The Stud Finder Showdown - Which One Is Best?

hi there my name is Nils with learn to DIY and in this video we're gonna be comparing for different kinds of stud finders to see what their strengths and weaknesses are and which one is right for the project that you're working all right this demo wall here and I've put all kinds of stuff back here to represent the types of things you might find in your home so back here to start with we've got as you'd expect we've got studs back here now this is half-inch drywall this is the green mildew resistant drywall like you'll find in kitchens and bathrooms I've got electricity and this is actually live electricity I do have this plugged in and I've got that going to both the outlets and the light here and so we've got the electrical romex wires running through behind the walls just like you wouldn't a normal home I've also got in addition to this thick metal pipe here which is representative of a gas line I've got a PVC pipe type of thing you might find if you've got water running in the walls and then I've got electrical conduit running back here for the type of things you'd have for any electrical going through your walls where you need it to be protected so last thing I've got back here is some speaker wire I'm just kind of curious to see if it picks that up that's about half way back the wall maybe an inch and a half or two inches back inside the wall don't know if anything will pick it up but that's there as well so let's take a look first with the cheapest of the stud finders and then we'll work our way up from there the cheapest one here is this is the CH Hansen magnetic stud finder these run about eight dollars I'll put links to all of these products in the description below so you can check these out the CH Hansen stud finder is very simple no electronics it's got a nice little level bubble in here which is mildly helpful and then it's got a rubber casing and a couple of magnets back here and the whole principle behind this is that wherever you've got drywall screws it's gonna pick up on those the advantage here is a couple of them it's just gonna it's gonna grab on to that screw right there and it's going to stay there so that's one thing I actually really like about this is rather than having to mark your studs you can just hang this on the stud that you need to work on keeps it really simple the advantage is that anytime you're scanning through like this it's not picking up anything so depending on how far the builders place the drywall screws in your drywall you may or may not catch anything and see even if there actually went right over that but because it went between the magnets that missed it and there we go and then it grabs it so it's not going to be the quickest thing to find and it's not gonna find really anything but metal screws so that's definitely a downside but it does work pretty well that hangs there it's cheap and it's also really good for if you're working on a ceiling or something like that this will actually just hang on to that screw in the ceiling as well does a nice job so not a bad little device something I recommend having handy it's not gonna do any good on finding you know these pipes nothing like that electrical wires obviously has no idea the electrical conduit wire back here no idea so it's just good for finding those drywall screws which are where your ear studs are attached to the drywall itself so not bad so the next one I'm gonna look at is a zircon and this is a stud sensor just this is kind of what I think of as more of a standard stud finder this one I bought brand-new just recently and it's got a couple of options it's got stud scan and deep scan and I found that this one actually does a pretty decent job of showing you what's back there let's take a look I'm gonna hold it in kind of a just open spot on the drywall and as I go through here okay so it marks right there it beeps when it comes to the edge of a stud and it even kind of shows these little indicators building up to it which is nice and it says there's one right here so what I'm gonna do is just mark that okay okay right there okay so it's saying the stud is somewhere in there which is probably quite accurate if you look at where the screws are placed that's about right and if we show the kind of x-ray vision here you can see that that's that's pretty close so I'm gonna go back through here now remember there's a PVC pipe right behind here it's not seeing it it doesn't think there's anything there we got a blip there let's see what happens when we move up to our cast iron pipe here okay so the little sensors are filling in so I think it's there we go see it's detecting something doesn't tell us it kind of tells us that there may be something back there which is good and up here there's another stud back here where the PVC pipe is see I just got a little flip again well that's not in the right spot okay let's move it over here so I've got electrical wiring so I do have the little currency symbol here indicating that there's maybe some wiring but it's kind of showing that everywhere so let me start over okay so now it's off it shows it there and it shows something back there okay let's move over to our electrical conduit wire here should be right back here okay so now it's showing again something back there which is good it doesn't think it's a stud but it kind of indicates there's something there if you're watching for it and then we got the edge of our stud here okay so that's kind of how this one did so not bad the other thing that I like that this one has is the deep scan so I'm gonna put it kind of where there's nothing right here yeah see it still does not pick up that PVC pipe which could be dangerous see if it gets our metal pipe here okay so it definitely sees that there's something there so that's good okay if we move over to our stud it'll find that no this is good see it's picking up some electricity back there pretty handy and now we're just beeping full on how about our okay so it even picked up the speaker wire back here how about our metal conduit kind of no see it's not picking it up let me restart here okay there we go now it's getting it kind of see it just kind of passed right by so it got it it's kind of hit and miss not bad this this one typically runs about I think these are twenty or twenty-five dollars so not too expensive and it does a pretty good job I like that it has both the stud scan and the deep scan feature so that's not too bad next we're gonna try out this one these ones run about fifty five dollars or fifty dollars again you can see the links to in the description below if you want to purchase these or check them out or learn more read some reviews this one also has a sensor or sorry a level this levels a little bit more functional because it's horizontal and it's a longer one and you can actually prop something up against it to either the top the bottom or even the handle to get a feel for the straight edge on that one and this one works a little bit differently I really like the feature on this one that all of the LEDs are across the top here and so you can get a feel for how where it is as you move horizontally typically we're scanning studs horizontally we're not as frequently doing that up and down so this is pretty helpful to have so if I just put this in here okay so there it is it sees the stud and it's not going to be quite as accurate necessarily because you've got these half-inch gaps between each each area so they're about a centimeter or centimeter and a half as you move to our next stud oh there it is okay so it found that nothing here on the pipe okay let me see about the electrical wiring so as I move this up and down let's see what it gets nothing nothing at all so no detection of the electrical wiring this is really just four studs well okay we got some blipping here so what is this so maybe it's detecting the wires but it detects them the same as a stud and nothing on the metal pipe which is what that actually was okay so the metal pipe as we go up here nothing doesn't doesn't detect it okay not bad oh look at this over here it thinks there's a stud right here as we move along well it's kind of all over the place it kind of acts like there's a stud there so I might think there's a stud right here and then drill into my electrical conduit and therefore into my electricity bad news that is pretty risky if you're using a stud finder you'd go to drill in TV for example a picture or anything like that especially something a little heavier duty and it thinks there is a stud when there's actually electrical conduit with the electricity running through it so not ideal in general pretty good actually use this one quite a bit but you've got to be careful one of the rules to go by is remember that studs are typically 16 inches on center and so if you've got studs that seem like they're six inches apart or eight inches apart or something like that it's unlikely that that pattern is accurate unless you just have two that are like that which is somewhat common but in general the pattern should be 16 inches on center so the last one we're gonna check out here is the Walla bot DIY and this is just a little device that you can attach to the back of an Android phone it doesn't work with iOS or Apple or iPhone just yet and so with your Android phone you can put this on there plug it in via USB it comes with all the different US to the USB cables that you might need one of the things I like about this one I've worked with this sensor before and you can select concrete or drywall so it actually can penetrate through the concrete walls and actually look it and see what's inside those as well which is super handy I've just got drywall here of course I'm gonna hit drywall and it says place it on there and calibrate it this just takes a minute to do so I'm gonna hit this and start scan this usually just takes a few seconds basically it's trying to calibrate what's behind this sensor okay so just after a few seconds that's good I'm gonna do a pan and this is pretty fun what this does is gives us a general image of what's back there I'm gonna hold and it's counting my inches as I go and generating this little image right on screen stud so it sees a stud there you can kind of see the red mark on there stud there even has a little purple mark back there for where it saw something else and look at that okay there's the purple mark for there you bring this up close so you can take a look okay so it found each of the studs and kind of gives you a layout just by moving your cross of exactly what you're what you're seeing there which is really handy all right so so now that I've got the scan done I'm gonna go to images this is the mode I use the most and I'm gonna hit say start scan this is pretty cool so watch this okay right there it says pipe or wire so notice it's not a stud but it knows there's something back there which is better than a lot of these other ones have done so far so that's pretty cool that it looks right there and you can kind of follow it up and it sees it back there so as we move along we've got a stud a pipe another stud we've got up here a wire and of course I wouldn't know if I hadn't seen back there what's a pipe and what's a wire but I know it's one of the two and not a stud got another stud I've got some more wiring back here another stud I've got another pipe or wire and then up here it's gonna pick up this one as well pretty cool so it actually picks up everything it doesn't distinguish between a pipe or wire but it does distinguish between pipes and wires versus studs so it shows everything on there okay so now that we've looked at the performance and kind of the features of all four of these stud finders which do I prefer it depends on the project honestly for a lot of things this little $8 guy is gonna do a decent job for you and if you are willing to kind of search around a little bit more to find those magnets then it's really pretty handy the fact that it sticks there is pretty good and for eight bucks super cheap kind of a nice thing to have I'm glad I have I use it sometimes other times I'm like definitely not what I'm gonna need not gonna use it so it just depends now for the zircon stud finder it actually did pretty good with the two different features that it has between stud scan and deep scan and it helps you know what's back there or at least it helps you know that there's something back there one thing it doesn't do is help you differentiate between what's what on the and it kind of had some false alarms in a couple of places but overall not too bad especially for the cost on the Franklin stud finder this one I think it's actually probably one of the ones I use most because it's easy and it's fast and I don't have to set anything up I also like the format of it as far as it being horizontal instead of vertical it can be misleading so if you're doing anything that might be sensitive as far as what you're drilling into or nailing into you want to be careful with that and again always remember kind of a pattern look for that pattern of the studs behind your wall and then lastly the wall about here did a pretty great job that was actually really cool to kind of see what's back there one of the things I like most about the wall about is that it's software so they actually just recently came out with another upgrade and they're it's a continually developed software so as they hone in on the technology the product itself can get better you don't pay any more I have to upgrade anything other than just updating the software which is pretty cool so there's your comparison this is not a sponsored video you can purchase any of these with the links below if you'd like that helps my channel out a little bit but they all have their strengths their pros and their cons so check those out and tell me what you think feel free to leave comments in the comment section below if there's any questions that you have I'd love to help out and if you want to follow me with the different things I'm doing around the house well we've got projects going on and fun things that we're doing around here as far as construction or woodworking or home upgrades things like that you can follow us on Instagram and on Facebook at learn to DIY or of course subscribe and hit the bell here on youtube so thank you so much for watching and we'll see you on the next one

Channel: LRN2DIY

Views: 95,487

Rating: 4.8761239 out of 5

Keywords: diy, how-to, lrn2diy, studfinder, stud finder, stud sensor, comparison, showdown, stud, wall sensor, walabot, zircon, ch hanson, franklin, review, user testing

Id: IVkNyhmRO1k

Length: 15min 10sec (910 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2019