Review on 🔌 Platinum Tools 100020 EZ-RJ45 Shielded Cat5e/6 (Internal Ground), Green - 50/Bag by Mike Burnett

I have enough experience installing regular RJ-45 plugs (dead ends you can't push wires through) and I can do it fairly reliably with standard -EIA make Wiring /TIA 568. I've had less success having to make custom cables to connect the RS-232 console ports to the terminal servers, as wiring was required on one end, with striped wires on pins 1- 4 and colored wires on pins 5-. 8 made conventional connectors difficult to properly mate due to the less natural action required to separate wire pairs into widely spaced connector pins. Note that I know it would be easier for me if I used non-UTP shielded cable for this, but shielded Cat5 cable is about 1/3 the price and I already have a bunch of these, so am using I it. I'm using shielded Cat5e cable with 24 AWG stranded conductors. The regular Cat5e RJ45 plugs I've used are shielded and 50 of them cost $11.29. When I was looking for an alternative to make installing funky wired plugs more reliable, these Platinum Tools connectors seemed like the best choice. In fact, using them makes it easy to tell if the wires are plugged in correctly: push the wires through, and if they're not all plugged in in the correct order, pull them back out and try again. However, if all the wires are routed and placed in the correct order, the crimp ensures a secure connection even with multi-wire conductors. The connectors for Cat5e are tight fitting and the jacketed portion of the cable requires some force to slide through from the back (I like to prep the cable by wrapping a piece of 3M 1181 around the back bent shield and ground wire, which eliminates it emerges more solid). than it could be) and I doubt more than 24 AWG conductors would fit in the holes, but they're really good for my purpose. I would give them 5 stars for their design. The reason I don't give them 5 stars is because while these forks seem expensive, they also seem very cheap. Compared to the discount plugs I usually use, the metal parts are less shiny, thinner and softer; When I crimp cheap connectors, the metal back stays fairly flat where it compresses the cable jacket, but on them the jacket forms a jacket-shaped bulge on the metal back. While I don't use proper connector boots, I prefer to use a piece of heat shrink tubing to reduce tension and cleanliness, and in all the years of doing this these are the very first connectors I've had. managed to melt the connector's plastic out of the mold before the shrink tubing had shrunk. These connectors install fine, but I think the connectors that cost me $1.35 each should be made of at least as good a material as the connectors that cost me 23 cents each. These connectors are cheaply made for no good reason, and despite the beautiful design, I feel a bit left out.