1. The Specs That Actually Matter
For breadboard-level hobbyist work — decoding resistor bands, verifying Ohm's Law calculations, checking continuity on a voltage divider — you don't need a lab-grade bench meter. Three specs matter far more than brand: basic DC accuracy (±0.5% or better on a $20-30 meter is common and plenty), a continuity beeper with a fast response time, and CAT III safety rating if you'll ever probe anything connected to mains wiring.
Auto-ranging is worth paying a little extra for. Manually flipping a dial between resistance ranges while you're mid-debug on a circuit is exactly the kind of friction that makes people stop double-checking their work — and most resistor/Ohm's-law mistakes get caught by a quick multimeter sanity check, not by re-deriving the math.
2. What's Marketing Noise
True RMS is genuinely useful if you're measuring AC on anything non-sinusoidal (motor controllers, dimmer circuits), but irrelevant for pure DC breadboard work. Bluetooth/app connectivity is a nice-to-have for logging, not a hobbyist essential. And backlit displays matter less than people think unless you're working in genuinely dim conditions — most hobby benches have a desk lamp.
3. A Practical Starter Setup
A budget auto-ranging meter, a set of fine-tip probes (stock probes are often too thick for dense breadboards), and a basic component tester for quickly checking diodes/transistors will cover the vast majority of hobbyist electronics work — everything from verifying the Ohm's Law Solver's output against a real circuit to hunting down a bad connection on a voltage divider board.