If you’re a professional or amateur mechanic or just wrench on your car from time to time, you will need an automotive multimeter to help diagnose electrical issues. A multimeter helps detect potential malfunctions and electrical gremlins while pinpointing their causes. Multimeters measure voltage, current, and resistance and you can use them to test the strength or weakness of a car’s battery or check the strength of electrical connections, for example. Multimeters also come in handy around the house.
Automotive multimeters work by combining these electrical properties into one unit, then showing the measurements on its screen. Analog multimeters use a gauge while the digital multimeters display the readings numerically.
When buying an automotive multimeter, you will need first to figure out what type of a multimeter you want: digital or analog. Digital ones are more common now and are easier to use and read. Multimeters can be as cheap as $10 but can go all the way up to thousands for professional, laboratory-quality ones. You probably won’t need to spend that much on one, but we’d warn against buying a super cheap multimeter because it will have more limits on what it can be used for, it might not last that long, and its accuracy might not be watertight.
When looking for a multimeter, you’ll want to take note of its accuracy. A feature that helps ensure accurate readings is the ability to recalibrate a multimeter. You should pay attention to a multimeter’s fit and finish, materials, ease of use, safety, and the number of test functions it can perform.
Here are 10 of the best multimeters you can buy. We’ve picked ones with high user ratings or ones that are bestsellers.