A Review of Solderless Breadboards
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 4 ก.พ. 2025
- A look at some good and bad solderless breadboards.
Here is a link to the Elenco one I show in the end of this video: a.co/d/dGJxbFF (note that I do not have any relation to the seller of this product, nor do I receive any sponsorship or payment for this referral.)
Here is a link I mention in the video to Ben Eater's 'Build an 8-bit computer from scratch' project web site where he talks about where to get parts. eater.net/8bit... Note that Ben prefers to use the BB830 by 'BusBoard Prototype Systems'.
Scan over the above web page. It has a number of useful items in it.
Here is a link to Ben's recommended BB830 breadboard on Amazon: amzn.to/2uXgIVO
You can support this channel on Patreon! / johnsbasement
Music used in this video (Vibe Tracks, Alternate) was downloaded from the TH-cam Audio Library.
The incredible amount of insertion force required on cheap, no-name breadboards is my main beef and that of many Amazon reviewers.
Incredibly.... Low? Yes. If you are seeing a high force, then your wires and leads are probably misaligned and are hitting the funnel on the mouth of the metal leaf springs. And if so, forcing in a lead/leg is likely destroying the springs.
@@JohnsBasement No, it's not that. This would be more easily described with a drawing, but on most decent breadboards, the contact strips are basically U shaped. The bottom ot the U is more typically flat, but the sides are sprung together so as to grip the component at the top. However, right near the top of the side arms, they are bent away from each other to form a "throat" to insert the component leg. I bought a couple of real cheapies, and they don't have that throat. The side arms of the U are sprung together, and simply cut off flat at the top ends, so when the component leg is introduced through the hole in the plastic body, it meets the flat ends of the U-springs and can't find a place to force them apart. It is thus very difficult for the component leg to spring them apart.
I chucked mine out, and asked a few questions online before buying new ones.
@@JohnsBasement you either need to park your car on top to get them in, or you drop the wire and it falls in
I love the BB830s that Ben Eater recommends
Your comments on Ben Eater style breadboard computers is exactly what I would've said. Any chance of a single wire coming loose or a bad connection that can't be traced, and you're sitting there for ages trying to figure out why it's not working. Not to mention the headaches of storage, making sure that it's not subjected to movement or humidity that might cause corrosion. The self inflicted pain tends to overshadow the novelty factor. But no question it helps to explain the concepts in his tutorials and he does a good job of it.
There's nothing wrong with building a system on a breadboard. It is a great way to learn. After 40 years of learning, I am OK with making my more complicated projects on custom PCBs.
I use the same 3M breadboard I've had for years. They're really good but insanely pricey.
For the Christmas holidays I got BB830 breadboard from BusBoard Prototype Systems after seeing it on a video. Oh wow, better than anything I used in the past. They can accept wide pins and narrow wire. I just checked and they have just come back in stock so stock so I placed an order for more. Never new I needed this until I found it.
It looks like we have to be careful of cheap imitations!
When you said that these came from Radio Shack, it just reminded me of the MANY items I bought from them down thru the years. I can honestly say that of all the stuff I bought, maybe only a handful of items turned out to be less than desireable in quality. I really miss being able to go downtown to the Radio Shack store and picking up stuff for my projects ! At least they have a website, so I guess that's better than nothing.
Yeah... Somewhere I still have a 1/2-filled "buy 10 and get 1 battery free" card around that I stubmle across once in a great while. 😀
Unlike you I find the banana posts handy for a couple of reasons: A) Quick connect and disconnect to lab power supplies with banana posts. B) It prevents unwanted tugs on the power supply leads to pull out from the breadboard.
Exactly!
A few months ago, I went through the very same frustration. I had bought some of the multiple breadboard things like yours, but of the cheap Chinese variety. Couldn't figure out why my circuit wasn't working, until I realized that one of the pins wasn't getting power. Couldn't figure out why that was, until I realized that the connector in the breadboard ... was missing. But this wasn't even my biggest complaint. On closer inspection, most, if not all of the connectors did not close completely, meaning: for most parts the connection was 'probably' okay, but with thin wires (like those on a cheap 1/4 Watt resistor), there may not be any connection at all. At first, I tried taking them apart and bending the connectors so they would at least close properly, but this was looking like a daunting task, with dubious returns. Frustration was mounting. So, I looked around for some better breadboards.
This time, I was less interested in price than I was in reviews and recommendations. Ben Eater, (the king of breadboards), recommends (and sells) something called BB830 from 'Busboard Prototype Systems (BPS)' These are relatively economical high quality boards. By "relatively" I mean they sell on Amazon.ca for $11 CAD/board, about 3-4 times the price of the cheap Chinese junk, (but not $120 that 3M charges for the same thing!) ... and they just work. They also have a website, probably a service department, and they say all of the things I want to hear. So, I bought 8 of these. (They also have BB400, BB1460 etc.)
Jumper wires:
I have LOTS of the Dupont jumper wires like those you show, but these are stiff, hard to work with, and prone to fail, especially the short ones. Having spent all that money on my nice breadboards, I could see that I needed a better solution for jumper wires ... but nothing online impressed me. So I made my own.
I bought some 26 AVG Silicone wire. This typically comes in boxes with 5 colours, 10 meters each. But, there are different colour sets available, so I bought 2 different sets giving me 10 colours. I purchased a crimping tool and tons of Dupont male/female connectors. I even bought the gold plated ones. Then I spent literally about 3 days making hundreds of proper jumper wires, in the 3 configurations, mostly short but also some longer wires, having first tinned all the ends. It was a LOT of work and expense, but these are super flexible, easy to work with on breadboards, and much nicer than any of the crap available online. Now I can concentrate on my electrical projects. I also similarly made a lot of probe wires for my logic analyzer, better than the crap which came with it.
I guess you get what you pay for.
Ya know, it's sad... Back in 1979 I bet there were no bad breadboards for sale.
These crap products seem to have come as some sort of "evolution" of what must be an extreme focus on revenue at the cost of every aspect of quality. 😞
Watch out for some older breadboards whose metal interconnects are just a common U-Channel rail without individualised finger connects for each hole. The issue with these is if an adjacent wire/pin of a slightly larger size is inserted it opens then clip wider and can cause the existing connections to become unknowingly & unwantedly disconnected.
Yikes!! That is even WORSE!!!!
Ben uses BusBoard brand bread boarda. They are SO WORTH it. Cheap chinesium boards are only good for 20 AWG leads or holding headers for solding. I have found that Chinese products where the company name is part if the mold are pretty good.
Hate the foam tape, remove it and use nice thick heavy duty packing tape. I ised to do wire install. Nobody back pulls the 50 pair, I did. Gave my professor 10 one foot bundles, still have some still in the jadket, hand wound up 10 foot rolls, and used short bits for twist ties all from 1993.
Right after I posted this I had the same thought that they would be good for soldering jigs! Every time I do some header-soldering I fear ruining my breadboard. Using them for jigs is perfect because, while they are flimsy, they can hold the header pins and are also loose enough enough to get the headers back out when done without the trouble.
So I feel a bit better since I don't have to just toss it in the trash.
Good honest reviews!
Thank you!
I use those power binding posts all the time. I pre-wire them to the power rails and it's super easy to hook up one or more bench supplies :)
Back in the day, I had binding posts & banana plugs on everything. Somehow my power supplies now have gators.. or I just use USB and a regulator board. I just never use the posts any more.
I was in the market to get a few of those breadboards a few months ago. As Fry's was closed, I turned to Amazon. After seeing what was there and seeing the negative reviews, I just went over to Ben Eater's site and ordered some of ones on his shop since he stated he had tried several and found some acceptable ones. They are not superior like the old ones, but they are, indeed, more than acceptable.
I am amazed how bad my latest breadboard order turned out to be. The only thing I can use them for is a jig to hold headers for soldering.
Nice video, do you recall where you purchased your hinged box? Looked around and couldn’t seem to find something similar, thanks!
I got mine at allelectrinics.com. their inventory changes all the time.
Watch the last 5 mins. I found a tolerable Elenco product with 22ga wire & a box with hinges.
If you just want a decent box, search for products from "Plano." People like them for tackle boxes.
@@JohnsBasement Awesome , never even thought about the Plano stuff!! Off to the google we go 😎
Every breadboard I have used has the power rails, then 5 holes connected vertically. Is it possible to get one with the vertical rows a bit longer? Eight holes would solve all problems, but even six would be a huge improvement.
Beats me. I've only seen them with 5. More holes would create more noise. So it's a balance.
Two boards with a double-row between are not 1/10" spacing, and actually about half a hole off.
So I removed the double between the two rows and used another perf-board with pegs to space them perfectly apart, then tacked them down.
Now I have a space between but run wires up the center to keep my builds very clean.
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Some boards are Nickle plated, some are just cheap metal.. if it doesn't say Nickle, Silver, or Gold plated it's NOT.
Found out many years ago that these do NOT work for RF experiments, but have built complete processors on them.
thank you for the review.
I am new to this and planinng to bulid 8 bit computer ,I should take the BB830 ?
it is very expensive when you want to buy it from the middle east
is there alternative?
How many do you need? If only a few then Ben Eater's site is worth supporting.
He has them for $8.79: shop.eater.net/products/bb830-breadboard
DO NOT get the cheap boards nor the thin jumper wires. Find some that are 22 gauge! The 24 gauge ones are flimsy. Yeah, they can work if you are careful and have a good breadboard. BUT if you go cheap on the breadboard then 24 will be way too loose!
Just last weekend I used one of my cheap bread boards and it was not maintaining contact with resistor leads. VERY annoying and time-wasting!! The cheap ones are only good for holding things while soldering.
My Elenco 9440 board came from Fry's (no longer exists.) I would have never paid more than $30 for them... and I see right now Elenco selling the same 4-boards on a metal base model for $68!!!!????
Makes $8.49*4 look cheap!!!
It looks like I also have some GSP GB6-474 boards that are the exact same thing (and with good breadboard springs)
Here is someone selling them for $45: www.diverseelectronics.com/products/Breadboard-3220-Tie-Pts-240-x-210-x3-2mm-p5705/ ...but for only 4 breadboards, Ben is still cheaper.
I do not like the jumpers with the crimp-on plastic ends & square posts... mine tend to break off the wires after not much use... I obviously got some crappy ones.
I insert and remove my solid core jumpers using needle-nose pliers. If you use your fingers, you will bend them and they will become messy and possibly break due to all the bending.
If you find anything better, please post back here and let me know!
sadly the best price with quality is the one you mentioned but he ships them from California and I from KSA so it becomes very expensive because I need to buy 14 breadboards
I got another Idea from my friend he suggested that I should design the circut with Kicard then print it using pcbway and they ship the board to me from china which will be more cheaper but i guess I need soldering
I still I don't know if the PCB is a good Idea for my project or anything about it
so If you have a clue tell me about it and I am really thankful to you
@@KH_V7 14 boards? Yeah, I'd prefer to go for a PCB. If it is any help, I recorded a KiCad series that might get you started.
I'd be surprised that noone already drew one up for Ben's project... if that is exactly what you want to make.
USE SOCKETS for everything that you can!!!! You may find yourself wanting to do upgrades and not have to re-buy everything!
@@JohnsBasement yeb ben project required 14 breadboards,the schematic of the circut is written in ben website but I will try donig it by my self.
I will check the series you made and thank you for the help
@@KH_V7 I saw someone post a PCB they created for it with KiCad on Github... notes suggest some errors to fix. The image looks like a fairly large PCB. I might have made it smaller. Meh...
51:50 It's certainly true that the shorter wires are far more useful than the longer wires. I've been buying these things for 20 years, and the ones that get used up are the short ones.
Great video, thank you
You're very welcome!
What is your opinion of Jameco or Mouser ?
I don't see them as equivalent for the purposes of comparison. Mouser is akin to Digikey in that I expect them to deliver product from specific venders and with proper MSL markings etc.
Jameco seems like it includes more of a high quality liquidator side to its business that can substitute brands but still provide a quality product.
I do not expect Jameco to have a large stock. So if I publish a parts list, I'll spec a distro like Mouser so I can expect my recommendation to be valid for a few years.
Some parts from Jameco might come and go more easily.
On the far end of supply reliability would be ebay. With allelectronics between ebay & Jameco. Any stock there could vaporize at any moment.
I have 3 jameco valuepro x2/x4 breadboards with the power posts and they're great.
One thing I hate about these breadboards is when using them with 0.6 inch or wider DIP/DIL packages where most of the connection holes are made useless by being covered up. Another bugbear is the abnormal spacing between the power rail holes and the standard holes requiring some mods/bends/kinks to pre-cut wires.
Do you remember back in the 80's almost all of the solderless breadboards were better than that MB-102, but the good quality ones had gold plated contact springs?
Yeah. Back then the market I was exposed to was not flooded with so much junk like today. It is very unfortunate for any newcomers to the hobby. 😞
Are the $85 3M breadboards overkill?
For hobby use? I'm not sure if it'd improve my results over that I have been getting with the more modestly priced ones.
I use the junk boards for things that run hot of have fatter leads that I know will keep good contact with the junk springs and I chuck them if they start acting up.
I use my be better ones for thinner leads and more extravagant wiring that takes too much time to risk wasting on a cheap board with bad springs.
Legit BB830 boards from Ben Eater's eater.net should be fine. I think they are $8.
Do a search for Global Specialties and check under Products, Solderless Breadboards, Singles. I purchased some a few months ago and have found them to be quite good. They don't sell direct but do list vendors.
I think my next breadboard purchase will be these better, more expensive, ones.
where is the positive and negative?
I'm not sure I understand the question. You can connect power to any part of the board you want. Most of the time, negative is connected to the row next to the blue or black stripe and positive connected to the red. But it can be connected any way that works best for you.
I had plans for that, but I never... Yeah, I did a lot of those -
😂
The "word-salad" in the description is probably to hit more searches.
In what way?