EXTECH Instruments MO280 Pinless Moisture Meter

Great meter, as a certified home inspector I can not say enough of how helpful this meter is. My company we use these in conjunction with Flir Infrared Cameras. The biggest advantage is no marks are left as with a pin meter. The second huge feature is the rapid seconds to calibrate it ot hte ambient humidity. Yes you read that right this meter has a calibration button on the side. After a thermal scan of an area, one jsut holds the meter in the center of the room away from anything and presses the calibrate button the unit beeps and then is ready in less then 5 seconds and the inspector is confident that no false positives will be made due to high humidity in the surrounding areas. For example just a few days ago I was in a un-vented basement and the humidity was reading at around 60% I then saw some anomalies on one of the window wells. After calibrating the meter I got moister reading of over 80% in the corners and then also found signs of water infiltration as well. The buyer was super happy and this finding as well as others helped them lower the price with the bank. So we use the thermal camera shows an area with a high probability of moisture then we use this meter to provide the customer with a thermal image and the reading on the meter to verify our findings. The best thing everyone loves employees and customers is it leaves no marks. Look when you are inspecting a $500,000+ home you do not want to leave any sign you were there. We pride ourselves on being the most professional home/business inspection company we can and we do this with the best technology and great service. And most importantly we are super clean in our inspections. This meter is great.

For some reason, Amazon will not let you follow up an initial review with another as time goes on. I purchased two MMD950 units, I liked the sensitivity of the units, but the function keys were "funky" and both ended up not working after a few months. By not working I mean in relative mode I cannot calibrate to 0, and in wood mode I cannot get it to move above 0.I have now purchased the Extech unit and it works simply and as advertised. Can sense your hand from 6" out.

I purchased this basically for testing concrete wall moisture level, and on the package it says the product can be used for this purpose. However, it does not work. I contacted Extech/(Now Flir) for advice, a feedback from their technical staff confirmed that this equipment cannot be used for my purpose. What a misleading description. I tried to ask for refund from Flir 2 weeks ago, but they haven't replied. Such a disappointment.

This is by far the worst moisture meter. It has never really worked correctly and now is unusable. It worked just well enough for me to have confidence but I have never been truly happy with it. Now it is past the 1 year warranty and only works when it wants to. I can send it in to get repaired for $150 which I will not do. I rather take a chance on buying a different meter. I would expect better from Extech which is a Flir company. I use other Extech and Flir products which have preformed great. For the price I would expect a better product and I'm very disappointed. The experience with this meter makes me weary of other Extech products.Edit: I first rated 1 star and change the rating due to Extech sending me a new meter. Which the new meter works much better. Read comments.

Update: I contacted Extech about the dud unit, they are shipping me a new one no questions asked.I'd already proceeded with purchasing another one as I always like to have a backup unit for my home inspections.The 2nd unit has been working perfectly and I should receive the replacement from Extech next week.So I'm changing my rating to 5 stars as the unit is in my opinion excellent for home inspections.Worked fine at first, very sensitive, I like the large display as I'm a home inspector and need to photograph the readout for my reports.But, the display started acting up, sometimes it would work and sometimes not.Or I'd power it up and calibrate and it would have a high moisture content readout when it wasn't near anything.I'm returning this one to Extech.Will let you know what happens if I can add to this review later.

I buy ExTech because they are great products and very reliable. On occasion you will get a defective unit with anything you buy, that's just a fact. The first one I bought had a problem which the ExTech support promptly diagnosed and confirmed that it was defective. I contacted Amazon, and within 10 minutes they had an order replacement at no charge on the way! Go Amazon!!! I sent the defective one back and when the new one arrived it worked perfectly. The pinless mode on this unit works great, it is very accurate and seems to detect moisture a bit further down, beyond their specified depth. It comes with both a decent battery and an extra set of pins for use in pin mode. The display is bright white with the backlight on, and setup is easy, The unit has a surprising number of features in setup and all are easy to get to by pressing and holding two buttons. The only thing that bothers me is the LCD viewing angle, it is only about 30-40 degrees but this is typical of many LCD pa​nels and the only way to fix this is ad an option for LCD screen polarization which would raise the cost and not be necessary for most people. I am very happy with this unit so far and would recommend it to anyone in need of this type of meter.

Takes some getting used to since it is based on relative moisture rather than actual moisture content. However, it has been very helpful in letting me tell a more complete story when explaining to someone what is going on in their basement. Being able to detect different levels of moisture thru the course of a floor crack or in a wall where someone just thinks water is coming through specific wall penetration is super handy.It has helped me provide a higher level of customer service by improving the certainty of the things that can't be seen without demolition. I have recommended this to many of my coworkers.