I gave in and bought some crimp dies and a pile of power pole connectors just to be compatible with other hams' equipment if the need ever arises. 

But, I prefer the XT60 connectors overall. The EC3 and EC5 connectors are nice as well.

If you have one of the newly ubiquitous automotive jump starter packs, chances are good that it has an EC5 connector to the jumper leads. I made some EC5-to-Power pole adapters to use these jump starter packs for portable power for my radios. They are very handy. They put out a useful voltage for ham gear, plus most of them have USB ports for charging phones and tablets in addition to a port for charging laptop computers. One I've got has a port that can be cycled through 9v, 12v, 18v with a button press but if the button is accidentally pressed while powering a lower voltage device, you could fry it. So I just power my 12V stuff through the jumper cable port. 

The power poles are convenient for several reasons, and if you have a crimper they are actually faster to install than solder-type connectors, but overall I think they are overpriced and the polycarbonate plastic shells are not very solvent resistant. If they made shells for them out of nylon I would be more comfortable using them for applications outside of the ham radio circle.

Nylon shells would be great, but I don't think Nylon would work well with the interlocking mechanism.  Something interesting might be a nylon two piece dedicated connector body, maybe even go all-out and have a strain relief at the back.

Still, considering all the negatives, the thing I really, really like about Powerpoles is they are "genderless".  And you
can only plug them in one way... correctly, provided they are assembled correctly in the first place.  But from a
user standpoint, that's not a problem.

Out of curiosity, would something like dielectric grease or OxGuard reduce the likelihood of possible humidity related issues without creating new problems?  It might make connectors dis-connect more easily, but they are easy to to secure with small zip ties thru the holes between pairs...

(ETA: thinking about antenna related uses as well as power)

Nick

good idea on the hot glue!  thanks for the tip!

Maybe glass filled nylon would be strong enough, but then the price might be prohibitive.

Maybe, but I would make sure it is ok to use with polycarbonate plastic before using it on powerpoles.

I purchased this one on Amazon.  

Anderson Powerpole TC-1 Ratcheting Crimper

I liked it so much I did a video.  

I used to run HF mobile so I ran heavy gauge wire from the battery to the cab of my truck with a commercial fuse block in the engine bay, all with large Power Pole connectors. When I uninstalled the radio I left the power cables and just disconnected the connectors. There were a total of 5 pairs of connectors in there. Poked around under the hood yesterday to discover that two of the connectors were missing entirely and one of the others had one wire pull out. These were commercially made cables and installed around 5 years ago and they've all failed. There was not undue strain on any of them and most were just dangling.

It's the exact same thing I've had with the smaller PP connectors. They just aren't reliable in my experiences.