In an electrodynamometer type wattmeter, the pressure coil (also called the voltage coil) has inductance.
This inductance causes the current in the pressure coil to lag behind the voltage, leading to a phase angle error.
At low power factor (typically with inductive loads), this phase error becomes more significant, and the wattmeter reading becomes less accurate.
The error introduced due to the inductance of the pressure coil is directly related to the phase angle between current and voltage, and it increases as the power factor decreases.
Therefore, the error is higher at lower power factor loads.