I’ve heard nothing but good about them. Which says alot especially when it comes to electronics as if they are built with crap parts, they fail or just die completely.
Ever since I discover the strobe tuners, I’ve never tried anything else. They are a bit more expensive but they are pretty awesome, they are accurate within a few cents. You can find great deal on reverb or even Peterson’s website. I order from them 3 times and so far it’s free shipping and no tax. Their clip on is just as accurate as their pedals.
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I read where the Korg PitchBlack and Petersons are very good tuners.
Bad string or wrong string
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The Peterson Strobostomp is basically the best tuner pedal IMO.
Both are classics; I happen to prefer the Boss for size and durability. Nothing wrong with either.
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I am taking this all in. I am gonna start checking on these tuners asap.
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How good are your ears - not being smart, genuine question? If you fret the 5th fret on the E String, that is the same note as the open A string. If they don’t sound even remotely alike then you may have just had the string tuned way too low to register. For example, I have a D’Addario headstock tuner and it generally works fine. I just did a test where I loosened the A string multi full turns of the tunig peg and it stopped registering the string. It seems to stop registering when I’m almost an entire octave below (all 7 notes including sharsp/flats below). As I tightened the string, I think it first started registering at A#, but have to tune all the way back up through A#, B, C, C#, D etc.
Another consideration - when you are tuning the A, are you actively muting the other 3 strings? Bass string and fat and wobbly and when you pluck the A string, the other strings (especially the E) can vibrate. If this happens, the tuner will get “confused”.
One last thing to try (just noticed on my bass), tune using a pick to pluck the strings. Using my D’Addario, it wasn’t registering the G string until I used a pick. It was only out by a little bit (a touch flat), but once I had it in tune, finger plucking would register as well (sometimes, still not every time). Really weird and probably not the first time that has happened with this tuner, but I rarely tune as my bass is pretty stable.
Could also be a dodgy tuner.
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And welcome to the wonderful world of bass and music in general 
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Maybe headstock tuners are not the best for such situation?
I rather prefer tuners that take ther signal directly from the pickups, cause that is what counts anyway, right?
Although: I have noticed that software tuners (as part of VST effects) have often challenges with 96KHz sampling rates, not with 48KHz.
My hardware tuner (Korg TM-60) never had an issue…
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Probably not, they seem to work fine on a guitar, but something about bass and the thick strings don’t play nice.
I’ve also got a Pitchblack polyphonic portable tuner that you plug into. Either that or if I’m on my laptop or headphone style amps (Prime P1 or Spark Go), the plugin or phone apps have a tuner and the bass is plugged in.
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I have the Spark Go too - the built-in app tuner is quite OK!
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My ears are pretty good. To the point I’ve been called mildly austistic for the sounds I hear and my ability to play by ear. Was actually told it wasnt normal, funny eh, lol. Im not normal i guess? But yes, even the Snark recommends to mute the strings with your finger and then hit which string being tuned. I didnt think to use a pick to see what happened or if there would be a difference. I knew about the 5th fret from Googling remedies of this situation. Thanks for the reply, stored this into my memory now. 
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You might have your tuner clipped to a spot that doesn’t have very much reasonance at the a string frequency. I’m sure there’s a better way to explain it, but in this video there are places where you can see the tea being bounced all over the place, and places where there’s very little movement. If you have your clip on tuner one of those places with little movement it doesn’t have enough vibration to register.
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The Snark Air is a strobe tuner for $30 that in my side by side testing is just as accurate as a Peterson, and is rechargeable
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I have one and it doesn’t reliably pick up my B string. I have to tune it off the harmonic, which isn’t a huge deal, but is a little annoying.
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Interesting. It picks up my B string just fine
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Maybe different resonance in our basses. Maybe manufacturing variance in the tuner. I have a strobostomp mini and I’ll say that experience is great. Still can’t believe I spent $90some on a tuner though lol
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I bought a strobe tuner, too! It works well…
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