MLCC Capacitance E-Series by Tolerance for Sweden: 310 of 1,586 Walsin 20 Percent Parts Sit Outside E6

MLCC capacitance E-series membership is not guaranteed by tolerance. We tested 23,594 distinct Walsin parts: 310 of the 1,586 rated plus or minus 20 percent (19.5%) list a value outside E6, 202 of 5,688 at 10 percent sit outside E12, and 54 of 5,381 at 5 percent sit outside E24.

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Your Swedish selector assumes a 20 percent capacitor is an E6 value. In Walsin’s export, one in five is not. We counted it. Venatech Limited, an authorised Walsin distributor in Hong Kong, holds the multilayer ceramic capacitor export published by Walsin Technology (Walsin), 24,026 rows in 00_ALL_MLCC_parts_combined.xlsx. This post is written from the Capacitance and Tolerance columns of that file and from nothing else. Every part number below is real and in the export.

Which E-series should an MLCC at 20, 10 and 5 percent follow?

By convention E6 pairs with plus or minus 20 percent, E12 with 10 percent and E24 with 5 percent. We used that pairing as the test. E6 has 6 values per decade, E12 has 12 and E24 has 24, so a 20 percent part has 6 legitimate mantissas and a 5 percent part has 24. Each smaller series sits inside the next.

We parsed all 23,601 distinct part numbers, kept the 23,594 whose Capacitance reads as a number with a pF, nF or uF unit, scaled each value to one decade (5600 pF and 56 nF both become 5.6) and checked that mantissa against the lists. Seven rows have a corrupted capacitance and were left out; they are the known defect rows.

Tolerance	Distinct part numbers	Convention says	On that series	Outside that series	Share outside	Match / mismatch against the convention
plus or minus 20%	1,586	E6	1,276	310	19.5%	Mismatch on 310 parts
plus or minus 10%	5,688	E12	5,486	202	3.6%	Mismatch on 202 parts
plus or minus 5%	5,381	E24	5,327	54	1.0%	Mismatch on 54 parts

How many Walsin MLCC at each tolerance list a value outside their series?

566 parts across the three tolerances, and the miss rate falls as the series widens. At 20 percent we counted 310 of 1,586, at 10 percent 202 of 5,688 and at 5 percent 54 of 5,381. Put differently, the 20 percent tolerance offers 74 distinct capacitance values, and 36 of them (48.6%) are not E6.

The 20 percent miss is not mostly drift into some other series. Of the 310, 295 are plain E12 values such as 1.2, 1.8, 2.7, 3.9, 5.6 and 8.2. Only 15 are E24-only or off-series altogether. So the 20 percent column behaves as an E12 column that happens to carry a 20 percent label on the E12 values that are not E6.

At 10 percent the picture splits. 180 of the 202 are E24-only values (2.0, 3.0, 3.6, 7.5 and so on) and 22 sit outside E24 as well. We have not seen this counted anywhere: the tolerance letter in the part number does not predict the preferred-value series of the capacitance.

Part number	Series	Size	Dielectric	Capacitance	Tolerance	Rated voltage	Mantissa	Match / mismatch against the convention
0402B104M500	General Purpose	0402	X7R	100 nF	20%	50 Vdc	1.0	Match — E6 value at the E6 tolerance
0603B562M100	General Purpose	0603	X7R	5,600 pF	20%	10 Vdc	5.6	Mismatch — E12 value at 20%
MT15B183M500	Automotive MT	0402	X7R	18 nF	20%	50 Vdc	1.8	Mismatch — E12 value at 20%
2220B563M102	Big sizes	2220	X7R	56 nF	20%	1,000 Vdc	5.6	Mismatch — E12 value at 20%
0402B104K500	General Purpose	0402	X7R	100 nF	10%	50 Vdc	1.0	Match — E12 value at the E12 tolerance
0402B202K160	General Purpose	0402	X7R	2,000 pF	10%	16 Vdc	2.0	Mismatch — E24-only value at 10%
MT03N300K500	Automotive MT	0201	NPO	30 pF	10%	50 Vdc	3.0	Mismatch — E24-only value at 10%
0603N250J500	General Purpose	0603	NPO	25 pF	5%	50 Vdc	2.5	Mismatch — outside E24 entirely

Which capacitance values are the off-series ones?

A short list of mantissas accounts for almost all of them. Six E12 values — 5.6 (56 parts), 2.7 (52), 3.9 (51), 8.2 (48), 1.2 (44) and 1.8 (44) — make up 295 of the 310 parts at 20 percent that are outside E6. The other 15 are 2.0 (5 parts), 3.0 (3), 1.6 and 5.0 (2 each) and singles.

At 5 percent the off-series mantissas are 2.5 (13 parts), 5.0 (9) and 1.4 (8), then a tail of fourteen values with one to four parts each. Two real examples: 0402N140J500 at 14 pF and 0402N500J500 at 50 pF. 25 pF and 50 pF are values engineers specify routinely, and neither is an E24 number.

The reading we take from this is narrow and checkable. A 50 pF part is not a data error; it is a value the series list does not contain. Walsin lists what it makes. Your preferred-value rule is the thing that has to bend.

Which dielectrics carry the off-series values?

Class II at 20 percent, and NPO at 5 percent. Of the 310 off-E6 parts at 20 percent, 292 are X7R, 16 are X5R and 2 are NPO; of the 54 off-E24 parts at 5 percent, all 54 are NPO. At 10 percent the split is X7R 115, NPO 86 and X5R 1.

Tolerance	X7R	X5R	NPO	Total outside	Match / mismatch against a rule that only expects Class I at 5 percent
20% outside E6	292	16	2	310	Mismatch — nearly all Class II, where a 20 percent grade is normal
10% outside E12	115	1	86	202	Mismatch — NPO carries 86 of them
5% outside E24	0	0	54	54	Mismatch — NPO only

We did not find the same effect in X6S, X7S, X8G or X8R at these tolerances: those dielectrics add nothing to the off-series counts above.

What does this mean for a Swedish BOM filter?

Do not use the tolerance column to infer a preferred-value series. If your selector rejects a 5.6 nF part because the tolerance is 20 percent and 5.6 is not E6, it drops 56 real Walsin parts of that value. If it accepts only E24 at 5 percent it drops the 25 pF and 50 pF NPO parts.

Three rules, each measured above:

1. Match the capacitance value directly, not the series it is supposed to belong to. Our free cross-reference tool compares capacitance, voltage, size, dielectric and tolerance as separate fields and states each difference from your original part.
2. Treat the tolerance and the value as independent. The same value is offered at several tolerances. 0402B104J500, 0402B104K500 and 0402B104M500 are one 100 nF X7R 0402 50 Vdc part at 5, 10 and 20 percent.
3. Qualify the actual part. A match on value and tolerance does not establish a match on voltage coefficient, thickness or termination. For the letter positions themselves, see how to read a Walsin MLCC part number and tolerance, TCR and dielectric codes decoded.

We hold 28 Walsin datasheets, 451 pages, covering 26 MLCC and 2 chip resistor series. We did not search them for a sentence pairing a tolerance with a preferred-value series, so this post claims nothing about what Walsin intends. What is in Hong Kong is on ready stock: 1,125 part numbers as at 23 September 2026, a dated snapshot and not a live feed. The capacitor range sits on the MLCC page.

The short version

We counted 23,594 distinct Walsin MLCC part numbers by the E-series of their capacitance. 310 of 1,586 at 20 percent are outside E6 (19.5%), 202 of 5,688 at 10 percent are outside E12 (3.6%) and 54 of 5,381 at 5 percent are outside E24 (1.0%). 295 of the 310 are plain E12 values. 0603B562M100 is 5.6 nF at 20 percent; 0603N250J500 is 25 pF at 5 percent. We will not tell you a part matches because its tolerance sounds right. We will show you the field that differs. Confirm against both datasheets and qualify in your own circuit.

Send us the capacitance and tolerance lines from your BOM and we will show which of them a series rule would have dropped. And a question back: how many of your approved values are on a preferred-number list only because someone assumed they were?

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Frequently asked questions

<!– wp:rank-math/faq-block {"questions":[{"id":"faq-question-01","title":"Does a 20 percent MLCC always have an E6 capacitance value?","content":"No. In Walsin's export 310 of 1,586 distinct part numbers rated plus or minus 20 percent, 19.5 percent, carry a value outside E6. 295 of them are E12 values such as 5.6, 2.7, 3.9, 8.2, 1.2 and 1.8, for example 0603B562M100 at 5,600 pF.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-02″,”title”:”How many Walsin MLCC at 5 percent are not E24 values?”,”content”:”54 of 5,381 distinct part numbers, 1.0 percent. All 54 are NPO, and the common mantissas are 2.5 with 13 parts, 5.0 with 9 and 1.4 with 8. 0603N250J500 at 25 pF and 0402N500J500 at 50 pF are real examples.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-03″,”title”:”Which dielectric has the most off-series values at 20 percent?”,”content”:”X7R. Of the 310 off-E6 parts at plus or minus 20 percent, 292 are X7R, 16 are X5R and 2 are NPO. At 10 percent, 115 of the 202 off-E12 parts are X7R and 86 are NPO.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-04″,”title”:”Can I filter MLCC by tolerance to get a preferred-value series?”,”content”:”No, not for a Swedish BOM or any other. We checked 23,594 parts and the tolerance does not predict the series of the capacitance. At 10 percent, 180 parts carry E24-only values such as 2.0 and 3.0, and 22 more are outside E24. Match the capacitance value itself.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-05″,”title”:”Does the same capacitance come in several tolerances?”,”content”:”Yes. 0402B104J500, 0402B104K500 and 0402B104M500 are 100 nF X7R 0402 parts at 50 Vdc listed at 5, 10 and 20 percent. The capacitance is the same E6 value in all three, so the tolerance changes the grade, not the value.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-06″,”title”:”How were the E-series checks done?”,”content”:”We parsed the Capacitance column of 23,601 distinct part numbers, kept the 23,594 with a readable value, scaled each to one decade and compared the mantissa with the E6, E12 and E24 lists. The lists come from the preferred-number convention, and we mark them as unconfirmed in the note above.”,”visible”:true},{“id”:”faq-question-07″,”title”:”Does Venatech confirm that a crossed part is a match?”,”content”:”No. We state the fields that match and the fields that differ, and qualification stays with you. Confirm against both datasheets and qualify in your own circuit. We hold 28 Walsin datasheets, 451 pages, and send the one covering your part number on request.”,”visible”:true}],”listStyle”:””,”titleWrapper”:”h3″,”titleCssClasses”:””,”contentCssClasses”:””,”sizeSlug”:””} –>

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