Range is just how high or low it's capable of measuring. My fluke 179 can measure up to 1000 volts, maybe the RS can only measure up to 200 volts. There's nothing on the car above 15 volts anyway.

My fluke is supposed to be accurate to +/-0.09% + 2 counts. Which is like 0.014 volts. A cheap meter might be off by 1/4 volt or more. For troubleshooting cars, you normally don't need that much accuracy.

My fluke can measure DC current up to 10 amps. A cheap meter maybe only 200 milliamps which is 0.2 amps. So if I'm trying to check for something that's draining the battery overnite, maybe I'll blow a fuse on the cheap meter but I can measure it with the good one.

Autoranging is when you simply set it to measure volts, you don't have to set any particular range. My RS meter takes about 2 seconds for the display do decide how to set itself, & then it shows the voltage. Less than 1/4 second for my Fluke. When you put the probes across a battery, 2 seconds seems like a long time.

But $200 is a lot of money... I had an in-between meter that was maybe $60 & I had that for more than 15 years. It was fine until it quit working. That was my excuse to 'upgrade'. I think if I got one of those $10 Autozone meters I'd get tired of it pretty quick.

It's also kinda like using a K-mart socket wrench. It takes off bolts just like the snap-on wrench, but you don't expect it to last forever.