Warning: that cheap stud finder lied to me for 9 months

Hung 4 heavy shelves and a wall-mounted TV using a $9 stud finder that kept blinking green. Pulled the TV down to repaint last week and found two out of three anchors were in drywall only. The packaging said it detects live wires, but it never caught the romex I nicked either. Anyone else trust a bargain tool and end up patching holes the size of your fist?

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emmap1611d ago

Remind yourself that cheap tools often lie in the safest way possible... they fail closed instead of open. My $8 one never found a stud but always beeped green on the corner where lead paint was. That false confidence is worse than a dead battery, because you start trusting the beep instead of knocking on the wall or using a magnet trick. The real kicker is those bargain detectors use a single sensor, so they miss the edge of a stud and call drywall a win every time... the patch job is just the tuition for learning that.