Vallidity of password strength tests

I feel it's time to change my passwords for the most secure areas such as banking.
My local bank restricts a password to 8 characters so I can't get past "Medium" on the Microsoft Test
[https://www.microsoft.com/security/p...-checker.aspx]

Longer passwords are more secure however what I'm discovering is an enormous variety of responses to the same password from different sites offering a test.
eg [https://www.my1login.com/resources/p...trength-test/] responds with the time required to crack the p/w
[]404 Not Found appears very reliable however a p/w which scores 100% and 'Very Strong' only gains 'Medium' in the Microsoft test.

The thing about such sites as banks of course is that you may have to access them from various places and computers so the password has to be memorable. Having a very strong one which is impossible to recall is of little help.

What have you found in your p/w strength search?
What method do you use to generate strong p/w?
If you were asked for advice as to how to test the strength what would you say?

on this the final day of 2015 I wish you all a Very Happy New Year - may it be free from all infections, trojans, bad files, corrupt HDDs and generally be a grand year for computing!

I use LastPass to generate secure passwords. It also saves my user login info to access sites.
The length of password can be set to whatever you want/need.

LastPass is absolutely free as is all other software I use. Just seems I can always find an alternative
to paid versions of almost anything or at least something close enough to do what I need.
Good luck.