Hakko Soldering Station, FX951-66

I have been looking for an affordable high quality soldering station and I think this one is great. What I like about it is how fast it warms up. From cold to 800F + in about 10 seconds. The sleep function works great. Beware that you have to jam the tip into the holder very deep to get it to engage with the electrical connection. If you get a E-5 display on the station, it probably means the tip is not inserted far enough. If you get a e-5 then put the tip on a hard surface with the white banded side in the holder and press on the tip with about 50 lbs of force. It will click again and will start to heat up. I had to call Hakko technical service to get my tip inserted enough and they explained the procedure. I will say that Hakko technical help was extremely helpful and patient. One more thing. There are a lot to of reviews that say the user interface is the pits. I disagree. I downloaded two manuals from Hakko's website. One of them went though the full menu of options for the station. After reading that I found the interface very easy to manage.

Every time I use my Hakko I wonder, why didn't I buy this thing sooner? I previously had purchased one of the X-tronic models that are so well reviewed on Amazon. I ended up hating it. The X-Tronic has a really annoying heating element that would constantly break and need replaced because the handle was poorly designed. The cord attached to the heating element directly and put too much stress on the ceramic casing. The result was a LOT of cracked heating elements. My Hakko has no such problems. It's obvious the design guys at Hakko put a lot of time in to making sure their products will work consistently for long periods of time. Also the user experience is incredible. The handle is light weight, which I love. The X-Tronic always felt cumbersome and I dreaded projects that required a great deal of precision. With the Hakko I look forward to soldering. It's just so graceful at what it does. It's always the right temperature, the cord never feels tangled, and it takes up very little space on my desk. The holster is 10x better as well. The X-Tronic I had was designed so that the hot metal actually touched the plastic so that over time it would melt slightly until the iron no longer fit snugly. This holster is completely metal and ceramic. I can plop the iron down carelessly into it without fear of accidentally stabbing and melting plastic. One other huge plus, this thing goes in to standby while holstered. I'm very forgetful and this has helped to both keep my room from becoming a sauna and my power bill from reaching Tier 4, which in California can get extremely expensive. Bottom Line: I can't say enough good things about this soldering station. If you have the money to purchase this over the X-Tronic models, do it. Also, don't forget that tips are sold separately!!

I love this station. Solid build quality, easy to use, it heats up quick. It does a really good job at maintaining temperature too, which I noticed another top brand would fluctuate constantly. I love the sleep feature but the way to set the temperature is a bit cumbersome when I’m working on something that requires me to swap between temp often. I also love how easy it is to swap tips, it’s so much easier than the other guys.

I ordered this with the Hakko T15-DL32 chisel tip. The primary purpose of my setup is splicing and soldering 8 AWG to 18 AWG copper wires for 12 volt work. I am not doing any fine component level work and while it's nice that I have the option of doing so (with the purchase of the appropriate tip), I have no plans of doing so at this time. To me this is a high-end iron with a high-end price tag. In my research I have become aware that there are higher-end models with commensurately higher price tags. So far I do not regret dismissing them from consideration. This station is leaps and bounds better than the small army of Radio Shack irons in the bottom of the toolbox that sometimes work OK, the butane iron that melts everything in an eight inch radius from the work piece, and the clumsy Weller pistol iron that (in my hands) does approximately the same damage as the butane iron. Upon unboxing and assembly, I noticed that the control card fit loosely into the station. This seemed strange to me. So I went to the Hakko USA website, looking for contact information found a chat option, and choosing that was promptly connected to a Hakko rep. I asked if this was normal and was reassured that it was. Now I'm not particularly fond of the existence of the control card, or how loose it fits, or that I will inevitably lose it in the process of regular shop shenanigans, but I did appreciate that I had a question about one of Hakko's products and it was very easy to reach them and get a straight answer. This is a net plus one in my opinion. Speaking of unboxing... the product is packaged very well. The assembly instructions are complete, but the user instructions are not. For example: nowhere in the enclosed instructions does it explain how to switch from °F to °C, nor in any of the documentation I could find on their website (Japan or USA). I had to waste more time than I'd care to searching for those instructions, and ultimately find them in the midst of a user review on the YouTubes. Everything feels heavy and sturdy enough but... the color scheme. They look like toys. The upside to this is that my fellow worker schleppers may be dissuaded from temptation to use or borrow the equipment but... really not schmexy at all. Anything would have been better. Black. Maybe a little lighter shade of black (which I'm told some people call gray). Heck for this many pesos maybe put some brushed aluminum somewhere. I dunno. The blue and yellow scheme is a not a serious look. And I know I just accused this umpteen hundred dollar piece of equipment of looking like a toy but thankfully it does not perform like one. 70W to the iron results in a heat up time that is much faster than I'm accustomed to. Even with the sleep function, by the time I get the iron out of the holder and get it close to where I'm ready to get to work, I've already heard the beep and I know it's ready to go. I can put it on a big heat sink like a couple of 8 AWG cables, jobs I know other irons I've used can't do, and this one handles them just fine. Even on 18 AWG wires, the work heats up fast and evenly, the solder flows extremely well, and my solder joints look better than they ever have. Indeed they may mechanically be better than they ever have. (I have also "upgraded" to Kester 24-6337-0027 63/37 solder, which I can also recommend as working very well) So in summary: the iron works very well. I have no regrets about the money spent versus the performance of the product. The support from the manufacturer, so far in my experience, has been top notch. Two improvements I would make if given the opportunity is: (1) change the cheesy color; (2) have a firmware option to turn off the control card feature. All told: 8/10, would recommend. Tip purchased with station: Hakko T15-DL32 Tip Chisel 3.2 x 10mm for FM-2021/FM-2027/FM-203/FM-204/FM-205/FM-206/FX-951 Solder purchased with station: Kester 24-6337-0027 Solder Roll, Core Size 66, 63/37 Alloy, 0.031" Diameter