Monoprice Shielded Cat5 Plug For Round Solid/Stranded Cable | 100 Pieces

First time making my own custom length cat-6 cables. Very happy I chose these Monoprice accessories. Great price and super fast shipping. Items were exactly as described. No cons at all. Great purchase.

This is a 3 piece connector with a loading bar and some sort of internal strain relief. Unfortunately the strain relief is too narrow to accept Monoprice's own shielded CAT6A. Maybe I'm assembling it incorrectly, but since there are no instructions I'm doing my best.

I've tried a lot of tips and these are great. Quality product, easy to install and durable.

I installed over 60 of these ends on two dozen runs of CAT5e shielded cable (STP) for a digital audio distribution network. I tested all cable runs after installing these connectors and they checked out great - mind you I'm not a novice at making custom CAT cables with RJ45 male connectors. I had a standard RJ45 connector tool and these shielded plugs fit the tool and crimped together just as easy as a non-shielded cables I made up in the past. This was my first time doing CAT5e shielded connectors and it went great. The photo is from an actual cable end from this installation. I heat shrunk a yellow and black tubing over the white jacketed CAT5e cable.

The connectors themselves seem fine but there does seem to be a shortage of information from MP about compatible crimpers. I have a ratcheting crimp tool that uses a "1PK-3003D11" RJ45 set of jaws. These are "standard" as far as I know and worked well with every CAT5 connector I tried in the past. However, they completely destroy these connectors. What I ended up doing was using a hacksaw to cut off the two tabs that were crushing the connector. This means the only mechanical connection is the teeth in each wire and the shielding crimp at the back. But I don't plan on moving these cables once in place so hopefully they will last. Others have mentioned their tools crushing the metal housing and I wonder if that could have led to some of the high failure rates as it might have been pulling on the wires during the crimp. Also, these connectors do fit well in the Axis outdoor lightning arrestor for those interested.

We did probably 20 of these on a project with a Cat6A bulk Monoprice cable, and we had a large number of failures, and will end up replacing them all.

The RJ45 plugs are some of the best I've found, and I certainly cannot beat the price. That said, while I've built many cables in the past, I've built 4 cables with these so far, and my 4th was the first to be free of a missing connection on a continuity test. (I highly recommend using a cable tester before attempting to use anything you build yourself, but definitely so with these.) Trent P's review is spot on. I've had the same experience for the most part. Crimping is solid because the metal shield will crimp down onto the wire, which looks ugly but you have a nice solid grip. There's also plenty of room inside the connector for a thick cable. However, the other downside I found is that the back edge of the metal shield is thin with a raw cut edge, not folded inward. Thus, when pressed down by crimping, the edge can cut into the cable, possibly slicing into the twisted pairs. So, when you trim your wires, be sure the plastic cover and foil shield are being inserted into the metal shield to protect the TPs, and after, be careful not to bend the cable up into the shield, cutting any further. Once the boot is in place, that shouldn't be a problem. I also agree with Trent P in that the wires inside feel too lose. The insert is not individual holes, and so you need the wires to be straight and well lined up before going into the insert, otherwise they will move on you during insertion into the main body. Also, the holes on the innermost part of the connector seem to be too wide, allowing the wires to move around and not make contact when crimped. Or possibly, the openings for the metal contacts are too wide, allowing the contacts to slide off to the side, instead of piercing the wire casing to the copper. In the close up picture, hopefully you can see what I do, that in this example, pins 3 and 5 are fairly straight, but all the others angle to the right just a bit. Just a little more refinement, Monoprice, and you'll have it down.

These RJ45 plugs are a mixed bag for me. First the positive: Grounding is SOLID on these jacks. Never made a connection with these that didn't have a good ground connection. Being able to wrap the outer support around the ground wire means this is a given. the outer casing at the cable insertion end is ONLY metal. As a result, it is one of the few connectors out there big enough to fully insert the outer jacket of a shielded CAT6 or CAT6A cable.. This also means that there is not internal cable crimp that you would expect in a normal RJ45, so your cable crimper just dents the heck out of the entire metal underside of the metal part of the body. It makes for a very solid connection (which is very difficult to achieve with most shielded CAT6 connectors), but it looks a bit ugly. The inserts (yes it does come with inserts) are pretty loose, and are basically a zigzag pattern across all 8 wires (rather than individual holes for each wire. The good news is that your wires sile into this realtively easily compared to a lot of other inserts. The bad news (at least with 23 AWG CAT6 (not 6A) wire, is that the wires are pretty loose inside of the insert. Because of the design of the plug, you NEED to keep the insert at the end of the wires because the connector itself DOES have holes for the individual wires, and the insert is the only way to get the wires into them. But because the insert is so loose, it can easily silp back while inserting cable into the plug. I already mentioned the cons, but to summarize, the underside of the connection looks a bit ugly (not a problem if covered by a boot or f no one cares... good news, it is solid). Secondly, because the insert is loose, wires can get out of order in the insert, and slip back during insertion preventing a good solid connection. These are by no means 100% fail-proof connectors for me. I find that you can trip your wires shorter than I normally might after placing them into the insert because you can stuff the cable farther into the plug. This also inhibits the insert from being as likely to slide back. Also, make sure that you keep the wires/inster close to the bottom (top of the jack when upside down) as possible to keep the internal "ramp from pushing back the insert. Finally, as tempting as it might be to make that good solid ground connection, and hold everything in place. I have had much more success crimping first and securing the cable support later. With all of that said, for all of the annoyances and failed connections, I will likely get more of these for the advantages that they DO provide. until I find the elusive magic connector.