FAKE Solderless Breadboards

This is why I only buy whole grain organic breadboards that are locally sourced.

"Its very difficult when you got both holes resisting the insertion of your component". I've had that problem before, not fun! :P

I have zero idea why people are complaining about the split rails. The basis of the complaint appears to be that a board you are planning to add lots of jumper wires to, requires you to add some jumper wires. Hardly the biggest problem. The counter-example though, where you are mixing 3v and 5v circuits on a board, or 5v and audio +/- rails, is certainly a lot more awkward without the welcome convenience of split rails.

I don't think "fake" is really the right word to describe these. More along the lines of very low quality/poorly implemented copies of a fairly common & simple design.

I'm totally new to electronics, so new that I’m proud to have made a binary counter though my wife won't let me stick on the fridge. She said something about me being 60 not 6. I only have two breadboards, one I got with a Freenove kit and one I got with a cheap kit I ordered by mistake not realising it was full of nothing (I said I was new). Watching this made me go and look at both my breadboards and the difference is like night and day, even the weight and feel is different. Thank you for this video, this sort of thing is invaluable to a newbie like myself.

The world is going to hell in a handbasket if a $1.86 breadboard isn't high quality.

The break in the power rails isn't a massive issue - I actually quite like it when working with multi-voltage projects. 5V logic on one side, and 12V for the LED strips or fans on the other. It's easy enough to join them together with a little jumper

Cheap is good but useless is useless at any price!

Separated rails are essential. If an experimenter is working with a transistor or chip amplifier with more than two stages, for example, a resistor and capacitor decoupling is unavoidable to prevent "motorboating". Also, I had to use long nose pliers to enable wire insertion, and needed to alter resistor values on the soldered item, as consequence of tie point ESR. Very enlightening upload from JL. Thanks. 🙂

Your comment about the printing is spot on. You can often tell counterfeit Cuban cigars made in Mexico merely by looking at the resolution of the printing on the (counterfeit) label. Often there is poor registration between colors. Congrats on 100k subs. I think I subbed back when you had <10k and have been enjoying ever since.

3 breadboard for 3.50 dollars. Only rating without a verified purchase: 5 stars and "Excellent quality. Product fulfills the function for which it was made. Ideal for Arduino" Seems legit, right?

I have some of these poor-quality ones at home. I found that some of the strips has surprisingly high resistance, like 8 ohms, which caused serious problems with an INA219 current/power meter that I was building (a lot like yours). I'm currently trying to build an INA219-based milliohmmeter to do some better comparisons.

One more point regarding the photo swap of the seller. I worked at eBay and can tell you this is a violation of their seller agreement. You can get your money back and file a complaint against the seller. The listing is a binding legal contract and the seller is required to supply you with the exact product represented in the photo.

Thank you Julian. This is important. Building and experimenting is difficult enough but adding another headache in the mess that is avoidable if I follow your advise on this subject.

Many breadboards have split in the middle power rails, sometimes you need more than 2 positive voltages, it's extra flexibility. You can put a jumper in between the rails of those boards to make them one power rail, but can't cut a breadboard power rail of board that have them connected all the way, so need extra breadboard or power rail.

Until I watched this video, I had no idea that not all breadboards are as bad as the ones you bought - I've only ever bought and used cheap ones and thought that horrible insertion and dodgy contact with the terminals was par for the course. So, let's say I want to treat myself to some good quality (and, no doubt, expensive) breadboards - where do people reckon I should go and what should I buy?

I was wondering why some of my projects did not work. Sure enough when I bridged the gap with a wire and tested It that was the problem .You just got another subscriber thanks Buddy. I going to buy the transparent ones from now on like You said.

Recommend Mr Sharman's detailed review of solderless breadboards. There are particular brands of a consistently (repeatable) quality. Saved me a lot of time and money - I was going nuts using cheap boards with dicey contacts - debugging that issue takes longer than any other. Cheap breadboards will drive you insane, slowly but surely.

This is a worthwhile video. Thanks for alerting us to this quality problem.

Looking forward to your follow up video on you new breadboards. Keep up the good work.