Review on AMPCOM 5-Pack CAT5E RJ45 Tool-Less Keystone Jack by Brett Slater

I bought 2 packs of these cables to rewire in my basement because I didn't want to mess with a keystone punch. I used Monoprice's premium CAT6A cable and found that this keyless keystone didn't pierce the copper wire jacket enough to support a full 1000Mbit connection without changing the wiring. I was able to get a signal through the Keystone, but my network devices could only auto-negotiate 10Mbps. I tried setting the speed manually, but the port didn't support more than 10Mbps. My initial guess was that the keystone wasn't piercing the copper wire jacket properly. To test my hypothesis, I opened the capstone and examined the copper wires. It turned out that most of the wires weren't pierced by internal connectors. For further testing, I cut a small section of the copper wire where the internal trapezoidal connectors would pierce the wire. When I rewired my network devices, 1000 Mbit/s was automatically negotiated immediately. The purpose of tool-less Keystone is to not use a tool - that wasn't my experience. I also find it unacceptable to strip twisted pairs individually. I brought back the tool-less keystone and borrowed a Fluke punch tool and then bought the keystone that required a punch tool. It was really easy to use after watching a 5 minute YouTube video. It took me a few hours but I was able to connect 8 CAT6A cables to the patch panel (on one end) and to the new keystones (on the other end). I had no problems testing the new cabling and everyone automatically negotiated 1000 Mbit/s immediately. Based on my experience I would not recommend this product. Instead, I recommend spending a few bucks more on a punch tool and keystones that require a punch tool. Save yourself the frustration and do it the old-fashioned, tried-and-true way.