Knock off 1 is UL listed

​@@Milanesa2010 knockoff #1 has a UL marking, but depending on the source, it may not be worth the ink used to put it there. There's lots of fraudulent items out there.

I'm sure Wago also stands by their products.

how do solid vs stranded wire work? any pull tests on conductors?

I use to think UL LISTED actuality meant something was good quality and safe to use. But then after having many different UL listed items actually get very hot and eventually did catch fire. I learned the hard way that UL listed doesn’t mean much at all for quality or your safety. Especially with items like portable heaters as well as some plug ins that have those little holes to quickly stick wires in to make connections that are really very dangerous since there’s very little contact on wires where it’s being connected and that causes even more heat and do eventually fall! I have had them burn out and fail leaving black marks inside the box where it was really border line of catching fire. If you ever been thru a house fire where you lost everything and it wasn’t your fault that caused the fire especially! The devastation and lost is horrible to have to live through. You don’t realize how the loss of some items that can never be replaced can hurt for many years and the only thing you’ll have is your memories of those items that will tend to haunt you that you don’t have them anymore!

Interesting about the having to wrap the Wago to prevent release. I've been using them in my own home, rewiring where I need to temporarily hook up some circuits to keep things running (always fun to live in the project). I was a little concerned about that issue, especially when I first started working with them using 12awg solid and bending/packing, then unbending/reconfiguring and repacking. It takes quite a bit of pressure to release those, but if all the wires are close to parallel and there is not a tight bend - say a JBox where conductors enter/exit in different directions, this is a non-issue if carefully installed/de-installed/reinstalled. Then there are the 'next-guy' issue to consider. I'm interested in the heat dissipation when wrapped vs. not. I've got an IR camera and will test that before buttoning everything up. It's kinda like people using wire nuts and not pre-twisting the conductors and letting the wire nut do the twisting, which, unfortunately, I've run into often.

Indeed. Quality control is a huge issue that is often overlooked/non-extant with cheap-o brand. To me, the whole thing is a non-issue as price is not an issue as I'm not using enough of them to make a difference in cost/profit.

Yeah, mixing solid and stranded is a massive advantage of them!

So many in-wall dimmers and smart-home switches have stranded wire. Being able to safely attach those to house wiring with 100% consistency is the single biggest advantage of the Wago 221 for me.

you can mix both in the simple push variand by adding a sleeve on the stranded wires 👍 Quite handy for compact setups...

It looks Home Depot is selling Wago and Lowes is selling a knockoff made by Ideal. I have used the Ideal push connectors for low current LED lights only.

Menards sells both WAGO and knock offs too. @@picklerix6162

Truely alarming. For homeowners who hire the cheapest contractor to do a job may/will end up with these in their homes.

Would be nice if the Connexbox Wagoboxes could get UL listing. They've passed such tough European testing they're approved for inaccessible installation such as inside a wall without and access cover. The trick is the special slots the WAGO connectors slide into to ensure the levers cannot come open. The boxes hold the 5 wire lever nuts or a 2 and a 3 can be put into a slot. But as a person at Connexbox told me, UL wants a telephone number size amount of money for testing.

@@greggv8it's up to the mfr to get the cert, not the cert org.

I wanna hear one where it didn't!

@@paulbrogger655 sorry don't have one

Thanks Roger, I appreciate the support 👍

There are some actually great knock off brands out there though. We use the term knock off as a blanket way of saying less than or not as good as the original but for some brands this couldn't be farther from the truth. No different than having off brand medicine which are equally comparable to the main line brands that charge exorbitant prices that consumers can't afford. Sometimes, the only thing different between the quality of a knock off and a name brand is how much R&D was spent developing a product but once the blue print is out there it's easy to copy for knock offs at a lower cost making it more accessible for everyone.

@@itachii267True but I’ve seen some lever nuts that don’t hold up at all. They do go through lots of heat cycles being in a commercial reptile habitat with heat lamps though. The levers just snap right off. They’re not wago.

@@itachii267. Your comparison between medicines and connectors is wrong. Knock off medicines are exactly the same in ingredients and dosages as the originals. The connectors are, however,made differently and with different materials.

@@itachii267 What's a "knock off brand" though? I would say Ideal isn't. Gardner Bender is an interesting company. They seem to subcontract a lot of their manufacturing and possibly design, but otherwise have high enough standards for what they accept. I've found a lot of less expensive connectors from the Taiwanese company Heavy Power, and they even have UL listed lever connectors. Now I don't know if I would use them. Wire nuts - sure. But I wasn't terribly impressed with their push-in connectors.

I know, I can’t believe I haven’t done that video yet. Should have the video out in the next month or so 👍

@@EverydayHomeRepairs Should've/Could've/Would've been in this comparison!

@@EverydayHomeRepairs I work at a lighting fixture manufacturer and we use ideal push nuts, and Wago lever nuts. So there ya go!

Agreed, these are available at my local Lowe's and I've already picked up a few packs for a low-voltage application. Wonder if I'd be willing to use the rest on my next outlet project.

Ideal is not a Lowe's brand. I've seen their push-in connectors, wire nuts, and other items at Home Depot. Ideal is a very big company and bought a jar of 500 of their lever connectors from Amazon. I believe Lowe's big house brand for electrical stuff is Utilitech.

Best of luck on the project 👍

Yep. Love me some Wagos and I preach there use...but..... I'm not hooking up electric water heaters with Wagos. Definitely 3m Yellow/reds for that for me. But for lights or a 120 junction 🤷‍♂️ I'm cool with that. Works very well for me.

Truth be told, the amount of contact area with the bus bar and spring (which probably takes a little bit of the conductivity) is small compared to squishing wires together in a wire nut. But as you say "twisted correctly". I've had wire nuts where there was no practical means to pretwist given how little wire was left, and lining up three ends (including a pigtail) were difficult and one never made contact. At least with these it's very easy to visually see that it's fully inserted and clamped. However, testing labs have certified them for use with the typical 20A (or even more in Europe) that we use for mains power in the United States.

Thanks!

Have you verified the UL listing of Knockoff #1 and that it is not a counterfeit mark?

@@soundspark The UL file number for Knockoff #1 is E497783, and you can double-check the listing in the UL "Product iQ" database. They're produced by Guangdong Ojun Technology Co but marketed under a variety of other brand names -- check the model numbers molded on the side opposite the wire entry holes to identify them. They're OJ-26x, where x is the number of connector positions.

Agreed, they will be coming up in the next month and I will test them on the same setup so I can overlay the results

@@EverydayHomeRepairs Great, thanks!

Is Prime Day promoting the knockoffs?

I wouldn’t trust anything on Amazon claiming to sell wago unless it’s directly from wago

If you ignore the best results being from the wire nut (cheapest). 😂

That's the idea. Because we patent everything, knock-off lever nuts have resorted to a design that is different than WAGO's. Our 221 connector was carefully engineered for the best performance and cannot be effectively replicated.

Ironically, I actually like the reverse direction of Knockoff #1s levers, because it means that if anything pulls on the wires, it will pull the connector in a direction that _will not catch_ the levers and potentially cause them to reduce tension on the connection and let the wire slip out.

​@@foogod4237I bought some IDEAL lever Connectors just to see how the preformed. They are easier to use because the levers are reverse of WAGO. The reverse levels may be helpful with some access problems. But..... I like and have used WAGO lever nuts for years. The high relative cost is easily offset by the advantages. My favorites are that lever nuts do not twist up the wires and makes a sure multiple wires are connected. In my collection of old technology are porcelain wire nuts made by IDEAL and extracted from a 1929 house.

@@foogod4237 I came to post exactly this. Plus, the direction of pull will impose an additional closing force vector on the lever (inside the connector), whereas the opposite is actually the case for even the true Wagos

If they are Ideal brand they are fine. I like Wagos, but they'll work fine.

@@mattfleming86 Thanks Matt for the info

Me too. But i’m also not a fan of my wires heating up more than they have too.

I had wires pop out of the #2 style I bought when I was pushing the wires back into the box. I sent them right back after attempting just one outlet. 😬

@@szlash280z I had the same thing happen with the brand Lowes carries!

@@petrushka1611 was that the push in type or the newer ideal lever nuts?

You’re absolutely correct, but for the average home do it yourselfer, ohms probably means very little but heat buildup just about everyone understands. It would be a good teaching technique to show both tests to get the point across.

Well, I'd like to see it for knockoff #1. Knockoff #2 can just go in the trash, no point testing anything else since the recommendation is already "never use them"

WAGO uses stainless steel springs and tinned copper bus bars. So does Ideal for their version of a lever connector. I believe the resistance isn't from the conductive materials used, but rather the contact area. I've taken apart one of these (from Ideal) and the contact area with a solid wire was really just the spring, a narrow point where the spring pressed against a tinned copper bus bar ridge, and the tip of the wire against the bus bar. I think there might have been better contact with a stranded wire, if inserted without twisting would have splayed flatter against the spring and bus bar. That being said, I'm using them and am confident that they're safe to use. The spring maintains a very consistent contact point. I've heard of criticisms that the wire can wiggle around or even slide against the bus bar, but that shouldn't matter as long as the spring maintains constant pressure against the bus bar. Power loss due to resistance is going to be dependent on the load. A good length of house wiring is going to be higher resistance than the connector. However, it's possible that a line is chained through several connectors. I've got a living room where it's chained to five additional receptacles using wire nuts, so each one adds up.

a properly done twisted on wire nut is definitely technically better than these lever nuts. The major downside is how irritating they are to take apart if you need to make a change to whatever they are connecting. I mean, you can just cut the twists out but I personally don't like to shorten the wires unless I really need to. With Lever nuts its super easy to make any adjustments.

I'm using Ideal push connectors for low draw lighting circuits, with Wagos at the connection to stranded on the fixture. Wire nuts for 20 amp plus circuits.