IDEAL INDUSTRIES INC. 61-035 E-Z Check Circuit Tester, 120VAC, Heavy Duty, Yellow

One of the best if not the best plug testers

Made well

Cheaply made now. I own the same exact model number and bought this tester for my employees. Once the package arrived, it’s very apparent ideal has changed the quality of this tester. Cheap plastic and the light covers already fell off. Disappointing to see a good product become so poorly made. I’ll stick to Sperry from here on out.

Im a licensed professional electrician and have purchased many of these over the years and I continue to do so because of it compact size, overall durability and light pattern is easy to recognize and the built in GFCI testing. If your an electrician you need the GFCI test feature and it works perfectly. I have one con about this tester other than it is way over priced, when used as a professional tool, where you use it every day and many times a day, over the period of 2 to 3 years the internal connections to the blades get loose and then the lights do not always reflect the correct wiring condition. What I mean by that is when you plug it into a live and properly wired receptacle outlet the 2 outer light will light up but after it starts to wear out you may plug it in and it may show a open ground or a open neutral wire but if you wiggle the tester it will show up as working so you cant 100% be confident that there isnt a problem with a connection to the outlet which would cause the same lights to be out. Ive had a few of these testers that the blades would push back into the tester and not make contact with the outlet. As much as Ideal charges for this otherwise fantastic tester they should be able to solve this problem. I have to replace mine every 2 to 3 years. I went to a trade show and a rep for GB gave me a free tester to try and its OK but this Ideal tester is the best. Ideal please find a way to add more support inside the tester to make it last longer so I dont have to replace it that often. Again, I am not a home owner that may have gotten one bum tester but rather I have purchased 10 to 12 of these over the last 20+ years so I speak from long term experience. If you buy one for occasional home use it will last you a lifetime.

My husband was only able to successfully use this once, it broke before the second use. Ironically it broke 1 day after the return period. Fortunately, Amazon.com still gave us a refund.

Durable

Worked exactly as described, Excellent tool.

Just what my engineer son wanted.

Great little tester. i carry it with me everywhere. im a commercial electrician and use this tester nearly daily. this particular one has the gfci test button in with it to simulate a gound fault and trip the resettable push button on the gfci, which is nice!

Broke the one I had for many years. So happy to be able to purchase another one.