What Outlet Should You Buy | Leviton vs Eaton

hey what's up you guys it's scott with everyday home repairs and today i want to compare two leading brands within electrical components that you'd use in your house specifically we're looking at 15 amp non-tamper resistant commercial grade receptacles so these two are our contenders today and that is a leviton and an eaton or this is actually if you've done this for a bit cooper you might know cooper industries so eaton bought cooper industries and still basically the same design now this comparison will be broken down in three different sections and on the timeline here at the bottom of the video you'll see those what are called chapters first we'll just talk about general features these are features that might save you a bit of time or an advantage when you're installing these receptacles in your home then secondly we'll look internally i'll cut these guys open we'll look at the contacts look at the housings and anything else that's different between the two brands internally and then finally we'll finish up on pricing and the results from the survey that thousands of viewers gave their feedback and answered the question what is the most common brand that you go to on your projects now there was overall four brands that we brought up it was leviton eaton legrand also known as pass and seymour and hubble in future videos we'll go into the legrand and also the hubble but today we're going to focus on these two so depending on when you're watching this those might already be out and you can watch and compare those as well and the whole idea here is to save you some time so we'll compare these different brands and then for your project you're not having to go to lowe's and home depot and menards or your electrical supply house and buy all these and compare them yourself so take a few minutes here we'll look at those differences and then you'll make a more educated decision as you approach those projects at home so taking a look at the outside and just the features we have the leviton on the left side eaten on the right side overall they're both commercial spec grades they're gonna have very similar look and feel you have the two piece housings here now i will point out later on when we look internally there is a difference on the seating compared to the leviton that i like associated to how these two housings fit together and stay together so we'll go into that a little bit more in depth now first feature you'll notice is these are called self-grounding straps or there's a self-grounding wire so if you had a metal electrical box that was grounded then you can get a continuous ground from that box through this 6 32 screw and then this strap ensures that you will connect that ground to the overall yoke of the receptacle i'm not gonna this is probably not gonna be used that much in residential uh one the newer homes are going to have non-metal boxes and then two for your romax the newer romex obviously you're going to have your ground wire that you're going to use the ground screw here to secure to so probably not something that's really going to be that valuable i do like the leviton's design a little bit more than just the wire you see here on the eaton now if we flip over and look at the backs here one thing that you'll pretty much get on all receptacles is a strip gauge leviton's a little bit harder to see it's actually on this side it just calls out that line there one thing to note is the strip gauge so if you have a piece of wire stripping it to this size like this that strip gauge is meant for the back wire features so if you're going to be using the back wire which we'll talk about that is what that strip gage is referencing if you're going to going to be doing a j hook clockwise around the screw terminal and then fitting the wire underneath that needs to be stripped longer get this sticker off here there we go okay so for back wire you can see the back wiring for the eaton has an internal plate i'll push it in and then as you tighten the screw it will pull the plate towards the outside contacts and that will secure your screw it's very similar to what you'll see on gfci receptacles now with the leviton it actually just has a external plate and then that external plate will be secured by the screw tightening up and then the external plate basically being pinched external plate being pinched on that wire if you're comparing and i would say eaton has a better design here this is a design that you'll find on higher end receptacles and i just think it is a little more robust than the thinner plate that you have externally to the leviton both would work and i do prefer back wiring to j hooks for most di wires that are taking on electrical projects now before we open these up what is the secret or hidden feature on the eaton if you guys know let me know down in the comments but i am going to jump into it here if you can tell with the eating you have these tabs that sometimes you need to break off to get the receptacle where you want it compared to the box these tabs are consistent spacing but if you look up at these tabs they actually are a different size and i'm not sure you're going to be able to read that but they actually have some wording on them so this says strip 14 wire and that's a strip 12 wire so technically you should be able to take a 12 gauge wire right get it to where you need it insert that in i think you need to rotate it to actually get to cut the outside insulation and then that should be able to strip your wire there you go so that's interesting it's a feature i don't see on any others um oh let me know what you guys think would you ever use that uh you know to be honest for me i can't imagine doing i can't imagine installing one receptacle let alone a bunch of receptacles without having some type of strippers whether it's a hybrid like this milwaukee where it's kind of the linesman's pliers and strippers or just simple classic wire strippers so it's cool um that they have that built in it does additional process they actually have to make the cutting edge on there make it sharp enough to cut the insulation but for me it's a little more for show than practicality's sake so overall if i had to choose i like to eat and it's predominantly for the back wire feature on the eden does have some higher end qualities compared to leviton let me know what you guys think i'm always curious to get your feedback and next up i'm going to take this dremel and open these guys up so we can see what's inside so so taking a look at the internals we'll have the leviton on the left hand side and the e on the right hand side just like before and let's touch on what you just saw so the screw coming through this back yoke actually attaches so you have two screws that attach to the top housing i really like that i there is failures that you'll see of receptacles where you get separation between the two housings and i know just even trying to take these apart as new receptacles the eaton was much harder to take apart mostly because the screw but also was just robust and harder to cut open now you do have differences in your contact design and then you can see the internals of that back wire feature right so there's the internal plate we talked about before on this eaton i like that design and then obviously you're not going to have that the leviton because the plates on the outside one thing note on the eaton is you have the classic contact designs which would be used for 20 amp so remember these are both 15 amp but something tells me eaton is using a design that shares contact between 15 and 20 amp so overall that's not bad for those 15 mbs you know that these contacts had to go through the testing that would pass for 20. not to say leviton couldn't take that as well but the design just shows that it's common other than that the gauge for the contacts is pretty similar you have nice separation in terms of the housing between your ground prong neutral hot nice separation there you don't see that always in the lower end residential receptacles and that is what's on the inside but that is what is on the inside of these two now let's talk about price and the survey results from the viewers on price with the leviton you're looking at if you buy a per unit right at about two dollars and if you buy a box of 10 down to about 170 per unit leviton is readily available in my area at home depot but you can obviously get it online as well you can reference link in the description for the receptacles that we're talking about here i can find eaten at lowe's in my area it's about 225 for this commercial grade if i'm buying one at a time or down to about 195 for a box of 10. so the eden is a little higher in cost compared to leviton now let's see what the viewer said and also i'll show you how to get to survey results just in case you're interested in other surveys that we've done or you want to put in your voice and vote as well so first up i just need to get a video up you guys are obviously already on one of my videos so i just want to get the same point that you are so bring up the commercial versus residential outlet and what you could do is click on everyday home repairs now you might want to open a different window so you can go to the community tab and stay on this video then you'll see survey results the top ones the one we're talking about but there's other ones talking about wire nuts for pros different wire connectors for joes and there's others from the the history so i'll go to eaton here and then we'll look at the results and you can see a whopping 68 of viewers said that leviton was their go-to the most common now i think that is strictly from an availability standpoint but then you're spread nine percent for eaton le grand which pass in seymour or hubble but it's pretty dominant that leviton's got 68 percent which i was surprised are you guys surprised i'm interested to hear your feedback but it seems like it's kind of the default for many people out there but finally which one would i go with after diving a little bit deeper sixty-eight percent of people say the leviton that's what they go with and only nine percent say eaton's or go to but believe it or not eating is my go-to now i could be a little biased i just installed about 30 of these in a different project that i had going but they worked great the two factors that really sold me i like the back wire feature on the eaton compared to the leviton and i also like the housing itself and how much harder that was to break apart it seems like the design is a little bit more robust than leviton but let me know what you guys think and also you saw there's there's other receptacles that we'll be reviewing in the future and i'm going to keep leviton because it's so dominant as the baseline so compare leviton versus the lagrange pass and seymour and then levitan versus hubble and now bringing those all together all four of them and kind of do a higher level video later on but let me know what you think also we really appreciate if you guys are getting value from these videos to give us a like that really helps us with the youtube algorithm and just helps get the videos in front of more people and if you haven't subscribed the channel and want to for more videos coming out we have multiple videos coming out on a weekly basis to help you with your repairs and improvements around the house and we'll catch you on the next one take care

Channel: Everyday Home Repairs

Views: 272,474

Keywords:

Id: 6jUa_HbUeoE

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 19 2021