Bundle Includes Soldering Station and CHP170 Cutter

Simply a great bang for the buck with digital quality. This will do whatever you need at the right temperature. Easy to use menu, accurate, full featured and gets to temp fast The only thing you need to do is buy some additional different style tips that will add to the versatility of the kind of jobs you can do.

After using a $5 soldering iron from Radioshack for years, this soldering iron just brings a tear to my eye on the time it takes to heat up. it has turned the soldering process from a pain to a pleasure. Would definitely recommend for anyone interested in soldering!

Hakko irons are generally well-regarded, and having used the analog FX-888 at work, this seemed like a winner when I was looking to purchase my own personal iron. However, the user interface is terrible. After reading through the included manual, I switched it on and tried to increase the temperature. One would naturally assume you do this by pressing the UP button. However, this does nothing. If you hold down the UP button, you are able to enter a temperature. Great! So I bump it up to 800°F and press enter... and the display starts counting down from 800 back to 750! Mystified, I try this a few more times before I go back and look at the manual. Turns out that was a HUGE mistake. What I was actually doing was adjusting the temperature calibration! Since I dont remember exactly how many times I tried setting the temperature, I cant easily undo those adjustments. So now I have a brand new iron whose temperature calibration is severely out of whack. There is an undocumented factory reset procedure, but this will not set the temperature calibration back to what it was when it was shipped to you, so you still might need to recalibrate it. Note that the tip thermometer you need to recalibrate it costs more than twice as much as the iron. It should not be this easy to royally mess up your iron.

I was very hesitant to spend this kind of money. However, I have a lot of LED outdoor lights to solder, and the snap connectors seldom work, my old soldering gun didnt get hot enough, it would take a long time to get the solder to stick. With this little unit, it make soldering fun again. I never thought the difference would be this great, but it really is. Considering the cost of the unit vs. my time/frustration, this unit has paid for itself, and its only been used a couple of times!

Great little station!

I used a wall plug soldering pen and then switched to this unit and the difference between the wall plug in pen and this Hakko station is night and day. If you have troubles soldering or de-soldering you will most likely need a temperature adjustable unit like this one. The Hakko soldering station is a good one for general use there are better ones, but this one meets the standard requirements in my opinion (comes with one chisel tip, sponge,wire cleaning tip the brass colored wire thing). The iron heats up in about 20-30 seconds and it is ready to solder, easy interchangeable tips and nice detached iron holster. The overall footprint is small, so bench space wasted with this station is very little. Overall, great buy to improve soldering quality with a noticeable difference without a doubt.

I use it still for many things like through hole soldering and connecting wires. However it is not suitable for microsoldering. I have advanced my skills enough to be able to do component level circuit board repair on things like laptops, and the heating accuracy and especially tip selection make it entirely unsuitable for that purpose. For most other type of work, you wont be able to find a better iron at a similar price.

very good unit

I love this thing. It heats up to 750 degrees in 40 seconds and keeps a nice even heat. The tip is small and precise but not too small. I use it mostly for tinkering with various electronic and wiring projects.

Great soldering station, gets up to temp super fast ! Easy to use !