SMS Meteor was an aviso of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) built in the late 1880s and early 1890s, the lead ship of her class that include one other vessel, Comet.

Intended to screen the main fleet against attacking torpedo boats, Meteor was armed with a battery of four 8.8 cm (3.5 in) guns.

Her design suffered from several defects, including excessive vibration and poor handling in heavy seas, both of which could not be corrected.

Smaller and faster than the preceding Wacht-class avisos, the Meteors were also badly unstable and poor sea boats, and they suffered from severe vibration at high speed.

Meteor returned to guard duties from 28 August to 3 October, at which point she was decommissioned to correct some defects that had been discovered during her trials, including increasing the height of her funnels by 1.5 m (4 ft 11 in) to reduce smoke interference with the aft gun crews.

[4] Meteor returned to active service on 19 March 1895 for fishery protection duties along Germany's North Sea coast.

She waited in Dover, Great Britain, from 17 to 24 April for Prince Heinrich to arrive to take his new sailing yacht back to Germany.

She then returned to the fisheries patrol, where British fishers were repeatedly violating German territorial waters off Norderney, forcing Meteor to intervene and drive them off.

At the end of May, Meteor began to serve as a training ship for engine and boiler room crews in addition to her patrol duties.

And she was not particularly suited to the fishery protection duties that had occupied much of her active career, since her small size prevented her from carrying sufficient coal to remain at sea for long periods; she was replaced in that role by the old aviso Zieten of 1876 vintage.

Struck from the naval register on 24 June 1911, she was reduced to a barracks ship based in Kiel, where she remained for the next eight years, including during World War I, when she was occupied by U-boat crews.