Southwire 28828222 Review: How to Read a Multimeter and Why This One Is Worth It

Buy the Southwire 28828222 autoranging multimeter. Skip the $20 specials at the hardware store — they cost more in the long run. In six years of tracking every tool purchase for a 12-person electrical contracting firm, this is the best cost-per-correct-reading meter I've found for residential and light commercial work.

I know the price is the first thing people question. The 28828222 lists between $65 and $95 at major retailers, depending on the week (prices as of early 2025; always check current listings). A budget meter goes for a third of that. But I replaced four of those budget meters in a single year at our shop. One dropped off a ladder. Two developed drifting readings. One just stopped powering on. The Southwire has been in our rotation since 2021 and it's still going. Spread the cost over that lifespan, and the cheap meter is the expensive one. Done.

Where this opinion comes from

Full disclosure: I'm on the procurement side, not the tools side. I sign off on equipment purchases for a twelve-person electrical contracting company that does mostly residential and light commercial work. Our annual tool and test-instrument budget runs about $8,000, and I've tracked every dollar of it in a spreadsheet since 2019. Model, price, date assigned, failure notes. It's not glamorous, but it catches patterns.

In 2020, after the third cheap meter failed, I built a comparison sheet. Ten models, four brands — Southwire's autoranging line, the usual premium suspects, and two off-brand imports. I didn't care about labels. I cared about cost per year of reliable service. The Southwire 28828222 came out ahead of every cheap option on three-year total cost. Not because it's fancy. Because it survives, and it reads correctly.

The most frustrating part of that exercise: none of the cheap meters failed dramatically. They just drifted. You'd think a brand-new meter would be accurate out of the box, but one of them read 122V on a circuit that was verified dead. That's when I realized we didn't have a formal meter verification process. Cost us time and trust. I built a checklist after that — verify against a known live outlet before critical work, every time. Should have done it after the first failure.

Does Southwire still make phones? No. Let's clear that up.

Before going further, this needs to be said, because a lot of people land here from a confusing search path. Southwire does not make phones. If you searched for 'DuraForce Pro 2' or asked 'does Southwire still make phones,' you're probably thinking of the Kyocera DuraForce Pro 2, a rugged smartphone from Kyocera, not Southwire. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'm not aware of Kyocera actively promoting it as a current model. Either way: different company, different product.

To be fair, the mix-up makes sense. Both brands make tough, job-site oriented gear, and Southwire has a DuraForce line of its own — pulling gloves and hand tools. Just a naming coincidence. No corporate connection.

If you're actually here because you need to test circuits, good. Keep reading.

What makes the 28828222 worth it

Most multimeters show numbers. The real question is whether you can trust those numbers on a live job site.

The 28828222 is an autoranging meter. Set the dial to voltage, and the meter picks the range for you. That's a 'nice to have' for experienced electricians and a genuine safety net for apprentices. In practice, it cut our field errors — I saw it in fewer callbacks and less overtime, and the cost sheet backed it up.

Safety rating: the unit I have is marked CAT-III 600V under IEC 61010-1. For panel work and branch circuits, that's the right envelope for this class of meter. The off-brand units I bought claimed CAT-III too, but the readings drifted anyway. I'm not accusing them of lying. I'm saying the engineering didn't hold up.

If you're shopping for a Southwire autoranging multimeter, the 28828222 is the one I'd point you to. You get AC/DC voltage, resistance, continuity, diode checking, and a backlit display. The continuity beeper is loud, which sounds minor until you're reaching around inside a panel with both hands.

One honest complaint: the included leads are adequate, not great. I swapped ours for silicone leads with sharper probes after about six months. That was $25 per meter. Even with the upgrade, the three-year total cost beats the cheap-meter replacement cycle.

How to read a multimeter (the 80/20 version)

If you've just bought one, or you're still deciding between this and a cheaper option, these four functions cover nearly all field troubleshooting.

AC voltage

Turn the dial to the V with a wavy line (~). Black lead in the COM port. Red lead in the VΩ port. Touch the leads to the circuit. Read the number. A standard North American outlet should read around 120V. Anywhere from 117V to 125V is normal. If you're seeing 90-something, that's not a meter problem. That's a voltage drop or a loose neutral.

DC voltage

Same setup, different dial position: the V with a straight line (⎓). Used for batteries, control circuits, solar panels. Red to positive, black to negative. If the number shows negative, you've got the leads reversed. No damage done — just swap them.

Continuity

This is the one you'll use daily. Set the dial to the sound wave icon, make sure power is off, and touch the leads together. If you hear a beep, the meter works. Now check whether a wire is intact, a fuse is open, or a switch is making contact. It turns a 45-minute diagnostic into a two-minute check.

Resistance

Set the dial to the Ω symbol. Power off the circuit first. Touch the leads across the wire or component. The reading is resistance in ohms. For most wiring checks, lower is better. This is how you chase a corroded connection or a damaged conductor.

That's it. Four functions. The rest of the dial is for edge cases you'll learn when you actually need them.

When I'd tell you to look elsewhere

I don't want to oversell this meter. It's a field tool, not a laboratory instrument.

If your daily work is 480V motor control or VFD troubleshooting, you need a meter with low-pass filtering and a higher safety envelope — something like Fluke's industrial line. The 28828222 is not that tool. And if you're doing precision electronics on a bench, this isn't a bench meter either. It reads voltage and continuity reliably; it won't measure a reference voltage to four decimal places.

If your budget genuinely cannot stretch to $65, buy the cheap meter. But treat it like the disposable tool it is, and verify it against a known source before you trust it for anything safety-critical. Not ideal. Just honest.

Last thing, for the owner-operators and two-person shops: I've been on your side of this for years. Nobody likes a vendor who only smiles at big orders. When we bought our first two Southwire meters from a regular distributor, it was a single two-unit order, and it got the same warranty and support as the bulk orders we place now. Six years later, we're ordering more, and I still remember which brands treated the small order with respect. The guys who took our $200 order seriously are the ones who get our $8,000 orders today.

Buy once. Verify your readings. Get back to work.