Kreg 720 vs. Budget Pocket Hole Jigs: Why Screw Length Matters More Than the Jig

We've all been there. You're halfway through a bookshelf build at nine at night, the kids are asking what's for dinner, and you're standing in the jig aisle of your browser trying to decide between the $150 Kreg and the $50 no-name that promises to do the same thing. They both drill pocket holes. How different can the joints be?

I've spent a lot of time reading the specs, the independent tests, and the buyer reviews on both sides, and the honest answer is more interesting than either marketing department would like. The jigs are closer than you'd think. The joints can be surprisingly far apart, and not always for the reasons you'd expect.

What a Pocket Hole Actually Is

Quick refresher, because the mechanics explain everything else. A pocket hole is drilled at a 15-degree angle. The stepped bit's larger diameter cuts the angled pocket, while the tip drills a pilot hole for the screw, and the bit is designed to stop short of the far face of your board so you don't blow through it. Kreg's own guide spells this out, and it's why the depth collar matters so much.

Kreg's screws are self-tapping, with an unthreaded upper shank. That unthreaded section spins freely in the pilot hole instead of gripping it, so the screw doesn't wedge the two pieces apart as the head pulls the joint tight. The flat head bears on the flat ledge at the base of the pocket. That's the whole trick, and it's a good one.

The jig itself, per Kreg, exists to hold the bit steady and keep that 15-degree angle consistent. That's it. Which raises a fair question: if a $50 jig also holds a bit at 15 degrees, what are you paying for?

The Kreg Lineup, Priced Honestly

Kreg has been making pocket-hole jigs since 1989, and the current sweet spot is the Pocket-Hole Jig 720 at $129.99 direct from KregTool.com. You get the Automaxx dual-action clamp, which automatically adjusts to your material thickness, an anti-slip clamping surface, adjustable clamping pressure, integrated dust collection with a vacuum adapter, and a lifetime warranty on the drill guides. The kit includes the Easy-Set stepped bit with stop collar, driver bits, a thickness gauge, and 60 pocket-hole screws.

The 720PRO, at $149.99, is the same jig plus the Docking Station support and storage wings, per Kreg's own Q&A, and Family Handyman notes it ships with 160 screws instead of 60.

If you want to spend less inside the Kreg family, the 320 is $39.99, a two-guide jig with adjustable stops for 1/2", 3/4", and 1-1/2" material. What you're not giving up is the joinery itself.

One caution on scope: I haven't verified current prices or specs for the older K4 and K5, so I'm sticking to the current lineup here rather than guessing at legacy models.

The Clones, and Where They Get Interesting

The budget field is crowded. Family Handyman's tested roundup named the Vevor kit ($49.90 to $56.90) best budget jig and the WEN kit ($43.02 to $57.79) best for beginners. Both cover the same 1/2" to 1-1/2" range as the 720. The complaints were about fit and finish, not geometry: the Vevor's manual bolt depth adjustment was described as finicky, its included bit duller than pricier models, and the WEN's base slippery enough to need extra clamping when used portably.

And here's the detail that changes this whole comparison. A Harbor Freight buyer found that with the Drill Master jig, a 2-1/2" screw, which is exactly the length Kreg specifies for 1-1/2" material, goes all the way through the workpiece. You have to drop to 2" screws.

Think about what that means. The Drill Master's hole geometry is not identical to Kreg's. The angle may be 15 degrees, but the geometry differs enough to change which screw length works. This is not a jig-quality problem. It's a joint-geometry problem, and it matters more than any clamp or warranty.

Why Screw Length Is the Whole Ballgame

The best independent data on pocket-hole strength comes from Matthias Wandel at woodgears.ca, who tested joints in uniform spruce, loading them 15 cm from the joint. His unglued pocket-hole joints failed at 95, 120, 75, and 105 pounds, averaging 99 pounds. A glued retest averaged 111 pounds, but every glued joint cracked open before the screws reached maximum force. In other words, glue doesn't meaningfully rescue a pocket hole.

The single biggest variable in his testing? Screw penetration depth into the mating piece. A shallower screw produced a 75-pound failure. Drilling slightly deeper, even with screws protruding a touch, produced stronger joints and shifted the failure mode from thread pull-out to the screw head breaking out of the pocket.

Now connect that to the Drill Master review. If a clone's geometry forces you to use a different screw length than the standard tables call for, you are directly manipulating the variable that dominates joint strength. The jig that changes your penetration depth genuinely changes the joint you build. I want to be careful here: nobody has published a head-to-head test of joints made in a Kreg 720 versus joints made in a clone, same wood, same screws, same method. So I can tell you the Drill Master changes the geometry, and I can tell you geometry drives strength. I cannot tell you the strength delta, because that test hasn't been done publicly. If you own both, you now have a genuinely useful weekend experiment.

The 99-Pound Ceiling, and When to Walk Away

Here's the part of the story that matters regardless of which jig you buy. Wandel found pocket-hole joints were already visibly opening a gap at around 50 pounds of load, well before ultimate failure. Plain glued butt joints failed at 35 to 50 pounds, so pocket holes are a big step up from nothing. They're just not the strongest thing available.

His takeaway, which I'd co-sign from experience: pocket holes yield progressively and can be re-tightened, so don't fill the pockets. And they're fine for rough and utility builds, but they're the wrong joint for living-room-quality furniture. A bench inside a mudroom closet? Perfect. A dining table your brother-in-law will lean on every Thanksgiving for twenty years? Use dowels or mortise and tenon.

So Which One Do You Buy?

My honest take, for a time-poor beginner: the Kreg 720's Automaxx clamp, dust port, and lifetime drill-guide warranty are worth the price if pocket holes will be a regular tool for you. The machine-adjusting clamp alone saves real fiddling on a busy evening, and dust collection in a small shop is not a luxury. If you're building one set of garage shelves a year, the Kreg 320 at $39.99 or the WEN kit gets you the same 15-degree joint with more of your own effort in the setup.

But whichever jig you buy, throw away the assumption that screw length is one-size-fits-all. Do a test joint in scrap first, check penetration into the mating piece, and adjust from there. The Woodgears data says that adjustment matters a lot, whatever logo is on the jig. And if the piece needs to survive decades of honest use, pocket holes were never the right answer anyway, at any price.