Mike Holt side-by-side review (review 1)

What Mike Holt is, and what it isn't

Mike Holt Enterprises sells code training. Books, DVDs, online courses, exam prep, continuing ed. The material is dense, accurate, and aimed at people sitting for a journeyman or master exam. It's been the gold standard for code education for decades and the graphics in the illustrated books are genuinely good for understanding things like grounding versus bonding (NEC 250) or box fill math (NEC 314.16).

Ask BONBON is not that. BONBON is a reference tool you pull out on the truck when you need to know if a 20A small appliance branch circuit can feed a refrigerator receptacle in the garage, or whether your EVSE install triggers 625.42 load calcs. Different job.

I've used both for about two years on residential service and light commercial. Here's the honest breakdown.

Speed to answer on a live job

This is where the two products split hard. If a homeowner is standing over my shoulder and the inspector is showing up in forty minutes, I need the answer in under thirty seconds. Mike Holt's material is built to teach you the code, not to hand you an answer. You're flipping through a workbook or scrubbing a video timeline.

BONBON gets me to the article in one query. "GFCI required for dishwasher" returns 210.8(D) with the 2023 exception noted. "Tamper resistant in garage" returns 406.12 with the dwelling unit scope. Holt would teach me why those rules exist, which matters, but not at 3:47 PM on a Friday.

• Finding 210.8(A) outdoor receptacle requirements: BONBON, 8 seconds. Holt workbook, 2 to 3 minutes.
• Understanding why 250.122 sizing uses the OCPD ahead of the conductor: Holt, clearly. BONBON gives the rule, not the reasoning.
• Checking a 2023 versus 2020 code change on your jurisdiction: BONBON, immediate. Holt, depends which edition you bought.

Depth and teaching

Mike Holt wins on depth, and it isn't close. His grounding and bonding course alone will change how you wire a service. The exam prep track is the reason a lot of guys passed their master's test on the first shot. If you're studying, buy his material. Period.

BONBON doesn't try to teach the code. It assumes you already know roughly where you are in the book and need the exact language, a plain summary, and the relevant exceptions. For an apprentice who doesn't yet know that 240.4(D) caps small conductor ampacity regardless of the 310.16 table, a reference tool alone is dangerous. You need the fundamentals first.

Buy Mike Holt to learn the code. Use a reference app to work the code. They're not competitors. They're a stack.

Price and format

Holt's full journeyman exam prep library runs $400 to $700 depending on bundle. His individual topic books are $50 to $90. That's fair for what you get, and you keep the books forever. But the books are heavy, the DVDs are DVDs, and the online portal is a browser experience, not a phone-first one.

BONBON is a subscription, cheaper per month than a single Holt book, and lives in your pocket. It updates when the code cycle turns over. No reshipping, no buying the 2026 edition of a workbook you already own in 2023 form.

• Mike Holt: one-time purchase per edition, deep, teaching-oriented, desktop or print.
• BONBON: subscription, shallow but fast, reference-oriented, phone-first.
• Both: current on recent code cycles if you keep up.

Where Holt beats BONBON outright

Calc-heavy work. If you're sizing a 400A residential service with a 48A EVSE, a heat pump, and a range, Holt's load calc worksheets and video walkthroughs will get you through it correctly the first time. BONBON will point you at 220.82 and 220.87 but won't hold your hand through the math.

Exam prep is the other clear win. Practice questions, timed tests, and the way Holt explains why a wrong answer is wrong are unmatched. No reference app replaces that.

Illustrations. Holt's graphics on services, feeders, transformer connections, and grounding electrode systems are genuinely better than reading the raw code text. Worth the price alone for anyone who learns visually.

If you can't draw a grounded versus grounding conductor path from memory, you need Holt before you need any app.

Where BONBON beats Holt outright

On the truck. In an attic. In a crawlspace with one hand holding a flashlight. Holt was not designed for that environment and doesn't pretend to be. BONBON was.

Cross-article lookups. When 210.8 points you to 422.5, which points you to 250.114, a search tool collapses that chain into one screen. Paper forces you to bounce between four tabs in the codebook.

Jurisdiction toggling. A lot of us work across county lines where one adopts 2020 NEC and the next jumped to 2023. Swapping editions in BONBON is one tap. Owning two full Holt libraries is $1,000 and a bookshelf.

The honest recommendation

Run both. Holt for the winter months when you're studying, prepping for a test, or filling CEU hours. BONBON on the belt for the other ten months when you just need the answer and the truck is double-parked. Treating them as rivals is the wrong frame. One builds the knowledge, the other retrieves it. Skipping either one shows in your work.