WEP882D Soldering Iron Station 2-IN-1 SMD Hot Air Rework Station with 2 Spools of Solder Wire, 5 Soldering Tips, 3 Hot Air Nozzles, Brass Wool Tip Cleaner, Tweezers, Desoldering pump

I have had this unit since Christmas, but hadn't been able to put it to use until the past few weeks. This unit has been everything I had hoped for and more - frankly, it has exceeded my expectations!The unit is compact enough to keep on my desk, and it is convenient to use - easy to adjust temperature, clear readouts, easy to switch from the hot air to the iron and vice-versa.This is my first experience with a hot-air unit, and I am so glad I got it - so convenient for SMD work. I have found it equally effective for initial soldering of SMD components (using solder paste) and for re-work. On the prototype board I have been working on, I have been experimenting with different resistor and capacitor values, and must have soldered, de-soldered, swapped out, and re-soldered some of the components at least a dozen times, with no problems.I can't (yet) comment on the longevity of the unit, but thus far it has worked flawlessly. It feels like it is well built; switches and knobs work smoothly.I'm impressed! Highly recommended.Update 1 year later: I have continued to be extremely pleased with this unit. I do not use it heavily, but from time to time I have been in the midst of a project and have used it for several days in a row, a few hours at a time. It continues to do everything I have needed. The hot air wand allows soldering small SMD components with excellent results (typically using a dab of solder paste on each contact, but sometimes re-soldering an SMD component onto an existing bit of solder with a dab of flux), and I also use it frequently at a lower setting for heat-shrink tubing. The regular iron has sufficient range to solder smaller components at lower heat or to solder onto a ground plane or heavy-gauge wire with the heat turned up. Auto-sleep mode works flawlessly.I don't know if my experience is typical or if I happened to get a unicorn unit, but I am astonished at the performance - not just its performance relative to its affordable price, which is even more impressive, but its performance overall. I don't have any experience with high-end, expensive units, so I don't know what I may be missing ... but I have yet to think of anything I wish for that it cannot do.The only thing I can think of to complain about - and it's not much of a complaint - is that the vacuum desoldering tool is pretty much useless. If you are buying the unit for that feature, don't - get a powered unit that applies heat to the desoldering tip. That said, they could eliminate the vacuum desoldering tool from the listing, and it would not change my evaluation of the value of this unit at all. Still highly recommended.

As usual I fond myself someplace where I did not have access to the soldering stations I already have. I needed to do a repair on a truck sensor plug. The soldering station worked to solder two 18 gauge copper wires so nothing special or unusual other than I thought that I had to increase the temperature a little to get the job done more so than what I would have done on my other soldering stations. It did work.What I found exceptional was the hot air rework feature. It comes with several nozzles of different sizes and the speed of the fan can be varied. That feature was GREAT for heating the shrink rap tubing that I put on to cover the bare wires. For me that feature and convenience was worth the price of the station. The biggest problem with shrink rap tubing is heating it so that it will shrink without damaging or burning up the wires in the surrounding area. Most heat guns supply too much hot air or too hot of air that effects the surrounding area in a negative way. The old standby the BIC lighter is hard to control evenly with out again damaging the surrounding wires,area.Construction is not great but it is serviceable if not abused. As far as temp control I have no idea as I do not have an accurate way to check temp or variations. The hot air has a turn on / shut off feature that when the cradle it is off and when you remove the hot air wand it turns on. Magnetic switch would be my guess. It does work well and is handy although when it gets hot you have to be careful putting the wand in the cradle.Would I purchase another one? I do not know yet it depends on how long this one lasts especially the hot air rework feature which I would still use even if the soldering iron quit.

It works and functions great! It's built very durable and with good materials. It heats up crazy fast and the design of the blower is great. I've used it for soldering small micro chips to heating the back of iPhones to change their back glass. It came with several solder and blower tips. I recommend this. Try it

The soldering iron and hot air tool heat up very quickly to temp. It appears as though (at least for the soldering iron) the temp is regulated very well. (Having been certified as MIL-STD-200 and IPC-A-610 and in electronics manufacturing, I can tell when an iron won't recover and regulate heat well.) This is to say, I can't really verify if a set value is a correct value- but, once it is set, it keeps its heat. I soldered pin headers and larger components with it for its trial run. A very feature of this unit is that, when you turn a tool off, the display stays on to view the current, ongoing temperature. Also, the hot air tool continues to supply air to cool down more quickly. The tools are independently controlled and can be active at the same time.A bonus of this item is that it is lightweight and has a small footprint, considering that the rework tool is, as is necessary, a significant size. This means that it's portable and takes less real estate on your workbench. In fact, I used this in my hotel room.A downside of that small size is that it wants to move around quite a bit. I recommend something like a mouse pad or other rubber to stabilize it on your workbench. The soldering iron fits snugly into its holder, which IS nice- but the light weight unit has to be held on to when removing the iron from its holder when it is fully seated. Again, fastening to a small board or using a rubber pad could help this.Lastly, it would be really nice if the hot air tool could be removed from the unit- as I don't use this tool nearly as often as the iron. However, expense would be higher in order to make this modification at the factory.Overall, the missing star is just a workflow thing- I felt like I had to have my extra hand on it to use it, and the unnecessary hot air tool and cord gets in the way. While you can easily modify your station to remove this issue, the fact is that, out of the box, you will find it a bit lightweight for constant use.