If it's a good multimeter...

 ... then it must be a Fluke.           *rimshot*

I've had a little Fluke 101 basic multimeter for about five years.  It worked well, and was the pride and joy of my electronics toolbox.  You can watch Adam "Mythbusters" Savage rant about how wonderful the 101 is here.  It's amusing.  Paid for itself many times over, say in diagnosing a dead dryer circuit.  (FWIW, when the electrician asked "How do you know the circuit is dead?" I held out the yellow Fluke and he just said "Oh, OK, right."  It's kind of like shibboleet.)  The last time I used it was in March.  

So far, so good.  Then I needed the 101 last week, and much to my dismay the batteries had leaked (never trust a Duracell), converting the nearby plastics to something resembling cheddar cheese.  Tried fresh batts, wiggled the contacts in their cheesy-mounts, no power, no dice.

I ended up chucking it and replacing with a slight upgrade to the Fluke 107.  It does everything the 101 does, plus one more trick, it adds an ammeter (you know, to measure Amperes).  That last function is key to tracking down the problems behind mysteriously dead car batteries, something that's occasionally called for in this household.  It also about doubles the price of the meter, so it may or may not be worth it to you.  I briefly considered going to the pro-level Fluke 117, but didn't want to double the price yet again.

Oddly enough, the 107 does not come with any sort of manual.  Oh, there's a quarter-inch thick safety manual in a dozen different languages, but if you need a safety manual for something that runs on 2 AAA batts, sorry, you probably don't need to be doing anything with a multimeter.  Here's a miserable little video that walks through the functions (thumpety music?  really?  why no narration?).  The rest is pretty obvious.  ps: here is the missing manual in pdf

So yeah, Fluke 107 is good, though for many the 101 will be enough.  Just remember to take the batteries out before tucking it away for any length of time.