Sam Brown
Great question!
You’re basically right — you want to use a loading meter because you want to see how that voltage will act when a load is applied to it.
In fact, you should essentially always use a loading meter (or the LoZ function on a multimeter) when measuring AC voltage. It keeps you from getting tricked by things like open neutrals and ghost voltage, and it shows you when a circuit fails under load, like when you have a loose connection.
To learn more, I highly recommend you watch this webinar recording, which goes into depth on this topic: https://mrappliance.mastersamuraitech.com/appliance-repair-course-support/student-forums/topic/loading-meters-ghost-voltages-and-triac-controlled-neutrals/