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131
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ranked #222,652 most helpful out of 571,544,897 reviews
★☆☆☆☆
Wildly inaccurate.
I was excited to receive this moisture meter, as I had a set of resawn walnut boards to check for uneven moisture content on the inside and outside faces. My excitement turned to mild concern when I started to read the instructions: "Press either button to active the sensor". OK, I can roll with that, I guess, although a later item, "Buzzer sounds when the reading changes every increasing digit" left me somewhat bemused. Funnily enough, the instructions also included a disclaimer: "Notice: we are not responsible for typographical errors". Um, OK, then who is responsible? Anyway, I "actived" the sensor, pressed it as described to one of my boards and...got a reading of 59.9% (the maximum). "Hmm", I thought, "those boards have been drying for two years - that can't be right." So, I tried a piece of beech, nice and dry when I bought it, that's been in my shop for a year or so, planed mirror smooth and thus eliminating the chance that a rough surface could be the problem, and got a reading of 8.0%. "That's more like it!", I thought, "Maybe my first attempt was a just a fluke." Then I re-measured the beech that had given me a believable reading. This time, I got 14%. Another attempt netted me 29%, then 7.4%. So, I tried a few other pieces of wood, with similarly wildly varying results. Fooling around with the unit, I found that pressing more on one corner or the other would cause huge swings in the reported measurement. When I held it in my left hand, I got a different result than when I held it in my right hand. Five minutes later, it was back in its box and on its way to the Amazon returns department. Maybe this was just a defective unit. Who knows?
June 2010 · Tools and Home Improvement · verified purchase
the product in question
General Tools MMD5NP Moisture Meter, Pinless, Digital LCD
3.5★ · 97 ratings, as of 2023
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