KORAD KA3005P-23 Programmable Precision Variable Adjustable 30V, 5A DC Linear Power Supply - 2023 Release

This power supply has a very impressive amount of functionality and quality for the price. The voltage and current displayed on the readout is very accurate. I checked with a multimeter from 10mV to 31V and also at various steps in voltage. Same for current from 10s of milliamps up to the max.So it's accurate and 30V 5A is more than enough for many projects, no complaints there. In terms of user interface, I think it's fantastic. Really happy with how simple and intuitive it is. There are no weird additional functions that require you to hold buttons and input something; all the functionality is clear and you don't have to read the user manual to understand what the buttons do.The memory functions work very simply; whatever memory setting you have selected, any changes you make are stored there. It's a bit of a bummer that if you change something, you have to change it back instead of being able to just save one setting and revert, but I appreciate the simplicity.The lock, over voltage protection, and over current protection is very easy to use and self explanatory. You need to hold the lock button for a couple of seconds to turn it on and off. With the lock on, the buttons and knob do nothing. Great for making sure you don't fry something by accidentally changing settings.One thing I really like about the user interface is the audio feedback. A lot of people don't like it when their equipment beeps with every button press, but I think it's nice to know that your button press registered, and this power supply does it really well. All of the buttons make a beep, and things like using the lock or turning the unit on produce a different beep. The knob (which is a rotary encoder that is not continuous but has bumps, not sure what you call that) makes a clicking sound when you increment or decrement (is that a word?) a digit, which feels really nice.Inputting a voltage/current is really quick and easy despite there being no keypad. For the price, it's completely acceptable that there's no keypad, and the rotary encoder and left/right buttons work just fine. The audible feedback and clicks in the rotary encoder make it easy to really quickly dial in a value.There is software included as well, and it's pretty good. I'm not completely sure, but it seems like it's just a labview program (though I don't know too much about labview, I am just a lowly undergrad EE student). It does install some national instruments stuff during the installation process. It's very easy to install and use, and you just connect to the power supply with a COM port. You can do anything on the software that you can do with the physical buttons, with some additional functionality. With the software, you can output a sequence of voltages at any time interval. You can also record the voltage and time at any interval and save that data to a text file, which you can import into Matlab or whatever you want to use. It shows graphs of the current and voltage as well. All this stuff is great for plotting I-V curves and seeing how much current your device is using over time. Cool stuff.Since it connects with a COM port, I'm sure you could get it to work with your own Labview programs, matlab stuff, or any other applicable software. I used the USB port (cable is included), but there's also a serial port which is cool.My one complaint with the software is that the buttons for quickly recalling set voltages and currents are filled with some seemingly random values and don't save what you change them to when exiting the program. Weird stuff.The connectors on the front accept banana plugs, or bare wire. They seem like pretty nice connectors and all my banana plugs fit well. The included leads are perfectly functional, although the banana plug portion has a screw and an extra hole, so not sure what's going on there. They feel a bit weird. But who cares, you're probably using your own leads anyways.Overall, there's nothing I can fault with this unit. It seems like all the things I've seen in reviews on youtube have been fixed or improved, and everything is high quality and easy to use. I'm very happy with this unit and the price I paid for it.I normally don't write lengthy reviews like this, but I think this trend of inexpensive but high quality equipment (like the Rigol DS1000 series scopes) is really important for students and beginners like myself. This power supply really stands out to me as a great bang for the buck for an engineering student on a budget.

Works great, no complaints for what I use it for.

The KA3005P arrived in a box with molded foam inserts so it was decently packaged. It came with a standard mains cable with US plug, a set of test leads (banana plug to crocodile clip) which are pretty cheap but usable, a USB cable, small instruction booklet and a DVD with the Windows software (and a PDF with the commands to program it via the serial port).My lab is wired for 230VAC so I had to move the voltage selector switch on the rear from 115 to 220, but I also need to change the 5A 250V 20mm fast blow fuse to 3A. Although the fuse holder comes with 2 fuses, unfortunately both are 5A, and I don't have any 3A fuses lying around so I'll have to get some.My first test was to connect the output to a 330 ohm 1% metal film resistor and set the output to 3.3V to get a current of 10mA. My multimeter confirmed the resistance, output voltage and current were as expected but the KA3005P reads only 6mA! I tried a 120 ohm resistor to give 3.6V and 30mA but the KA3005P reads 25mA. So it seems to under read by about 5mA. I did not yet test higher voltages and currents as I don't have suitable loads handy.I tried the software on my Windows 10 PC. Windows recognized the serial device and automatically installed a Microsoft driver but the software simply failed to communicate with the PSU (even though it beeped when I launched the software).I manually installed the Korad serial driver instead but it did not help.This is really bad software. The voltages stored in the ini file are pretty random and the default save path is invalid so one gets an error (partly in Chinese but with an invalid codepage so it is complete gibberish). Fixing the save path to point to a valid directory fixes this.I connected using PuTTY at 9600,N,8,1 with no flow control and was able to successfully communicate with the KA3005P! So the problem lies with the Korad software.Note: The serial protocol does not expect any control characters (such as CR/LF) and there is a very short timeout between each character received, so commands need to be pasted into the terminal software, not typed.I examined the Korad software (v3.2 from their website) and see it is based on a really old version of LabVIEW (National Instruments LabVIEW 2014). So I downloaded LabVIEW 2014 SP1 (runtime only, which does not require registration) from ni.com and installed it. After the installation completed, the Korad software suddenly started working correctly! I hope this helps others.So am now quite happy with this PSU and will update my review once I've had time to do further testing.