How To Choose Between Oscilloscopes and Multimeters

If you are an engineer working in a firm or an electrician undergoing regular electrical machinery testing jobs, multimeters and oscilloscopes can come extremely handy in your professional overtures. While oscilloscopes measure wave lengths and voltages in great details, multimeters are capable of measuring a number of things such as resistance, current, voltage as well as proper functioning of transistors and diodes. But which one would be more suitable for your work and how to choose them? As a dealer of a wide gamut of electronic products of brands such as Proxxon, Hameg, Tektronix and the likes here are a few tips from Conrad to help you choose the right tool for your work.

Multimeter or Oscilloscope?

A multimeter can do a great job in testing and maintaining general and daily electrical appliances and circuits but cannot check complicated machinery controls or other electronic design works. Moreover, while the former can depict the average level of voltages, oscilloscopes have the capacity to detect signals, changes in voltages, type of waves, compare voltages and a lot more.

How to Choose a Multimeter

In order to choose a Multimeter you have to look into the operational area for the device, the measurement functions, features like Auto Ranging and Dialing, battery life, display options and test lead lengths.

How to Choose Oscilloscopes

As in choosing a multimeter, the first things to consider while choosing an oscilloscope is also the area where you will be using it, the number of signals to be measured, the highest frequency of the signals needed and the maximum and minimum ranges of amplitude. You also require taking into account factors like whether the signals will be viewed both in the time and the frequency domains and whether they will be single or repetitive shots. However, the most important consideration remains that of choosing the right bandwidth or the input signal’s frequency range that is capable of passing with the least amplitude dissipation through the front-end analog.