1/4W 1% 86 Value 860 Piece Resistor Kit

This is a very nice starter set for someone getting their feet wet with learning electronics, arduino, etc. While not the cheapest per-unit price around, you will find every possible combination of resistor you are likely to ever need. I've since switched to using this box of resistors as my "go to" place to find the correct value resistor quickly, and when a baggie runs out of the most commonly used values I simply re-fill it from bulk orders of those types. Having all the less commonly-used resistor values can be quite handy, as it's very easy to quickly try a few different values when prototyping a project. These are extremely well labeled with laser-printer labels, and the box they come is is perfectly sized for this use. They get the little things right! The sticker on the lid of the box shows the common color coding -> value lookup chart, which for those of us who have not done this all our lives can be extremely handy as well! For those of you who have bought similar sets from overseas suppliers directly, you will find this to be a much more pleasant experience.

Every value comes packaged in a neat little plastic bag with a printed label so you don't even have to read the the bands. The whole kit is neatly packed in a sturdy little cardboard box and you could use them just as they are without sorting them into drawers. You also get a set of 0 ohm resistors, not wire jumpers but resistors banded for zero ohms! As a hobbyist, I don't see why I would prefer these over plain jumper wires, but they are kind of cool to have. I plan to show them to my buddies and ask them to read off the value to me :) Yes do I know they have their use. If you have the time, read the comments on D. Deloach's review and you will see that Joe is very serious about producing a good product that meets his customers' needs. That being said, my one gripe about nost resistor kits, is that they don't take into account the fact that some values are more popular than others. It's great to buy a kit like this once so that you have every value represented but when the time comes to restock, I expect to still have most of the values under 100ohms and above 1m ohm. From my personal experience and some informal research on the web, it seems that the most commonly used values are the E12 series in the 1k & 10k ranges and a few values from the 100 & 100k ranges. The E12 series, which is based on 10% increments goes: 10, 12, 15, 18, 22, 27, 33, 39, 47, 56, 68, 82. Update: I found these values at 5% in packs of 50 for $0.99 including shipping on ebay and loaded up on the values that I mentioned. futurelec sells a 1/4w 'Value Pack' of 300 resistors for $2.95. Its a bit hard to find at their site. Do a search on 'resistors' and click on the 'more info' icon in the searc results. This pack does emphasize the more commonly used values giving 10 pcs in most values and 20pcs in the very common ones. They come neatly packaged in labeled cellophane bags. Their other component packs are nice too. I got two of their capacitor packs. I finally unpacked all the resistors I got from Joe's kit. I was a bit frustrated to find a few values that are not on the standard E12 series. This is annoying since most circuits spec the standard values and I have a cabinet with a little drawer for each of the E12 values. Where do these go?

I don't think this combination of values, quantity and price can be beat for resistors. If you are just building your electronics kit or need a wide range of resistor values, this seems like the best place to start. Also, having them individually bagged with labels is amazing! Its probably obvious to everyone out there, but I also want to mention that they are sorted (left-to-right) in increasing resistance. With this setup, its effortless to find the value needed. I've used several of these in conjunction with an LCD, LEDs, servos, and small DC motors. They've all worked perfectly. As mentioned by someone else, it can be a bit difficult at times to read the stripes, but I want to point out that I have another set of resistors that are even smaller. I can't read those values at all without assistance (magnifying glass). These I can read just by focusing (and maybe going cross-eyed a bit in the process :-) ). But as I already said, after you've done it a few times to confirm that they are actually labeled correctly, you'll never need to read the stripes again when you can just read the clear, bold print on the baggie.

Was running out of time to work in the lab at the university, so I brought the lab home with this resistor assortment. I was surprised to see all the bags are sorted by value, making it very easy to find the one you need. The overall presentation is great, no need for any other type of organizer/bins. Resistors were measured with Rigol DM3058 and all showed to be within 1% tolerance so far. This kit allowed me to complete my properly biased multi-stage BJT amplifier at home. All voltages were as expected from Cadence simulation thanks to these excellent tolerances. Highly recommend this kit for experimenting and designing. I also recommend the Elenco capacitor kit available from Amazon.com (which I also purchased for my project). While not as high quality as this resistor kit, it certainly came in handy. Any plans to create a capacitor kit? Thanks Joe.