A+ 220-1201 practice test: 15 free questions

What this A+ 220-1201 practice test measures

Core 1 is the hardware half of A+, and it is examined with a technician's logic: what is the part, what does the symptom point at, and what is the first safe step. This set gives the largest share of questions to hardware and troubleshooting, which together carry 53% of the exam, and keeps the mobile and cloud questions practical rather than definitional.

The fifteen questions are grouped the way 220-1201 is grouped, so the domains that carry the most marks get the most questions. Each question has one key and three distractors, and every option carries its own explanation: the key says why it is right, and each distractor says the specific thing that makes it wrong. That is the part most free question sets skip, and it is the part that turns a miss into a lesson.

Nothing here is drawn from the paid bank or from a real exam. The questions were written for this page, mapped to the published 220-1201 objectives, and checked against every question in the SecLern packs so the same idea is not tested twice in different words.

How to use a practice test without wasting it

A practice test is a measurement, and a measurement you have already seen is worth less the second time. Take this one once, cold, before you revise anything: no notes, no lookups, no pausing. Fifteen questions will not take long, and the score is only useful if it reflects what you actually know today.

Mark every question you were unsure about, even the ones you got right. A lucky guess and a confident answer look identical in the score, and they are not the same thing. At the end, the questions you flagged tell you more than the ones you missed.

Then leave it alone for a while. Come back in a week and the same fifteen questions will feel different, which is useful evidence about whether the revision landed.

• Take it cold, once. Sit the fifteen questions in one go with a clock running and nothing open beside them. The result is a baseline, not a verdict.
• Read every explanation, including the ones you got right. The three distractors teach the distinctions the exam tests: which control, which order, which owner. A right answer for the wrong reason will not survive a differently worded question.
• Write the miss down by objective. Not "I got four wrong": name the objective id and the idea behind the question. That list becomes the next study session instead of a vague feeling of weakness.
• Move the miss into another format. If the miss was about a control, find the lab that uses it. If it was about order, find a PBQ that grades sequence. Reading the same explanation twice is not revision.
• Measure again with fresh questions. Repeat on unseen questions, not this set. When two fresh sittings land comfortably above the pass margin, the exam date is a scheduling decision rather than a hope.

What 220-1201 actually asks, domain by domain

The percentages below are the published weights, not a study plan. They say where the marks are, which is where your calendar should go first: Troubleshooting carries 28% of 220-1201 and deserves the largest share of the remaining weeks.

The exam is 90 questions in 90 minutes, which is about 1 minutes per question on average, before you account for the 5 performance-based questions the simulation serves. That average is the whole timing argument: a question that takes three minutes has borrowed a minute from two others.

• Mobile devices (13%). Mobile devices is 13% and mostly judgement: which component a symptom belongs to, what an MDM policy can and cannot do, and when a repair is a replacement. Read for the constraint, such as a personal device that must keep personal photos.
• Networking (23%). Networking at 23% is the vocabulary of connectivity: ports, cables, wireless standards and the small configurations a technician actually changes. Memorising port numbers is unavoidable, and this domain is where that pays.
• Hardware (25%). Hardware is 25% and the most concrete domain on the exam: connectors, memory types, RAID levels, printer components and the order of assembly. Questions are usually one clear fact, so a confident answer beats a long deliberation.
• Virtualization and cloud (11%). Virtualization and cloud is 11%: hypervisor types, cloud service models and what the customer still owns in each. The traps are small words such as 'host' and 'guest'.
• Troubleshooting (28%). Troubleshooting is the largest domain at 28% and always scenario-shaped: a symptom, a constraint and four plausible first steps. The right answer is usually the diagnostic step, not the replacement.

Reading your score honestly

The published pass mark is 675 on the 100 to 900 scale. Your raw score out of fifteen is not that number: the real exam is scaled, and 90 questions sample far more objectives than fifteen can. Use the raw score to find gaps; use a full simulation before you book.

A useful rule for a fifteen-question sample: anything under ten correct means at least one domain is unlearned, not unlucky. Twelve or more with two flagged guesses means the knowledge is there and the risk is pace and wording. The number that matters is not the percentage; it is which domains the misses cluster in.

The app's full simulation is the honest test: 90 questions on the real clock, with the same domain mix the objectives describe, and 5 performance-based questions in front of it. Free accounts get thirty study questions a day and three PBQs; the timed simulations are Pro. That is the line between practising and measuring.

The week after this test

Five steps, in order. Each one uses a different surface, because reading the same page twice is not revision.

• Step 1. Turn every miss into a part or a port on a flashcard, and put the symptom on the back. Core 1 rewards fast recall.
• Step 2. Work the A+ Core 1 labs: the hardware bench tasks and the help-desk ticket both grade the same judgement the questions test.
• Step 3. Walk through the printer and RAID questions out loud as if explaining to a new hire. If the explanation has a gap, that is the gap.
• Step 4. Take the A+ PBQ examples page and try the matching scenario with hints off; the item-by-item report shows exactly which pairs you guessed.
• Step 5. Finish with a full simulation under the clock, then book only when two fresh sittings clear 675 comfortably.

220-1201 practice test questions