The surface resistance R _s of superconducting materials can be obtained by measuring the quality factor of an elliptical cavity excited in a transverse magnetic mode (TM₀₁₀). The value obtained has however to be taken as averaged over the whole surface. A more convenient way to obtain R _s, especially of materials which are not yet technologically ready for cavity production, is to measure small samples instead. These can be easily manufactured at low cost, duplicated and placed in film deposition and surface analytical tools. A commonly used design for a device to measure R _s consists of a cylindrical cavity excited in a transverse electric (TE₁₁₀) mode with the sample under test serving as one replaceable endplate. Such a cavity has two drawbacks. For reasonably small samples the resonant frequency will be larger than frequencies of interest concerning SRF application and it requires a reference sample of known R _s. In this article we review several devices which have been designed to overcome these limitations, reaching sub-nΩ resolution in some cases. Some of these devices also comprise a parameter space in frequency and temperature which is inaccessible to standard cavity tests, making them ideal tools to test theoretical surface resistance models.