Soldering Iron Showdown: $10 vs $1,000 Soldering Iron! Which Is The Best For You?

I do a lot of soldering. A LOT! Whether it's soldering wires onto printed circuit boards, or soldering battery leads on a lithium pack, soldering is just part of the game when it comes to anything that is powered by electricity. I often get asked what my soldering setup of choice is and why...

In this video I cover four popular soldering irons, in four different price categories. The range is from $10 to over $1,000! They include the LDK, Weller WLC100, Hakko FX888D and the monster Weller WX2. Which is my favorite? Which is best for you? Tune in to find out!

Is there another soldering iron I should have considered for the test? Which is your favorite? Leave a comment below!

SOLDERING IRONS TESTED IN THIS VIDEO:

TOOLS SHOWN IN THIS VIDEO:

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[chedwick]

I have the Hakko FX888D and I use it for PCB/electronics soldering. The reason why I watched this showdown was to validate my current knowledge, and make sure I still have a good tool for the job.

Now, your overview/showdown is a rare thing. That's the way it should be. Informative and guiding your audience to make their own decisions based on the info you provided. Great job!

[fretbuzz]

Fast heat-up is nice, but in almost every situation an iron can be heating up while the work is being prepared. The much more important thing--which you didn't cover, unfortunately--is thermal recovery and an iron's ability to maintain temp during use while heat is being sinked away.

[calvinlong]

I have a Weller WLC100 and love it! For only $33 bucks on Amazon, it's hard to beat.

[ntag]

High performance generally means shorter life. For a iron to heat/recover quickly it needs a very high power relative to its nominal static power. For the heating element to last it needs to be bigger but that means a bigger bulkier pencil.

Although not practical, similar results can be done manually with the use of a isolation transformer, Variac and monitoring equipment.

The LDK is a 60W iron which might explain why it heats to the point of melting solder quickly. That's pretty high power for a pencil iron of its size.

Warranty time is usually much shorter for professional use. Example, if consumer use it's a year, professional will likely be around 90 days.

[J.C...]

For the Weller WLC100, the base station will handle anything up to 300w. I've used mine with my D650 300w Weller soldering gun and had no problems.

[tpolarbeart]

I recently had the opportunity to use a metcal for a day and I was blown away by how good they are then blown away again by how expensive they are. It did make me upgrade to the fx-888d which I'm very happy with over my previous $30 iron.

[ChrisKnowlesTube]

Thank you Bobby for taking the time to make this. I'm an RC hobbyist and was starting to run into problems with soldering and achieving a good connection or melting connectors. After your video I ought the HAKKO from your link. Thanks so much.

[KrakkenZero]

hell a little over a minute isn't too bad compared to my radio shack iron, which the other night took 30 minutes to heat up...which is what lead me to this video lol

[turtletrading]

I have the Hakko soldering station for hobby purposes like you said. It is amazing, I would never go back or go to any other I think. It holds heat really well and it heats up really fast. I would not recommend to anyone the cheap soldering stations. I bought one but the tip is oxidizing really fast even with flux, plus there are no clear temperature readings, the heating is usually slow and when you solder a joint, you have to wait again for the thing to heat up. Just buy a decent 70-100$ station. It will serve you well in the long run. The cheap stations will infuriate you and eventually you will be forced to replace them by a good one, so in that sense they are more expensive. Probably there is no need to go crazy and buy the 900$+ models either.

[tomstrickland]

Shopping for the perfect soldering tools. So happy I stumbled upon this video. Now I know exactly what I need. Thanks for the great Showdown.

[Tim_Nilsson]

The biggest issue I have with Hakko is the colour scheme. =P
Looks like a toy.

[drip]

i have a cheep soldering station (£40 on amazon) and it is amazing, it has a dial and temp readout, 5 tips included, heats up from switch on to melting solder a few seconds faster than the hakko. the only problem is the build quality of it, but for what i need, its just fine.
mine might be faster because its running on 240v ofc.

its the hanmatek sd2 if anyone is wondering.

[Spolupyo]

Honestly, with $900 bucks to burn on a soldering station I would have gone with a JBC or an OKI Metcal.

[goodun]

That red Weller station ($65 at Home Depot in 2024) has no thermal-regulation feedback circuitry; the control circuit inside of it is nothing more than an electronic light dimmer; and therefore you can turn the heat down but you cannot turn it up. It might be useful for throttling back the heat from a 60 or 80 watt iron but the supplied 40 watt iron is pretty much useless in conjunction with this supposed "soldering station". Harbor Freight sells a Schneider soldering station with electronic temperature regulation and feedback for only $45 and it's way better than the Weller (although I recommend buying better-quality tips separately; and the cable connecting the iron to the station is too stiff to be convenient for every day use, but it could be changed out for a better, more flexible cable). The Harbor Freight unit is far better than what I had to work with as an electronics-nerd kid in the 1960s and 70s! I posted a review and teardown of the Schneider station on my channel recently along with a comparison to the Weller.

[mathewmunro]

I bought the Hakko. It was unable to get hot enough to salvage parts from a broken 500w computer power supply. It simply could not melt a large lump of solder with lots of medium-gauge pins & wires coming out of it. It's probably a lot more economical to buy multiple fixed power/temperature soldering irons than to fork out a bloody fortune for an extremely high-powered variable-power soldering iron.

[grahamhall]

Just bought YIHUA 939D+ III EVO Digital from Amazon about $80 fabulous mid pricer with 4 memory and sleep function. Fast start up love it.

[Chu]

Soldering depends what you’re soldering and levels of your skills and professionalism.If you’re a hobbyist $40-50 bucks soldering station works fines and it can lasted for you 2-3 years easily.If you’re a in the fields of electronic technologies tech. or engineering.Soldering iron stations 🚉 about $100-150 bucks works for you in 5-6 years easily.

[mdhavoc]

Thank you so much for this upload. It's not what I was originally looking for but it helped me out alot!

[iblackfeathers]

for the price, the wx2 should also come with a hot air desoldering station.
for portability, i’m looking at the recent ts80p usb c soldering iron that runs on pd 2.0 and qc 3.0 powerbanks. It heats up in seconds.
i find for my needs, portability trumps stationary.

[suprak]

13:34 watching this right after I ordered a WLC100 from amazon lol...not worries about the speed though