Comparing The Best Wire Connectors On The Market!

when it comes to safely taking on DIY electrical projects around your house my recommendation for years now has been the Wagga 221 lever net this wire connector compared to standard wire nuts is just going to result in a more consistently secure wire Connection in almost any application especially those applications where you're bringing solid and Stranded wires together but there is another option ideal makes the insure lever nut which has a similar design but I want to put it to the test so let's jump into three different areas first we'll just compare and contrast the two different designs then we'll load up the designs and actually put 23 amps through the ideal insured connector and compare that to our pass test to see how much it heats up and then finally we'll do a pull test with the lever closed how much force can the insurer actually hold compared to the Wago lever nut so let's jump into it so first up let's just look at the different types of Wago and Ensure two wire three wire and five wire right are going to be the same across each one these can hold between 24 gauge and 12 gauge which is going to be the same for the insurer and the Wago what I do like about Wago is you can get the 613 which is a larger lever nut this is going to go up to 10 gauge wire which comes in handy for some of your 240 volt circuits and then the inline splice for the 2401 which again for extending out wires an electrical panel and some light fixtures this can be really handy so from a Wago 221 sample I do like the other types of connectors that you can get that go past your standard two three and five wire now let's do a close-up here on one of the critical features of these waggas are so nice these are pretty compact especially in your two and your three wire so if we say this is the overall length very similar if we say this is the overall width very similar where you're going to have a little bit of a differential here let's get a good comparison is the thickness so it will not be as Compact and you're going to give up a little bit more space if you're using the insurer from ideal compared to the Wago 221 from a basic operation standpoint pretty similar but there is a little bit of a difference now the Wago 221 has a great housing very easy to see the wire going within the housing easily going past and making contact with your bus bar and then you close that lever and you have a secure connection now with the insurer it looks like I have these upside down well I do not the levers are actually in the opposite direction so we'd open up those levers and then we're going to go ahead and insert in our wire you will be able to see that wire it's a little harder to see you're only going to see it right at the end so you'd want to see the stripped and exposed copper all the way then then you'll go ahead and close that lever in the opposite direction and do the same for your second wire making sure you see all the way into the housing and then close it down so you can see the levers are in the opposite direction for the insurer now I believe that is to counteract possibly a design limitation or flaw from Wago so once you insert in wires this is only 14 gauge but you do have play in that lever so because the spring is compressed here there's a cam in here that no longer needs to engage so that lever kind of is free now that is not going to impact much your holding force it does impact it slightly but the pull out force is still going to be very strong with your Wago but the biggest thing is if you're pulling this connector out of a box with many other wires it is feasible that that could hook on another wire when you're pulling it off and then that could actually remove one of your wires and make for a bad connection so I believe that is why ideal and the insure went with the levers in the opposite direction and although the insurer also will open up slightly I do not think it would be as much of a concern as with the Wagga 221 lever nuts now overall the housing the housing is not as clear on the ensure you have a little bit clearer housing on the bottom but your sides are a little bit more opaque with the ensure lever nut now a little closer look on the operation there is a spring inside there so when you press up that lever you'll see that spring will start to press down and then that opens up your passage here in the end and then that is how we're able to pass that wire in all the way down across the bus bar these are actually you see the metal here that's actually the bottom of your spring so your bus bar is located all the way at the end that is why with the insurance absolutely 100 critical that you get all the way to the end because your bus bar is all the way to the end before you shut that now I think that is a little bit worse of a design compared to the Wagga lever nut because our bus bar is actually in the middle so it gives you a little bit more leeway even if you don't have your copper all the way to the end you're going to have a solid connection with that bus bar so it gives you a little bit more forgiveness even though you really do want to bottom those off at the end of your lever nut okay running two separate tests now I'm going to use the ecoflow Delta Pro and the 30 amp RV Outlet with a little conversion harness to be able to go above 20 amps so I'm going to run 2 800 watts so at 120 volts that's about 23 amps with a variable heat gun here and then also a space heater I've ran this load many times in the past and that's why we're going to be able to compare apples to apples the insurer from ideal which is connected right now into the hot side of this Outlet we'll be able to compare five minute intervals for 20 minutes at 23 amps how hot to that lever nugget and then compare that to the Wago 221 leverknot and a few others that we ran in the past then I'll jump right over to the pull test do the pull test and then we'll just sit down and compare the results to see how did the ideal stack up so testing is complete let's jump into that but first let's also touch on price now when it comes to the Wago 221 lever nut in the ideal insure they're about the same in price the factor that's going to drive your price up or down is more how many you're buying so if you're just buying a 10 pack you could be getting up to about 75 cents maybe between the 70 and 80 cents range per connector so they are a little expensive but if you look right below this video in the description you'll see a link to my Amazon store where I put all my favorite tools for diy-ers specifically in the electrical extension you'll see several examples of Wago kits for your reference and you can see the difference in pricing depending on how many you're buying so there's 175 piece packages that are going to drive that price even below 50 cents more like to the 35 or 40 cents range or you can get the most common and popular kit which is that 90 piece kit because it comes with the inline spice as well so between the two I don't really think there is a price Advantage one way or another it's more going to come down to where are you getting them and then what is that overall quantity that you're buying now for the loading test we did those four different test points every five minutes so it's five minutes ten minutes 15 minutes and 20 minutes and now we're able to compare across many other connectors that we've tested in the past so I plotted out the results here and we can see side by side starting off with the Baseline that is where no wire connector was in that circuit going straight into the screw terminal and then that was the lowest overall heat generated inner testing next up the wire nut was the most efficient that had the lowest amount of resistance and as such the least amount of heat generation the Wago 221 lever net is in gray that is not doing too bad it's it's a little bit ahead of the wire nut but it is the lowest of any of the lever nuts we've tested interestingly here a knockoff which is an Amazon knockoff a non-main brand knockoff was actually lower than the ideal the funny part about that that knockoff number one is actually based off the ideal design at least that's my take on it and then the ideal came in a little bit higher right so we're we're about 10 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit higher at our 20 minute Mark compared to the Wago 221 leverknot now I will I unhide a few columns here and then that's going to give us a few more data points the thing we want to look at here is there is a design specification of 221 degrees Fahrenheit for the ideal and the Wago so in both cases the yellow line here for the ideal is well below the design specification the maximum temperature that that component should be able to function perfectly fine without exceeding so there's no concerns there but it also should be noted one of the knockoffs that we tested last week was considerably higher so really this is what I'm looking out for a few degrees Fahrenheit here and there isn't as big of a deal to me but when there's a separation like that that we saw with this knockoff number two that makes me want to absolutely steer clear of any of those components when doing projects around my own house so overall ideal is a little warmer but I would not be too concerned knowing that the design specification is considerably higher than the rages that we were seeing and then there was the pull test so actually applying Force onto the wire to see how much force was needed to pull it out let me show the setup that we're dealing with which is going to be the same setup we did with the Wago 221 lever nut so pretty simple testing set up here I have a works jaw horse which is going to provide a stable platform for me to hang a adjustable weight kettlebell from a three wire a Wago two two one four one three where I'm able to pass that wire through the jaw horse set the 413 on top and then apply all of that Force Through the middle slot on that Wago which I'll start at 20 pounds of force pulling down and I'll increment up by two and a half pounds until we get the wire to pull out and then that will be our failure pull force in the standard condition I'll repeat that for three different connectors each time swapping out the connector to a fresh connector and also cutting back the copper so we don't have any damaged copper for each run now after those three intervals in the standard connection we should get a consistent reading for the pull out Force so when we did the standard test with the Wago 221 it held to 25 pounds did the same test for the ideal ensure lever nut and the ideal insured was actually considerably stronger after doing again multiple iterations cutting off new copper every time we got a failure using a new ensure lever nut every time we got a failure we got all the way up to 35 pounds so the insurer did have a little bit more holding Force when compared to the Wago lever nut so Wago versus ideal after looking the functionality looking at some of the internals doing the actual heat loading test and then doing the pull out test personally my own opinion I'm comfortable with either one of those I think they're both great products and I'd be comfortable using them for any of my projects within my home now me personally I'm gonna stick with Wago I've like those products I have a supply of those products here my Milwaukee pack out my little like electrical setup so I'm just going to stay the course I like the 600 series that goes up to 10 gauge I like the inline splices for some of the electrical panel work some of the light fixture works so I think there's a few advantages to the Wago but again I mean if it's availability you're running down to Home Depot or Lowe's they have the ideals they're probably not going to have the Wago 221s I get it and I would pick up some myself I have a few here from this testing that I'm sure I'll use on some projects but let me know what you think give me some feedback down in the comments would you go with the Wago or the ideal or you're not touching love or nuts lever nuts are ridiculous and you're going to stick with wire nuts all that feedback is welcome and I really appreciate you guys giving me your take now if you want to just go back to some of the basics maybe you're just starting to get into your electrical around the house you're just doing some simple projects maybe swapping out some light switches to some Decor light switches maybe install the GFCI outlet check out this video right here it's a great starting point for what tools do you need some basic wiring principles and it just gets you started and gets you comfortable with some of the things you need to know before taking on electrical projects around your house so thanks for joining me on this video and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 27,461

Keywords: ideal lever wire connectors, wago connectors, wago 221, everyday home repairs, home repair, diy electrical wiring

Id: 5hsMTklDgd0

Length: 13min 23sec (803 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023