pavius.net

After working a while with standard 22 gauge jumper wires (the ones you buy by meter and cut yourself), I decided I deserve an upgrade. For one, the 22 gauge's inflexibility made it a pain to work with - it was brittle and not very aesthetic on a breadboard. Second, I could never bring myself to reuse a wire. It just felt wrong.

Looking at other people's projects I noticed many used pre-made jumper wires - they were colorful and flexible. Since a 22 gauge costs so little, I assumed the same would be true for the pre-made wires. I was wrong. Quite a few stores sold the same wires Sparkfun carries - 4$ for 10 wires or 24$ for 100 (50 male/male and 50 female/female, or 100 female/female), shipping not included. That works out at about 30 cents per 155mm wire if you also need 50 F/F. If you only want male/male, it will cost considerably more.

I continued my search and found an ebayer called giorgio11185 which sells 150 male/male for 9.5$ including shipping. My concern was that the quality of the wires would be bad but hey, they're just wires. My package arrived after about 2.5 weeks and was just as described - more jumper wires than you can shake a stick at, in seven different colors. The quality overall is not very high (as you can see by the pictures) but they're flexible and reliable so far. I found that I had to cut about 1cm off and slightly straighten the tips to allow it to fit snugly in a breadboard - it still beats working with 22 gauge. If the seller disappears just look for bargains on ebay tagged "jumper wires".