The Difference Between Clamp Meters and Multimeters
The most prominent feature of a clamp meter is the front opening clamp, which can be easily inserted into the wire to measure the current in the circuit without damaging or modifying the original circuit, and can measure large currents. A multimeter also has a current measurement function, so what are the differences between it and a clamp meter for measuring current? Firstly, let's understand the principles and differences between using a multimeter to detect current and a clamp meter to detect current.
As mentioned above, the main function of a clamp meter is to detect current. Compared to a multimeter, a clamp meter is more convenient to detect current and has a much larger measurement range. However, one thing is that a clamp meter cannot display normally when measuring small currents (such as hundreds of milliamps), and its measurement accuracy is not as good as a multimeter.
The second difference is that because the main function of a clamp meter is to detect current, it is not as good as a multimeter in other functions. Although many clamp gauges now integrate many functions of multimeters, such as voltage measurement, resistance measurement, frequency measurement, temperature measurement, etc., overall, these functions other than current measurement are not comparable to multimeters, and the accuracy of these measurement levels is generally worse than that of multimeters.
In summary, clamp meters and multimeters have different focuses and usage environments. If they are mainly used to measure current, especially high current, clamp meters are preferred; If it is used for daily measurement of voltage resistance or electronic component parameters, and there are certain requirements for measurement accuracy, a multimeter needs to be selected. So these two types of instruments can be selected according to actual needs, or they can be selected simultaneously according to the usage environment.
