The price seems quite steep when you compare it to other offerings already on the market (like the Pinecil). Although IFixit of course is known for reliable products and this one specifically has...
The price seems quite steep when you compare it to other offerings already on the market (like the Pinecil).
Although IFixit of course is known for reliable products and this one specifically has some unique things:
Higher wattage (100 compared to 60 for most others)
Heat-resistant storage cap
Heat-resistant cable (some of the others require you to source your own cable)
Locking ring on the cable
A few other QoL features seem to make it a user-friendly product.
Interestingly enough the settings can not be changed on the iron itself. You either need to do it connected to a computer or with the power station. The latter also makes the entire offering quite expensive.
I was initially really interested when I read the verge article, but that interest waned the further down I got: Needing a computer, or a ~$200 add on to control the settings is a non starter. The...
I was initially really interested when I read the verge article, but that interest waned the further down I got:
Needing a computer, or a ~$200 add on to control the settings is a non starter.
The tips are expensive ($20 for 1 vs $25 for 4 pinecil tips), and prorietary
The tips are proprietary? I thought I'd seen that 3.5mm jack style before though? Or are they physically or electrically(resistance values / current rating) different somehow that prevents other...
The tips are proprietary? I thought I'd seen that 3.5mm jack style before though? Or are they physically or electrically(resistance values / current rating) different somehow that prevents other 3.5mm cartridges from working?
Well that's my reminder to scrutinize things I read on the internet. I'd never seen a tip with a 3.5mm jack before, and read a comment somewhere else claiming that the tip was proprietary. I let...
Well that's my reminder to scrutinize things I read on the internet.
I'd never seen a tip with a 3.5mm jack before, and read a comment somewhere else claiming that the tip was proprietary. I let confirmation bias get the better of me.
So, I was sure I'd seen that style before, but then when I started searching for it nothing was coming up - I was searching for 3.5mm soldering cartridge and such related search terms, then tried...
So, I was sure I'd seen that style before, but then when I started searching for it nothing was coming up - I was searching for 3.5mm soldering cartridge and such related search terms, then tried searching for T100 replacements and those looked like what Pinecil uses (not the 3.5mm jack style), finally I found it - it's the style the T80 model from Miniware uses.
So, for my post before - I was genuinely asking that as a question from the point of view of 'I'm super sure I've seen that before but damn if I can find an example, could I have imagined it?' at the time I posted that.
Ya, its weird. I wouldn't say that makes it a non starter for me, but I already have a pinecil + their silicone usb-c cable (which is super cheap and very nice and flexy), so I can't see me...
Interestingly enough the settings can not be changed on the iron itself. You either need to do it connected to a computer or with the power station. The latter also makes the entire offering quite expensive.
Ya, its weird. I wouldn't say that makes it a non starter for me, but I already have a pinecil + their silicone usb-c cable (which is super cheap and very nice and flexy), so I can't see me switching. If my pinecil breaks I might buy the iFixit one though, minus the power station.
In particular, I think the price for the station is too high. I would consider buying a set if they offered a station without the battery for a much better price. I'm always going to be near an...
In particular, I think the price for the station is too high. I would consider buying a set if they offered a station without the battery for a much better price. I'm always going to be near an outlet when I'm soldering.
The Smart Soldering Iron is $79.95 / €84.95 / £74.99, the Portable Soldering Station including the iron and battery pack is $249.95 / €269.95 / £239.99, and the Soldering Toolkit with the iron, battery pack, pliers, and all the tools you need to solder on the go is $299.95 / €329.95 / £289.99.
The iron looks really nice. I have never had a problem with a friction fit connection coming off of my TS-100 iron before, but the locking connector and included cable is nice to have. The one...
The iron looks really nice. I have never had a problem with a friction fit connection coming off of my TS-100 iron before, but the locking connector and included cable is nice to have.
The one thing that makes this a no-go for me is the lack of an interface on the iron itself, requiring you to either have access to a computer or shelling out for the $250 combo with the battery pack. It looks like a nice battery pack and all, but that's way too much money. Sure, the Pinecil doesn't include a battery or a cable, but the missing parts are things most people will already have and it retails for roughly 10 times less money.
In any case, it seems in the past few years it has trended that a newer shinier version of these pen-sized soldering irons comes out just about every year, but with few exceptions it's rarely worth upgrading if you already have something. My TS-100 works perfectly fine for my usage and the tips are very easy to source when I need to replace them. Even though I'm jealous of the USB-C powered ones, there's not really a good excuse to purchase one. I haven't bought the Pinecil even though it's practically in impulse buy territory.
Yup, it does make things really expensive. While I don't doubt it will be of good quality considering it is IFixit, I am not sure it needs to be that high in price.
It looks like a nice battery pack and all, but that's way too much money.
Yup, it does make things really expensive. While I don't doubt it will be of good quality considering it is IFixit, I am not sure it needs to be that high in price.
I love iFixit and their approach, generally. They have missed the target here. The price tag is only one part of that. They should have made the temperature be set on the iron itself. Once you...
I love iFixit and their approach, generally.
They have missed the target here. The price tag is only one part of that. They should have made the temperature be set on the iron itself. Once you have to use PC or phone o set it, it's borderline unusable.
I have TS100 and also Pinecil. I use the latter all the time with TS100 being the backup solution. Both of those are fully capable of.working just by themselves. If you need temperature changed you can do it literally in seconds by pressing buttons on the iron itself. Other things can be set too and the UI is probably worse than web interfave of iFixit iron, but you don't set those everyday, so you can spend those say 15 minutes of initial setup when you get the iron and be done.
I won't be buying this iFixit iron. I'm a fanboy but this is too expensive and seems to be too cumbersome to use. Simply bad buy for me, impractical. Too bad, as when I saw the title I immediately thought "That would be great thing to buy!" but I don't think so anymore.
Of course, I don't know how often you adjust the temperature of your iron while soldering. But, I feel it is safe to say that most people only set the temperature once for most soldering jobs....
Once you have to use PC or phone o set it, it's borderline unusable.
Of course, I don't know how often you adjust the temperature of your iron while soldering. But, I feel it is safe to say that most people only set the temperature once for most soldering jobs. Which also seems to be the reasoning IFixit used according to the hackaday article.
Which I feel like must have been a way to keep the price of the iron itself lower. Or, to make the internals of the iron not too complex so it is easier to repair. Given the price of the base station I feel like cost must have been a consideration.
Which does raise some questions to me. Why is the base station so expensive? Granted, it is a 100watt powerbank, so some of the cost goes in there. But if that was the biggest factor, I feel like they would have offered a version without the powerbank components and just the control circuits like a more traditional base station.
So, assuming IFixit isn't just cashing in with a large margin, why are the Chinese USB-C soldering irons so much cheaper? Are their margins so much smaller? Possibly development cost? Specifically, Pine64 is known to dump products on the market and leave it to the community to tune the software side of things. This in turn also leads to cheaper products as they have less development costs to recoup.
When I solder (make) something myself, I use pre-set temperature the whole job. But when a friend calls me to do something on their thing, I don't know if the solder is lead-free, if it would melt...
When I solder (make) something myself, I use pre-set temperature the whole job. But when a friend calls me to do something on their thing, I don't know if the solder is lead-free, if it would melt using 300C or I hae to crank it up. 20 years old solder is often with lead and still it won't do with (for me) standard 300C. And when you have to diassemble half the thing (say motocycle in the garage) only to find you can't solder because of the bad temperature setting, you don't usually want to bring in laptop (that is if you have one) on top of all the other things you already have there.
Let's say that I can see usecases where using this specific iron would be more of a nuisance than using alternatives. And I speak from my very own experience, I would hate to be unable to solder just because I can't set the temperature on the spot - be it because I have my hand covered by oil or because I don't have notebook (or phone) at hand or any other stuff.
Pinecil does it much cheaper and it works. Yes, it's probably not the same quality as iFixit, but it certainly has advantages other than price.
As I said, I love iFixit, you could call me fanboy, but this piece of their hardware is not for me. I can see it being perfectly fine in electronics lab or other such environment, but not that much out there in the wild.
So, as a product, this is a fairly nice entry to the field soldering arena... if you don't look at the price tag. I like the features - that it uses USB-C (at first the plug end looked proprietary...
So, as a product, this is a fairly nice entry to the field soldering arena... if you don't look at the price tag.
I like the features - that it uses USB-C (at first the plug end looked proprietary until I realized that was just the extra lock-in-place cap on top), the on/off switch instead of a button is nice from the perspective of having no misunderstanding about 'did it turn off?'. I like the iron cover cap as a holder and a safety, and as a whole it is nicely compact.
The price makes the whole thing unacceptable to me.
I think my whole field soldering kit cost around that (maybe less?) - Pinecil, Anker power bank, high wattage micro wall plug, solder, flux, tools, heat shrink and more...
I made a couple videos on my kit: video 1 isn't as updated but it has better audio, here's video 2 which shows my current updates to the kit but.. sorry about the audio quality on that one, you need to turn up the volume to hear it.
I mean, the Pinecil really sets the standard for field soldering on value for money. Are there higher power options? Yes. Is the Pinecil enough to do the job? In my experience, YES. I can't really justify the cost difference here. Now, show me a field soldering option that uses JBC cartridges and I'll pay attention.
Now, to be fair, from what I understand a bunch of stuff sold by the Pine store is priced at basically minimum/no profit and is run to put maker tools into maker hands as cheaply as possible by people who are part of the maker community. That DOES make it hard or even unreasonable to expect other products to be able to compete on price. But as the people who use these tools, it isn't our job to 'be fair' to a company's profit margins, even a nice company like iFixit. It's our job to get the best tool to price ratio out of our hard earned money - and at $26, I just don't see anything that competes with the Pinecil when it comes to value for money.
I have one of the smaller irons (a ts100 or pinecil, i forget) and I have a decent entry level hakko station. I don't see this replacing either? The entire upside of the smaller irons is the...
I have one of the smaller irons (a ts100 or pinecil, i forget) and I have a decent entry level hakko station.
I don't see this replacing either? The entire upside of the smaller irons is the entire kit is insanely small and fits in just about anything, while also being quite cheap and "good enough" for whatever minor work you're doing (keyboards in my case).
The upside of something like a hakko is...well it's a fucking hakko and they make a good tool for serious use cases.
I do like that it's a "middle" size depending on your kit with a smaller iron, and maybe if I didn't have the hakko i'd look at this, but god not having controls on the iron itself is SUCH a miss. You MUST bring their battery pack or, somehow, hook it up to a computer with chrome/edge to use their web system to adjust settings, before plugging it back into whatever thing is giving it 100w (because it's sure as shit not your computer USB port?)
Thinking about it a bit more, it does have some interesting features and I like the focus on repairable systems, but god I just cannot have yet another device that's "app only oops!". I do believe that if I didn't own the hakko i'd probably pick this up as it would be considered my less portable option, and I suppose that it's certainly easier to lug around than the hakko should I one day decide I need a 100w iron for travel, but I doubt that. I don't really remember what I spent on the hakko and I suppose that would've been a big part of the math as well.
You can even find entire cheap Chinese FPV repair kits for ~$20 that include an analog soldering iron with LiPo connector, plus much of the other stuff in this kit....far less than 300 bucks.
So, I had previously commented in this thread about the Pinecil setting the standard for cost value among field soldering irons (at $26), but as is the case recently in this kind of tech space,...
So, I had previously commented in this thread about the Pinecil setting the standard for cost value among field soldering irons (at $26), but as is the case recently in this kind of tech space, developments in China progress rapidly given the combination of the concentration of tech manufacturing and the wild west-esq government-sponsored mass espionage / IP theft that is part of China's economic and strategic policies... (sorry, tangent there).
Anyway, Fnirsi (the name pains me) has come out with a USB-C iron for $40 - the HS-02 that appears to have the same style of cap (no idea if it is heat-resistant though) AND IT IS JBC CARTRIDGE COMPATIBLE!! They sell it with knock-off cartridges of course, but it works with JBC style T245 cartridges which means we now have a field-portable iron that we can pair with the best cartridges out there (admittedly, genuine JBC carts cost almost as much as the iron does).
The price seems quite steep when you compare it to other offerings already on the market (like the Pinecil).
Although IFixit of course is known for reliable products and this one specifically has some unique things:
Interestingly enough the settings can not be changed on the iron itself. You either need to do it connected to a computer or with the power station. The latter also makes the entire offering quite expensive.
Some other links
Lastly, this feels like ~tech? Not entirely sure though...
I was initially really interested when I read the verge article, but that interest waned the further down I got:
and prorietaryedit: Tips may not be prioprietary
The tips are proprietary? I thought I'd seen that 3.5mm jack style before though? Or are they physically or electrically(resistance values / current rating) different somehow that prevents other 3.5mm cartridges from working?
Well that's my reminder to scrutinize things I read on the internet.
I'd never seen a tip with a 3.5mm jack before, and read a comment somewhere else claiming that the tip was proprietary. I let confirmation bias get the better of me.
My bad!
So, I was sure I'd seen that style before, but then when I started searching for it nothing was coming up - I was searching for 3.5mm soldering cartridge and such related search terms, then tried searching for T100 replacements and those looked like what Pinecil uses (not the 3.5mm jack style), finally I found it - it's the style the T80 model from Miniware uses.
So, for my post before - I was genuinely asking that as a question from the point of view of 'I'm super sure I've seen that before but damn if I can find an example, could I have imagined it?' at the time I posted that.
Ya, its weird. I wouldn't say that makes it a non starter for me, but I already have a pinecil + their silicone usb-c cable (which is super cheap and very nice and flexy), so I can't see me switching. If my pinecil breaks I might buy the iFixit one though, minus the power station.
Yeah, the Pinecil really sets the standard on value-for-money in portable soldering irons.
In particular, I think the price for the station is too high. I would consider buying a set if they offered a station without the battery for a much better price. I'm always going to be near an outlet when I'm soldering.
https://www.ifixit.com/products/fixhub-power-series-smart-soldering-iron
Exactly - it's a huge jump in price between the iron and the station, and I think they'd do well to introduce a cheaper, wired station.
The iron looks really nice. I have never had a problem with a friction fit connection coming off of my TS-100 iron before, but the locking connector and included cable is nice to have.
The one thing that makes this a no-go for me is the lack of an interface on the iron itself, requiring you to either have access to a computer or shelling out for the $250 combo with the battery pack. It looks like a nice battery pack and all, but that's way too much money. Sure, the Pinecil doesn't include a battery or a cable, but the missing parts are things most people will already have and it retails for roughly 10 times less money.
In any case, it seems in the past few years it has trended that a newer shinier version of these pen-sized soldering irons comes out just about every year, but with few exceptions it's rarely worth upgrading if you already have something. My TS-100 works perfectly fine for my usage and the tips are very easy to source when I need to replace them. Even though I'm jealous of the USB-C powered ones, there's not really a good excuse to purchase one. I haven't bought the Pinecil even though it's practically in impulse buy territory.
Yup, it does make things really expensive. While I don't doubt it will be of good quality considering it is IFixit, I am not sure it needs to be that high in price.
I love iFixit and their approach, generally.
They have missed the target here. The price tag is only one part of that. They should have made the temperature be set on the iron itself. Once you have to use PC or phone o set it, it's borderline unusable.
I have TS100 and also Pinecil. I use the latter all the time with TS100 being the backup solution. Both of those are fully capable of.working just by themselves. If you need temperature changed you can do it literally in seconds by pressing buttons on the iron itself. Other things can be set too and the UI is probably worse than web interfave of iFixit iron, but you don't set those everyday, so you can spend those say 15 minutes of initial setup when you get the iron and be done.
I won't be buying this iFixit iron. I'm a fanboy but this is too expensive and seems to be too cumbersome to use. Simply bad buy for me, impractical. Too bad, as when I saw the title I immediately thought "That would be great thing to buy!" but I don't think so anymore.
Of course, I don't know how often you adjust the temperature of your iron while soldering. But, I feel it is safe to say that most people only set the temperature once for most soldering jobs. Which also seems to be the reasoning IFixit used according to the hackaday article.
Which I feel like must have been a way to keep the price of the iron itself lower. Or, to make the internals of the iron not too complex so it is easier to repair. Given the price of the base station I feel like cost must have been a consideration.
Which does raise some questions to me. Why is the base station so expensive? Granted, it is a 100watt powerbank, so some of the cost goes in there. But if that was the biggest factor, I feel like they would have offered a version without the powerbank components and just the control circuits like a more traditional base station.
So, assuming IFixit isn't just cashing in with a large margin, why are the Chinese USB-C soldering irons so much cheaper? Are their margins so much smaller? Possibly development cost? Specifically, Pine64 is known to dump products on the market and leave it to the community to tune the software side of things. This in turn also leads to cheaper products as they have less development costs to recoup.
When I solder (make) something myself, I use pre-set temperature the whole job. But when a friend calls me to do something on their thing, I don't know if the solder is lead-free, if it would melt using 300C or I hae to crank it up. 20 years old solder is often with lead and still it won't do with (for me) standard 300C. And when you have to diassemble half the thing (say motocycle in the garage) only to find you can't solder because of the bad temperature setting, you don't usually want to bring in laptop (that is if you have one) on top of all the other things you already have there.
Let's say that I can see usecases where using this specific iron would be more of a nuisance than using alternatives. And I speak from my very own experience, I would hate to be unable to solder just because I can't set the temperature on the spot - be it because I have my hand covered by oil or because I don't have notebook (or phone) at hand or any other stuff.
Pinecil does it much cheaper and it works. Yes, it's probably not the same quality as iFixit, but it certainly has advantages other than price.
As I said, I love iFixit, you could call me fanboy, but this piece of their hardware is not for me. I can see it being perfectly fine in electronics lab or other such environment, but not that much out there in the wild.
Oh yeah, that I what I meant with saying I can't comment on your use case.
So, as a product, this is a fairly nice entry to the field soldering arena... if you don't look at the price tag.
I like the features - that it uses USB-C (at first the plug end looked proprietary until I realized that was just the extra lock-in-place cap on top), the on/off switch instead of a button is nice from the perspective of having no misunderstanding about 'did it turn off?'. I like the iron cover cap as a holder and a safety, and as a whole it is nicely compact.
The price makes the whole thing unacceptable to me.
I think my whole field soldering kit cost around that (maybe less?) - Pinecil, Anker power bank, high wattage micro wall plug, solder, flux, tools, heat shrink and more...
I made a couple videos on my kit: video 1 isn't as updated but it has better audio, here's video 2 which shows my current updates to the kit but.. sorry about the audio quality on that one, you need to turn up the volume to hear it.
I mean, the Pinecil really sets the standard for field soldering on value for money. Are there higher power options? Yes. Is the Pinecil enough to do the job? In my experience, YES. I can't really justify the cost difference here. Now, show me a field soldering option that uses JBC cartridges and I'll pay attention.
Now, to be fair, from what I understand a bunch of stuff sold by the Pine store is priced at basically minimum/no profit and is run to put maker tools into maker hands as cheaply as possible by people who are part of the maker community. That DOES make it hard or even unreasonable to expect other products to be able to compete on price. But as the people who use these tools, it isn't our job to 'be fair' to a company's profit margins, even a nice company like iFixit. It's our job to get the best tool to price ratio out of our hard earned money - and at $26, I just don't see anything that competes with the Pinecil when it comes to value for money.
I have one of the smaller irons (a ts100 or pinecil, i forget) and I have a decent entry level hakko station.
I don't see this replacing either? The entire upside of the smaller irons is the entire kit is insanely small and fits in just about anything, while also being quite cheap and "good enough" for whatever minor work you're doing (keyboards in my case).
The upside of something like a hakko is...well it's a fucking hakko and they make a good tool for serious use cases.
I do like that it's a "middle" size depending on your kit with a smaller iron, and maybe if I didn't have the hakko i'd look at this, but god not having controls on the iron itself is SUCH a miss. You MUST bring their battery pack or, somehow, hook it up to a computer with chrome/edge to use their web system to adjust settings, before plugging it back into whatever thing is giving it 100w (because it's sure as shit not your computer USB port?)
Thinking about it a bit more, it does have some interesting features and I like the focus on repairable systems, but god I just cannot have yet another device that's "app only oops!". I do believe that if I didn't own the hakko i'd probably pick this up as it would be considered my less portable option, and I suppose that it's certainly easier to lug around than the hakko should I one day decide I need a 100w iron for travel, but I doubt that. I don't really remember what I spent on the hakko and I suppose that would've been a big part of the math as well.
How is this better/new tech when the TS100 has been out forever?
You can just run the TS100 off a lipo with an XT to USB-C connector.
https://www.amazon.com/ts100-soldering-iron/s?k=ts100+soldering+iron
You can even find entire cheap Chinese FPV repair kits for ~$20 that include an analog soldering iron with LiPo connector, plus much of the other stuff in this kit....far less than 300 bucks.
So, I had previously commented in this thread about the Pinecil setting the standard for cost value among field soldering irons (at $26), but as is the case recently in this kind of tech space, developments in China progress rapidly given the combination of the concentration of tech manufacturing and the wild west-esq government-sponsored mass espionage / IP theft that is part of China's economic and strategic policies... (sorry, tangent there).
Anyway, Fnirsi (the name pains me) has come out with a USB-C iron for $40 - the HS-02 that appears to have the same style of cap (no idea if it is heat-resistant though) AND IT IS JBC CARTRIDGE COMPATIBLE!! They sell it with knock-off cartridges of course, but it works with JBC style T245 cartridges which means we now have a field-portable iron that we can pair with the best cartridges out there (admittedly, genuine JBC carts cost almost as much as the iron does).