I have a Mity Digital test indicator, don't actually use it that much as I prefer the visual sweeping arm over the numbers for a lot of things but the battery life , oh my god. I left it on and hadn't used it for about 4 months , batteries still fine , hardly ever change them , think it's done two sets of batteries in maybe 10 years(and that was probably because it got left on for nearly half a year).
Stu
I can't speak to indicators specifically, but I think the electronic "guts" of that are at least in principal, the same as what's going on in digital calipers. Good electronics (coupled with good displays) are like that. Just like a digital wrist watch. Leaving the display on doesn't bother the battery life any. I have at work, several pairs of calipers that are pretty much scribes and compasses, and a "good" set, which is clearly a rebrand to a company who doesn't make calipers. The "good" ones, the display usually hasn't been turned off since I bought them three or five years ago, and I just had to buy the battery recently. The pair they replaced, another good pair, same thing. Solid couple of years on a battery, with or without the display turned on. My (presumably) crap grade ones, the ones I get at a low price so that I can do things to a caliper that you shouldn't ever do to a caliper- Doesn't matter, 357 batteries or 2032 batteries, manual on/off, automatic on/off, manual on/auto off, any way they make 'em, if you leave them on for a week and they're dead. Leave them off for a couple of months, and they're dead. Humid weather, cut that in half.
For reference, when I say "good" calipers, I can't tell you who made them, I'm not talking about "high end", I'm just talking about "not junk". One "good set" was a tool truck purchase, so converted for the convenience tax/ expensive and borderline obsolete business model pricing, it's probably roughly an 80 dollar set at regular retail, the current set is a house brand for a local store, they were near to 100. I have a couple of cheap Fowlers,and a big expensive disappointment from the MAC tools truck (the inch/metric/fraction contraption), and some harbor freight and/or home depot crap that were bought just to cut the jaws for something.
Bottom line... Who made the piece, and how much pride they have in their name really matters of you want to have a "good" set.
Compare this to the real/fake images in the video. 
