Back in 2018, I wasted $350 on a cheap wireless sensor tester that failed on its first real job.

It gave false positives for signal strength, so I spent half a day re-running wires in a 3-story office building thinking the sensors were bad, only to find out the tester itself was the problem.

4 comments

4 Comments

evan_green522mo ago

Wasted $350" is the perfect way to put it lol. That's the kind of tool that tells you a signal is perfect while you're in the parking lot, then you get inside and it's just lying to your face. You trust it and end up re-running a whole bundle of wire for absolutely no reason. Nothing worse than a gadget that creates more work instead of saving time.

the_jennifer2mo ago

Actually it's more like $500 now with tax. Still feels like a rip off when it gives you a false positive like that.

ruby_henderson362mo ago

Oh man, that's the worst... spending all that money just for the thing to straight up lie to you. It's like paying a fortune for a fancy weather app that says it's sunny while you're getting soaked in a downpour. You end up doing twice the work because you trusted a broken tool. What's even the point of having it then? Might as well just guess and save the cash.

knight.dylan4h ago

Heard a buddy of mine talk about a similar thing happening with a cheap network tester he bought off Amazon. Said the thing lit up green for every test but the cables were totally dead when he actually hooked them up. Ended up costing him a full day of troubleshooting and a pissed off client lol. Feels like these budget testers just skip the whole "actually working" part to save on parts. You're basically paying to get lied to and then having to do the job anyway.