

so. You get a rather large case for it here with the probes and they claim that these are gold plated probes. Um, ah, they're yeah, your regular Pvc. They're not, uh, silicones, but you don't expect that.

But yeah, gold plated probes. This time they make a deal out of that and you get the Usb adapter for it as well. But I won't be trying the Usb uh software in this. Let's do the Ohms auto range in here.

That's pretty quick. Yep, Yep. that's pretty decent. continuity.

Buzzer: Oh yeah, yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Latched and fast. Doesn't miss a trick. It's pretty loud too.

Just notice something. Check this out. I've got a magnet here because I've been talking about the uh, make now, look, look, look. It goes into serial mode.

Does that mean that there's a magnet in this puppy and it shifts into serial mode? Is that a thing? So yeah, if I slide that in, it's got some sort of detection because there's like there's no signal. It's an optical, uh thing. Anyway, I think that's kind of cute. Anyway, it does.

Um, even though super fast continuity does actually have visual continuity, but that takes time to kick in. It doesn't flash. looks like it's coming from the reading instead of the buzzer circuit. Now that is a real large design oversight.

I mean, you're obviously switching on the buzzer. When you switch on the buzzer, you should switch on the light. That'd be like, ah, maybe they can just simply change that in software. That'd be like, you guys, you can't upgrade the software in this as far as I know.

Um, but you know, maybe they can make that change and uh, future revisions can have that because that's a You know. It's nice to have the visual continuity there. But no, they've just completely screwed that because they're basing it on the visual display. it's It's probably a couple of lines of code now.

Just ignore that. uh, bar graph at the moment. Um, it does seem to be fast updating like the other one, but I'm feeding in a triangle wave at 20 Hertz at the moment and you can see that we're getting that on the display. No worries, it should read about zero because that's its, uh, average value I put in here and um, no, we're not seeing it.

Why is the bar graph up to there when it's 0.08 That does not seem good. So the new bar graph seems to be improved. So if I change that to 10 Hertz, there actually seems to be kind of like some artifact business going on there. and like, no digits there.

It's interesting. I mean, this is a proper triangle wave, so I should spend the same amount of time in each, uh, position. The old display. What's happening to the bar graph there? It's not going anywhere.

you can see it in there, but the bar graph ain't keeping up. So new bar graph is much quicker. Okay, it's only if we go down to five Hertz that we actually start to get there. You go.

It goes up to near the plus hundred millivolts that I'm actually feeding into this thing. Yeah, it's kind of like it just flickers everything, but at least it flickers and tells you something's changing whereas the previous one didn't do it at all. Okay, let's do some spot checks. Uh, take these with a grain of salt of course, because we only got a sample size of one.

but yeah, substantially closer on the newy. Yeah, again, at two volts. Uh, substantially closer tighter. let's actually see what it goes up to, shall we? I mean, it's supposed to be 2200 count.

Will it go to 23.? No. No. 2.2 Let's go up. Yeah, there we go.

So 2.22 it, uh, rolled over. Will they roll back the same? There you go. The new one actually rolled back and this one didn't So there's slight differences in their thresholds for, uh, ranging. Let's go negative.

A little bit different. Oh, that one didn't arrange properly. Look at that. that's an improvement.

Looks like maybe there's an improvement in some range in there. Perhaps No. There we go. It's done at this time, a little bit closer there on current at, uh, the lower part of the range.

Let's go up to ten. Oh yeah. Same 100 milliamps though. significantly.

uh, different. both of them actually. but then again, like it's still well within our spec. it's got like half a percent spec.

Just go negative. there. There you go. Yeah, it does change a bit.

boohoo. It's a little bit out on resistance, but you know, still with inspect and it's a fair bit out on my reference cap. but once again, uh, you know it's like three percent tolerance or something. so it's still within spec.

Let's measure the current consumption, shall we? Nine milliamps? There you go. in Dc Volt. That's not the lowest thing out there, whereas let's measure the previous one with its 9-volt battery. 2.4 milliamps.

Hmm. I'll have to run the old confuser and get back to you on that. Which one's better? Okay, let's see if it'll support mains up the clacker. There we go and we'll do the old switchy millivolts.

Ohms yep. hurts Hfe beta? There it is. yep and non-contact voltage detection. Boom.

Switch it off seems to still work. Yeah, no worries. still works. Geez, that's a bit out.

isn't it? That's supposed to be my 10k? Maybe I need to. uh, let it cool down a bit. Yeah, yeah, it's got. I think it's going to go back up.

It's just eaten up. Yeah, no worries. everything still works. So while they're not silicone, they are actually uh, labeled and raided.

16 awg all wishing let's chop it. Okay, let's see what we get for our dollar Edu's They are quite thick so that's oh yeah. yeah yeah, that looks good. I'm liking that.

Oh yeah, look at that. How many strand is that? Don't know. but it's a lot and that's what you want to see because the more strands, the better the uh, flexibility and uh, the more the longer life you're gonna get. So yeah, that's pretty good.

You are getting yourself a lot of copper in there for your dollar-y dues. All right, let's have a brief comparison of the Pcb with the uh original one and see what's different. Really? Now I do have high-res tear down photos of this over on the Eev blog flickr account, so check that out if you want to see it. Now here's the basic uh differences.

The first thing is that the input jacks on the previous version they were like these split input jacks. The new ones actually have solid jacks like this. very nice which then uh, screw in so that's a really good upgrade right there. I like that Now as far as the input protection goes, they have really are beefed it up before.

We only had two Ptc's here and no moths at all. uh to speak of. Now of course the Ut61e was, uh, never recommended for its uh, input protection and stuff like that. It's just for its uh, bang per park.

So they have actually, uh, improved it there. No less than four Ptc's and three mobs. You might think that's great. Well okay, but where's the input protection resistor? There's actually nothing like usually they have a high voltage r surge resistor in series with the Uh Ptcs because how the Ptcs work is that they're a low resistance value and they only I go up in resistance.

uh when they actually heat up and that takes time. So the initial surge current if you get like an over voltage condition and a surge current happens, then it's going to be clamped by the moths. Or maybe the clamp diodes. you know, somewhere else.

It depends on the uh can of what's actually doing it the protection there. Then you're going to get a large in-rush current and the Ptcs are going to be low value. uh, resistance until such time as they have time to heat up. So yeah, that's not good like most meters on the market.

Uh, with any decent input protection will have a high voltage surge input resistor and this just doesn't have it. Of course the original one. uh, didn't have it because well, there were no, were no uh, mobs. They only had the Ptc's but of course you would have the clamp protection.

Uh, diodes in here? Where are they associated with? Are they over here? They're associated with the current I think. Anyway, any clamp protection is reliant upon the Ptc to heat up and they haven't changed anything there. So yeah, they've beefed it up. but still.

for the cost of a series, you know, surge resistor. Oh, come on. Anyway, you can see the uh, like limited amount of our clamping here. Like in terms of like, there's hardly any clamping Zener transistors here.

and well, Xena configuration. I've done a whole video on how these actually, uh work. I might have to link that one in, but look, look at all these. Look at all these back to back uh, Xena protection, uh transistors here.

Anyway, they have added in Smd, uh Diode bridge up here that does, uh, the protection across the uh, current, uh the current, uh, fuses or the current input. so that is a decent upgrade there. Now the fuses. um they've remained the same type unfortunately.

Now the ones supplied are actually from Asia Fuse. But the problem is is that they're only 240 volt rated and well like no, come on, we want you know if you want decent input protection, you want a thousand volt rating. Now this is very nice. They've actually added i can't get that out of there with a fuse in, but anyway, there's a cutout in the board there and they've added this little uh, plastic, uh, spacer in here to actually, uh, separate the range switch contacts from the fuse and that's a very nice touch.

So I uh, checked and yeah, sure enough, even though they don't have a voltage rating on them. yep these are uh, 250 volt fuses so meh, you know at least they are, um, you know, ceramic jobbies. but yeah, no. like you don't buy this meter for the input protection so the extra money is not going there.

Now there's our input divider resistor network there and it's very nice that they've actually used that. It looks like they've used the identical one again now. Uh ebg, that's actually an Austrian company so very require reputable. They do actually have an Asian branch and that's where it would have come from.

so yeah, don't Uh, you know, get all moist thinking that you're getting an Austrian input resistor divider network? No, but still, you know it's pretty good. Like, for the price, it's pretty good. And the rest of the differences? I don't think it's neither here nor there. Of course, we've got the non-contactor voltage detection That's that up there happening in the new model, which we didn't have on the previous one.

So on the bottom here won't go into any uh specific changes except for the fact look, we had a bunch of Melf resistors. uh, over here, don't have those. uh, these time on the new jobby on the plus model, a significantly, uh, less complex range switch here if you actually, uh, compare those two, but neither here nor there. It uses the same brand chipset except they are different.

significantly. uh, different. We've got an Esr51922a here and an Es232 2037 here. I don't know.

Uh, the differences I'm not going to like. Go into the absolute details here. it doesn't matter. You can go discuss that on the Evblog forum.

The Lcd is implemented differently. Just had a single row zebra contact at the top. We've got dual row here. We've got the lead here for the non-contact and that just goes into the little uh, light pipe there which goes through the front cover so you can see that they've actually put you know more attention to detail in terms of like the uh, high voltage isolation slot here uh and the little uh, plastic.

they went to the effort there. Look, they've got a bigger solder coated extra which means extra uh, current trace running from your mobs all the way back to your, uh, common jack here. so that's nice. So they've allowed for you know your fault currents to actually go right back to the jack like that whereas before, well, you didn't Hey, you didn't have any mobs.

um, did you? Unless there's a sneaky. Is there a sneaky mob in there somewhere? I don't I don't think so. I mean they should be down here, but uh yeah. Basically they have beefed up the protection but like which is okay, but you wouldn't like rush out and buy this for its uh, protection that's for sure.

And they've of course gone away from the nine volt uh, battery here with the contacts integral to the Pcb two, uh, what? I much prefer the uh, triple A's and then the holder being in the back and then there's the contacts going down to the board. So they've you know, improved the battery solution and I know there's some 9 volt fan boys out there, but I think the majority of people are going to go. Yay! they're triple A's instead of 9 volts. One thing you won't find in the new one is a 10 turn trimmer pot now that was actually used.

it's marked Dc Volts down here, so presumably you would tweak that for the calibration. You've got another pot down here as well for the Ac volt calibration and another adjustment pot over here as well. and then a couple of trimmer caps down there that would be for the frequency adjustment and another one over here for the capacitance adjust. And well, I'm not seeing any adjustment pots on the new design at all.

So yeah, they're Are they using a like? Just a better reference? Uh, better divider resistors, everything else and that probably lowers their production cost. but they are charging 20 bucks more for this. Remember that One of the interesting things is they only had a transmit Led before here for the Um serial interface. They've now got looks like transmit and receive here.

So are they doing the you know, like software calibration? because of the lack of the trimmer pots? Now they might be doing that via the serial input, so if someone can crack that, you might be able to do, uh, the calibration. So generally the upgrades here are, you know, pretty worthwhile. I don't think it's worth an extra 20 bucks, but you know, yeah, they've improved things. As far as the case goes, I really like it.

I love the shielding around here fantastic and of course the new spring contact battery compartment. Great stuff. And of course you can access the Uh fuses terrific and then down in the Uh switch part. The Uni T has always had a uh, like a decent feeling switch.

This one's uh, no exception and that's uh, thanks to, you know, a fairly typical uh, indent arrangement here. but it does feel, uh, really nice. And of course we've got a new input screw jacks instead of like the little stamped uh split ones before. So huge improvement there.

And of course, one of the big upgrades for many is that we now have a backlight under the Lcd and that's just, uh soldered down onto the board. there. you have to desolder it under there. So we'll compare the specs here.

Here's the previous one. Like just the basic headline specs here: um yeah, it's increased. It was uh point one percent uh, Dc volts plus two. It's now 0.05 percent are plus five, so a few more loosey-goosey uh digits on the end.

but generally an improvement on the Uh accuracy. Dc current is uh, basically the same Half a percent, uh, plus 10 digits. So no improvement there. But it does actually have an improved maximum 20 amps here as you saw on the front, whereas uh, previously, it was only 10 amps.

So yeah, Dc resistance? uh, half a percent plus 10. Nothing's changed and it's got the same uh, frequency response up to 10 gigahertz uh, true Rms as the previous one did. So yeah, so there's been a slight improvement in Dc voltage spec, but basically everything else is pretty much, uh, identical. really.

So it's It's nothing to write home to your mum about, so I won't go into any more detail on this. I'll cut it short there. If you want me to do any specific tests, I can actually do it. So what's my verdict on the new uh plus model? Well, yeah, it's an improved meter.

definitely no question. over uh, the original E model. I mean, you know some nice extra features like the bigger display, the faster responding bar graph it does have some extra features on there Hfc wankway, and the non-contact uh, voltage detection. It's got increased uh 20 milliamps.

It's uh, using new uh, triple A's you can access uh, the fuses now. Uh, so that's all good. The stud might be uh, handy for some people and it's got better styling and stuff. And you know some people might like the probe holders in the back and things like that.

But the problem is, is that the original E model its major appeal was the fact that it was like 22 000 counts which hasn't changed. It's exactly the same, but it was its price point. It was like under sixty dollars and now they've increased that by practically fifty percent more. and it's pushing closer to ninety dollars now.

And for that money, you're not even getting like an extra temperature measurement. As I said, if it probably had temperature measurement instead of Hfe, I reckon they could have charged you know, a little bit extra for it. Maybe not, uh, 50. But yeah, there's just not enough there.

Maybe if it went to 50 000 counts, you might argue. Well, you know. Hey, that's a bit of a fantastic thing because you know if you're measuring 5 volts or 3.3 volts, you're not going to get the extra digit over a 5 000 or 6 000 count meter. So 22 000 count is handy.

But if you're measuring anything over 2.2 it's going to be the same resolution. So yeah, I think, uh, most of the appeal of the original one is gone because this price point just, uh means that there's extra competition. and um, leave it in the comments down below. I haven't actually, uh, seen the meter, but uh, the new aiming 870 uh series is half the cost of this.

It's in the 40 bracket and it's also 20 000 counts with a similar feature set. and it has temperature as well. So yeah, let me know if you want to, uh, maybe that'll be a decent uh shootout. Is this one worth? You know, almost 12 like twice as much as say the aiming Uh one, which is a similar 22 000 count meters.

So yeah, I think most of the appeal there is, um, pretty much gone. I don't know. Leave your thoughts down in the comments down below. I'm probably going to give it a thumbs sideways because it's not a thumbs down.

It's You know, it's still a decent meter, but like it, it doesn't represent the same value as the original 61e offered. I don't think. and in terms of, uh, bang per buck compared to the old one, I, you've probably got to give it a thumbs down because this one is still vastly, I think vastly better value than this. Even though this is a bit nicer, I wouldn't really want to pay 50 more for this over the 61e and it's a bit of shame.

Yeah, it's an improved design. uh, you know, and it's still decent build quality and it's going to be a fine meter. But yeah, nah. Anyway, leave your thoughts down below everyone's requirements.

Is different? Let us know. Do you think? Oh yeah, I'm going to upgrade my 61e to this beauty. Um, and you know my extra money's worth it? Or do you go? Well, no, there's other competition at this, uh, sort of price point. Let us know Anyway, hope you enjoyed that.

If you did, give it a big a thumbs up. As always, discuss down below and of course the Ev blog forum is the place to discuss test equipment. Catch you next time you.