1/8 Watt 0805 SMD Resistor

1/8 watt 0805 SMD resistors with 5% tolerance for surface-mount LED circuits and PCB-based electronics projects.

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  • 1/8 Watt 0805 with 5% Tolerance
    1/8 Watt 0805 with 5% Tolerance
    SKU: 0805SMDRESISTORALL
    1/8 Watt 0805 Resistors 5% Tolerance. Can be used for nearly an unlimited amount of things.
    The price depends on the options chosen on the product page

    Starting at $0.10

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1/8 watt 0805 SMD resistors with 5% tolerance for surface-mount LED circuits and PCB-based electronics projects. The 0805 package measures 2.0mm x 1.25mm — large enough to place and solder with a standard soldering iron and fine-tip, small enough for compact PCB layouts that through-hole components cannot fit. These are the resistors you need for custom LED driver boards, Arduino and ESP32 shields, DCC decoder installations, mechanical keyboard builds, guitar pedal SMD builds, and any project where you are designing or assembling a printed circuit board.

The standard SMD resistor for hobby electronics: The 0805 footprint is the go-to surface-mount resistor size for hobbyists making the transition from through-hole to SMD. It is the default SMD resistor package in KiCad (Resistor_SMD:R_0805_2012Metric), EasyEDA, Altium CircuitMaker, and virtually every PCB design tutorial written for hobbyists and small-production runs. When a blog post, YouTube video, or forum guide says "use an 0805 resistor," this is what they mean. The 0805 package hits the sweet spot between hand-solderability and compact footprint — 0603 and 0402 packages are smaller but require magnification and tweezers for reliable hand placement, while 1206 packages are unnecessarily large for most hobby PCB layouts.

Hand soldering technique: The 0805 package is widely regarded as the most beginner-friendly SMD size for hand soldering. You need a fine-tip soldering iron (chisel or conical tip, 0.5–1.0mm), flux (either flux pen or paste flux), thin solder wire (0.5mm or 0.6mm diameter), and tweezers for component placement. The process is: apply a small amount of solder to one pad, position the resistor with tweezers, reflow the pre-tinned pad to tack the resistor in place, then solder the second pad. No hot air station or reflow oven required, though both work well for batch assembly. Total time per resistor with practice is under 10 seconds.

Common applications: Custom LED PCBs are the primary use case — current-limiting resistors placed directly next to each LED footprint on an indicator panel, display board, or lighting controller PCB. Arduino and ESP32 shields and carrier boards use 0805 resistors for pull-ups, pull-downs, and current limiting on GPIO pins. DCC decoder installations in model railroading often require an external 0805 resistor for function output current limiting — decoder manufacturers like ESU, Digitrax, and NCE reference 0805 values in their installation guides. Mechanical keyboard PCBs from the custom keyboard community (Corne, Lily58, Sofle, Iris, and Ergodox variants) use 0805 resistors for per-key LED current limiting and pull-up resistors on I2C communication lines. Guitar pedal SMD builds from PedalPCB, Aion Electronics, and other board houses use 0805 as the standard passive component footprint. LED strip repair is another common use — replacing a burnt-out current-limiting resistor on a 12V LED strip segment restores the entire segment to working condition.

5% tolerance — why not 1%? Our 0805 SMD resistors are 5% tolerance, which is the standard for SMD resistors in LED current-limiting applications. At the current levels involved in SMD LED circuits (typically 5–20mA per LED), the difference between a 5% and a 1% resistor is a current variation of less than 1mA — invisible to the eye in terms of brightness difference. For precision analog circuits where 1% matters (reference voltage dividers, instrumentation amplifiers, measurement circuits), source 1% 0805 resistors from a distributor like Mouser or Digi-Key. For LED circuits, PCB pull-ups, and general digital logic, 5% is the correct and cost-effective choice.

1/8W power rating: The 1/8W (125mW) rating is sufficient for most SMD LED circuits. A single 0805 or 0603 LED running at 20mA on a 3.3V or 5V source creates minimal power dissipation across the resistor. Even at 12V with a 470Ω resistor limiting a 3V LED, the dissipation is about 0.17W — above the 1/8W rating. For those higher-voltage SMD circuits, use a physically larger 1206 SMD resistor (rated at 1/4W) or switch to a through-hole 1/4W resistor. The 0805 1/8W rating is designed for 3.3V and 5V logic-level circuits, which is where the vast majority of SMD LED applications live.

For through-hole alternatives, see our 1/4 watt, 1/2 watt, and 1 watt through-hole resistors. Use our LED Resistor Calculator to find the right resistance value for your circuit — the formula is the same regardless of whether you use SMD or through-hole. Browse our SMD LEDs to pair with these resistors on your PCB design.

Frequently Asked Questions

0805 is the imperial package size code: 0.08 inches long by 0.05 inches wide, which translates to 2.0mm x 1.25mm in metric. The metric designation is 2012 (2.0mm x 1.25mm). It is the most common SMD resistor size in hobby and small-production electronics — large enough for hand soldering with a standard iron and fine-tip, small enough for compact PCB layouts. You will see it referenced in KiCad as R_0805_2012Metric, in EasyEDA as 0805, and in most PCB design tutorials as the default passive component size.
Yes — the 0805 package is widely considered the most beginner-friendly SMD size for hand soldering. You need a fine-tip soldering iron (chisel or conical, 0.5–1.0mm tip), flux (pen or paste), thin solder wire (0.5mm or 0.6mm), and tweezers for placement. Pre-tin one pad, position the component with tweezers, reflow the tinned pad to tack it down, then solder the second pad. No hot air station or reflow oven required. With a few minutes of practice, you can place and solder an 0805 component in under 10 seconds.
For 3.3V and 5V SMD LED circuits, yes. A 150Ω resistor limiting a 20mA LED on 5V dissipates about 0.04W — well within the 1/8W (0.125W) limit. For 12V circuits, the dissipation can exceed 0.125W depending on the LED and resistance value — in that case, use a larger 1206 package SMD resistor (1/4W) or switch to a through-hole 1/4W resistor. Always calculate P = Vdrop × I before committing to a package size.
Through-hole resistors have wire leads that pass through holes in a PCB or plug into a breadboard — easy to hand-solder, swap, and prototype with. They are the standard for breadboard work, perfboard builds, and any project where you are soldering point-to-point. SMD (surface-mount) resistors are flat chips that solder directly onto pads on the PCB surface — they are much smaller, take up less board space, and are the standard for modern PCB designs. Both do the same electrical job at the same resistance values. Choose through-hole for prototyping and hand-wired builds, SMD for PCB designs.
In KiCad, the standard footprint is Resistor_SMD:R_0805_2012Metric (found in the Resistor_SMD library). In EasyEDA, search for "0805" in the footprint library. In Altium and CircuitMaker, the footprint is typically labeled RESC2012X65N or simply 0805. This is the default passive component size in most reference designs, open-source PCB projects, and beginner tutorials.
Most 0805 resistors use a 3-digit code printed on the top surface. The first two digits are the significant figures, and the third digit is the multiplier (number of zeros to add). For example: 471 = 470Ω (47 followed by one zero), 103 = 10KΩ (10 followed by three zeros), 220 = 22Ω (22 followed by zero zeros). An "R" in the code indicates a decimal point — 4R7 = 4.7Ω. This is different from through-hole color bands, so keep your SMD and through-hole resistors in separate labeled storage.