Fun kit. Not terrifically useful when finished (still kind of neat), but a good time assembling it if you're getting into electronics.

This is exactly as a lot of the other reviewers had mentioned in their comments! I have been messing around with electronics just about since I was 10 yrs old. I can solder pretty good and I have a professional soldering station. For the price, this is a good tester! I only would have liked it more, if the board could handle the high heat required this day and time for the no lead solders to adhere components to the pads! I found it a very easy project to understand as the instructions are great and the board is marked out well! I have a few problems with the pads letting go of the board due to the heat required! I did have to repair a couple that had lifted up and I had to use a magnifying glass to find that there were a couple of hairline cracks in the traces! Other than that I am pleased with the price and I do think that if I were to build a second one, I would do a much better job with the soldering as it had been a few years since I had done anything like this! I do not understand why there is not a much better way to install the battery clip like with screws and a place to screw them in instead of a piece of two sided tape? 1 star deducted for the battery design and 1 star deducted for bad pad design that cannot handle the heat too well! Otherwise, I would purchase it again!

Buy the assembled unit. This kit has the worst circuit board I have ever worked with. The traces are not tinned and if you apply enough heat to properly solder the component the traces start to lift from the board! I would be happy to pay $10 more for the kit if they included a better quality circuit board. The test leads are very stiff.

This thing is okay but for the money the GM328 tester is a much better value. Gain indication is only guesswork and this thing is only useful for diodes and bipolar transistors. On the upside, if you want a nice little kit to build then you'll likely enjoy the experience. The kit is complete and the directions are good. I put grabbers on mine instead of the alligator clips. I also used Velcro to hold the battery in place instead of the clip they provided (which attaches with double-sided tape - bad idea since it's a metal clip and likely to come loose).

Could not get to function properly...despite following directions to a tee. So ordered a second kit as now the challenge was on. Tested every resistor before soldering. Soldered every point cleanly. Caps and diode placed with proper polarity. Again, diode test function worked fine (only after tossing the defective cmos this time and using the one from the 1st kit. Could not get the transistor test function to work properly, again. Same exact problem ("ok" would not go out as instructions say it is supposed to). Leads me to believe that there is an error in the instructions. Wasted 46.00 on two kits.