I am a recently retired Engineering Manager for a global company that manufacturers analog and digital measurement instrumentation for the electrical power, nautical, industrial and aerospace industries. In the practice of our design and development work we frequently used very high-end benchtop standards and handheld DMMs, primarily from Fluke Corp. I sometimes borrowed a handheld DMM to troubleshoot consumer electronics products and do hobby tasks at home. When I retired I had to purchase a personal DMM and I no longer had the company's purchasing power to use. I reviewed several products from each of the familiar names; Fluke, Keysight, Extech and Keithly, but along the way I found the Greenlee DM860A, which had all of the features I had used extensively in the DMMs I used on the job, plus the PC interface, which is typically only available on bench DMMs. I have to admit, I had never heard of Greenlee as a measurement instrument manufacturer. Comparing specs is one way to evaluate features, but with an unknown manufacturer, user reviews and tear-down evaluations are the best way to validate specs. The DM860A is a private label version of the Brymen BM869, and the Brymen is what I found in-depth tear-down reviews of. I found very few reviews of the Greenlee, but they were all 100% positive. The Brymen had more positive reviews and several teardowns and a few YOUTUBE comparisons which were quite impressive, versus Fluke products, including the 87V. Greenlee also has a limited lifetime warranty. The Greenlee also has a favorable price point in comparison to the 87V. The DMM feels solid and well built. Its accuracy is excellent, though fractionally less accurate than the 87V in some areas. I would definitely recommend it to a colleague. I purchased the DM860A and experientially used it to measure transients in the power in my new house, that were causing the LED lightbulbs to flicker when a washing machine agitated. It is unlikely that a competing DMM could have measured those transients. The voltage excursions, which seem excessive, will be presented to the local power company for evaluation.
