Cable Matters(12-Pack Cat 6A RJ45 Shielded Keystone Jack

Works perfect, able to get well over 2.5GB speeds and confirmed that the run is grounded properly using these. They are heavy and feel & feel premium, make sure you have some flush scissors. Because the way that these work you need to cut the excess wire flush to let the hinges go down to lock the keystone tightly. This even comes with zip ties to help secure it down which I recommend waiting to do once you confirm you terminated it correctly. These also do have very easy to read legends to figure out if you need to wire in A or B which I used rather than having to reference back to the legend on my crimps. Overall, highly recommend these, they are a little pricey, but I would much rather pay this price for the quality than save a couple dollars and the quality takes a dive.

Here is the break down of the jack: Design (5/5): This is the design where you lay the wires across the jack portion and not the plastic cap portion, which means that you can punch down these wires instead of pushing the cap down to finalize the wire connections. The cheap Chinese connectors will have a design where you are forced to wire the cap instead of the jack and then force it down to finalize the connection, which results in bad connections many of the times. This jack also comes with the peaks required to split the wires, making it easy to use the peaks to split the wires (the correct way) instead of having to unwind them prior (incorrect way). However, in order to accommodate larger sized wires, they have opted for a zip tie to bring the metal shield up to become flush with the wire at the end. I find this to be both a good and bad thing, but I am glad that they added support for larger cable sizes. Quality (4/5): Metal could possibly be thicker, and some of the mechanisms used in the jack could be done to be more sturdy. However, this is still a vast improvement from the alternative cheap Chinese jack which has MAJOR issues, and the stamped jack which features thin metal which can be bent with a little force from the fingers. This jack is also machined well, and fits RJ45 jacks with no issues, unlike the Chinese jack, which must be forced. Value (5/5): Comparable jacks are big branded, such as Belkin, however, those are $10-11 a piece. These are vastly cheaper. The review which states this cannot be used with a 110 punch is incorrect. That was for an older version of the jack, and Cable Matters has updated the design to allow for punch down tools. I highly recommend using the Trendnet 110 Punch as a cheap punch tool, as it will give you much more solid connections. It's a very good value buy as well. This jack is the best all-around buy hands down. There are several other competitors out there, but they are either too expensive or poorly built.

I was initially a little skeptical of the toolless punchdown, but it worked really well on 23 AWG solid core CAT6a. I used a C-clamp to cinch mine down tight, but a small bench vice with soft jaws would be most ideal. Channel lock pliers would do it, but will scratch the metal. The plastic guide is designed to accommodate the cable jacket, which encourages you to pull the wires tightly through, and it holds the wires in place before crimping. This helps to minimize the untwisted portion of wire. The finished termination is tidy and strain relieved with no exposed wires on the back side of the keystone. I like that the shielded metal housing completely encloses the connections, and the zip-tie strain relief is a convenient place to attach the foil shield and drain wire. You could use this to make a male to female extension cable for your toolkit, although flexing it too much would eventually make it fail. The plastic gate cover is of debatable usefulness, but for my application (home with 2 dogs that shed a lot) it's definitely a plus, and I think it makes open ports look a lot more presentable.

Even though it says tool-less, you still need wire clippers (or better a nail clipper), a flathead screwdriver to push the wires in its tracks properly and a slip joint plier to properly close the plug enclosure, especially when using 23awg cable. None of these bothered me. It is a nice product and perfectly fits in the keystone wall brackets and in the patch panel I have. No complaints. Yes, I would recommend but the price needs to go down. I would give 5-stars if they were to come with 3M copper tape to secure the shield on the cable. I installed 12 of them in my house with zero failure. I tested the runs with a cable tester and all 4-pairs (including ground for the shield) came out okay.

I used these for long distance, high throughput cable runs. Aside from cutters to expose the wires on the cable, these things are tool-less as advertised. It's worth paying extra because you get what you pay for and it takes away (most of) the frustration of network installs.