Hakko FX888D-23BY Digital Soldering Station FX-888D FX-888 (blue & yellow)

It’s nice but overkill for hobby work. It heats in seconds and once hot it idles along at reasonable power levels. I cannot seem to get to the presets, the up arrow button does nothing unless you you hold it down to get to the adj settings. However, for this price it should come with a few more tips. The provided one is only good for heavier stuff, you wouldn’t use it to put pigtails on the leads of to92 parts. I’ve had a lot of soldering equipment in 40 years but always pretty much took them for granted, a good station was just not that important. I also bought a $24 kit that honestly is as good as my ancient weller and would serve my purposes now but the quality and solidity of this Hakko is something I appreciate.

Ill begin by saying that I dont have very much experience when it comes to soldering. I have owned a butane Weller for a while that I use for soldering wires and large components, but I recently started working with circuit boards both at work and as a hobby. I decided that a decent, temperature-controlled soldering station was a good investment, and went with the Hakko on my fathers recommendation. I took the FX-888 to work to compare it side-by-side with their Weller WES51 stations and was blown away at the difference. To be fair, the Wes51 had a used tip vs. the FX-888s brand new one, but neither was oxidized. The Hakko heated up slightly faster, tinned slightly easier, and was generally a pleasure to work with. The Hakkos cord between the iron and station is also lighter and more flexible - a small detail that I noticed right away. The inclusion of the brass sponge and rubber tip cleaners in addition to the standard sponge is very welcome, and having them all right there in the stand means that you wont have extra items cluttering your desk. I do wish it came with a smaller tip, either a conical tip or a smaller spade. It is also impossible to find tips for the Hakko locally - a problem I wouldnt have with a Weller, since theres a supplier in the area - but I knew both of these issues before I bought it, and they arent major. Overall, Im loving this iron. Its within the budget of a serious hobbyist, but I feel certain it could be used every day at work with no problems.

Ive been saying that Im learning to solder for a long time now and thats because I never purchased the proper iron and so I thought it was the fact that I lacked the skill and know how. Now I know the cheaper irons, which I have 2 of, one is not temp controlled and the other just didnt get hot enough. If I would have known that I just needed to invest in a great iron, I would have empowered myself a long time ago. Its sturdy, easy to use, easy to change the controls and I like that the power unit is separate from the holder. The only thing I would suggest is if you are soldering pcbs youll probably need to purchase an additional tip as the one included works but is a little wide for tiny pcb probject IMHO.

I purchased this soldering station to replace a crappy Radio Shack 20watt/40Watt soldering iron. I solder mainly for hobby/repair applications and this soldering station is a REAL step up from my crappy soldering iron. Review Update: Ive been using this soldering station for the last 1.5 years. I love this soldering station! I actually look forward to soldering with it. It is really not even fair comparing this soldering station with my old Radio Shack 20watt/40Watt soldering iron. My old iron seemed to take forever to heat up and the tips were GARBAGE. I love that the Hakko FX-888 soldering station heats up from cold in just a couple seconds. The transformer is nice and heavy and has great rubber feet. The power cord attached to the transformer is heavy weight, and as a result, is rather stiff. Even with a stiff heavy weight power cord, the weight of the transformer (plus the grip of the rubber feet) is enough to keep the transformer where you put it. The pencil holder also stays where you put it. The pencil holder is all metal and is nice and heavy. While in the pencil holder, the heated portions of the iron are almost completely covered. The cord on the soldering iron is a decent weight but the cord is not stiff. Its nice and floppy. The soldering tip is amazing and is very resistant to oxidation. By using the sponge and the wire cleaner built into the pencil holder, it is very easy to maximize the life of the tip. The selection of tips that can be purchased and used with this soldering station, in my amateur opinion, is really impressive. I love this soldering station! Using this soldering station and proper soldering techniques, I am able to consistently produce high quality solder connections without overheating components.

Im using this for various applications, from soldering tabbing wire on delicate solar cells, soldering components on perf boards, to soldering wires of various wires together. The temperature control is a necessity for these various uses and the Hakko works great. This Hakko is great if you plan to solder more than a few things as its quite affordable for the semi serious, but quality enough to please a professional. The time to heat up is very quick and you can start to solder within 10-15 seconds. Other fixed wattage irons Ive used take a minute or more and you cant really tell if its reached its proper temperature. The Hakko will show when its reached the desired temperature. Simply turn it on seconds before you need it and itll be ready. I was impressed. Setting the temperature is actually quite nice, but you might need to read the instruction manual (gasp!) to figure out how to do it the first time since the two button interface isnt intuitive. The iron holder comes with the sponge and wire, which makes cleaning off the iron very easy. Its also very stable feeling and made of metal so it feels like a quality stand. The iron cable is a nice soft silicon which makes handling and moving the iron effortless as the wire wont stiffen up, twist, or get in your way. Fixed irons with their stiff cables retain the bends and twists that they get so you might knock something off your desk thats three feet away. But not with the Hakko and its those little things that make this unit a joy. This is my first variable wattage iron so its leagues above a fixed wattage iron. After using a variable temperature iron, you cant go back.

Hakko is a big name. Their desoldering tool is the best there is--but this soldering station is a hassle to set and doesnt hold temperature all that well. It also doesnt recover quickly. At least not as well as my old Youyue 858D (who?) which had a single temperature knob. One touch. The Hakko, on the other hand, requires several presses to set the temperature. As much as I wanted to love this iron, it slows me down. I recommend the popular cheapo alternative. Not the 888D.

Great iron. Durable and dependable.

All I can say is I wish I had bought one sooner. The Days of waiting are over, this thing is ready in seconds.

Yes, the build quality is good, and yes, it does the job well. Theres something you should know before buying it, though. I wish I had known. Other reviewers have been very charitable in describing the controls as not intuitive. For the sake of forewarning future buyers, Ill be blunt: The user interface is a steaming pile of... um... garbage. You get a three-digit display and two buttons that each serve multiple functions. That design decision alone was foolishly stingy, as others have noted. A knob and another digit (for displaying short words) would have done wonders, and I would gladly have paid the extra $3 in hardware costs. Especially since these controls are required for even the simplest of operations, like setting the temperature. The two buttons you get are labeled: UP and ENTER, but those labels are misleading, because neither matches the corresponding buttons function in the devices normal operating state. If you find your way into the settings menu (which you cannot do with the buttons alone) the four top-level categories are represented by mysterious, disjointed numbers: 01, 03, 11, 14. Even if youre a programmer who habitually translates decimal numbers to binary, this menu is still meaningless. Its all the more insulting to discover that letters *can* be displayed, as they are in the submenus; just not here, the menu where they are arguably needed most. Want to raise the temperature while youre working? Pressing the UP button wont do it. You must hold the ENTER button for a while, then wait, then repeatedly press the UP button until the first digit of your target temperature appears (and then nine more times if you overshoot), then press ENTER, and then do it again for each additional digit, until the display shows your target temperature and you press ENTER a final time. Its like having to program a 1970s/1980s videocassette recorder... just to adjust the temperature of your soldering iron. Okay, that madness is not the end of the world, but adding injury to insult, can you guess what happens if you accidentally (and understandably) hold the UP button instead of ENTER to adjust the temp? It takes you through the same procedure, making it look at first like you succeeded, and then reverts to displaying the original temperature. Want to know why it didnt work? That was the procedure to recalibrate the machines temperature control. Congratulations: Now every temperature the machine displays is wrong, and will remain wrong even after a power cycle, because the machine tricked you. Oh, and it doesnt tell what happened, so its very possible that youre now soldering at a much higher temperature than you think. I hope you didnt damage any components. What if you somehow figure out what happened and you want to fix it? Too bad. The manual doesnt tell you how. It doesnt even mention that it can be done. Youll have to wait until you can reach Hakko support, or else find a note online from some other unfortunate soul who was also burned by this unforgivably awful excuse for an interface. I hope it happened during business hours and you have a phone nearby, or youre someplace that has internet connectivity. For the record, here is the secret factory reset procedure: 1. Turn off the power switch. 2. Hold the UP and ENTER buttons. 3. Turn on the power switch with those buttons still held. 4. Wait until the display says A. 5. Release the buttons. 6. press UP to make the display say U. 7. Press ENTER. I hope that saves someone some trouble. Dear Hakko, Please do better in the future.

Having safely made the jump from a $20 soldering iron (Velleman) to this wonderful $80 soldering iron I can now say that I know how to solder. If you are trying to decide if the extra $60 is worth it then stop right now and just buy this one. I went from putting down globs of solder to creating finely shaped tiny works of art. Here are a couple of things that are different between this soldering iron and the one I came from: The Hakko gets AT LEAST 200 degrees F hotter. I dont know how hot the other one gets, but I had a hard time getting lead free solder to melt with it. The Hakko does so easily at 700 degrees (goes up to 900). I havent tried it out at a lower temp yet. It is nice to know what temp I am using. The tip that came with the Hakko is larger than the one that came with the velleman. In spite of this it is considerably easier to solder small parts. Replacement tips for the Hakko run about twice as much, but they also last at least twice as long. Ive done more soldering with the tip that came with (T18-D16) than I did with the last two tips I used on the velleman and it still looks brand new. It was next to impossible to tin the Velleman tips. It is quite easy with the Hakko. The Hakko comes with setup, calibration, and cleaning instructions. The Velleman came with a box. Having a flexible cord is quite nice, although personally it isnt a selling point. One extra thought for anyone else who is considering upgrading from a lower end soldering iron: This one comes with an on/off switch. This is important to note so that you dont just turn the dial like you did on your cheap one and then panic when it doesnt do anything (like me). The tip in a bag that is pictured up top is the one that comes with it. It is not an extra tip. You only get one tip. It is a good general purpose tip. I am going to buy the T18-B, T18-BL, and the T18-I to complement it. Oddly enough, this isnt iron I meant to buy. I had added it to my cart while I looked at the Weller with the LCD screen. I ended up deciding that I wanted the digital temp readout but forgot to add the Weller to my cart. When I was done shopping for other things I didnt look closely at my cart and didnt realize I had the wrong iron. So far I do not regret my mistake, but I DO wish I had a digital read out and a tip temp sensor. Oh well :D