HANDSKIT Soldering Iron Kit 200W, 6-in-1 Welding Tool Set with Adjustable Temperature (180-480°C), Solder Iron LED Display, 3 Solder Tips, Solder Wire & Stand – for Electronics, DIY, Repairs

Heats up and cools down fast, very easy to use, really nice feel. However, I was expecting a 2 mm chisel tip to be included as shown in the photos but it arrived with 2 small round tips (one fitted), an 8mm angled flat wedge and a 9mm angled round tip. For copper foil stained glass I use a chisel tip, so I'm a bit annoyed because now I'll have to buy a chisel tip which will cost as much as the iron did.

Great product. Only gripe is the instructions for temperature compensation & auto-sleep are a joke, they might as well have left then in Chinese.

I suppose I was being a bit optimistic to buy a temperature controlled soldering iron for £27 so shouldn't be surprised. The 'temperature' read out just relates to the power setting that is applied to the element. There is no temperature regulation. I proved this by putting the tip in cold water and the temperature display remained solid at its current setting. When you switch on, the temperature display appears to climb quickly to its preset giving the impression of a very fast warm up but this is nothing to do with tip temperature, its just the power ramping up. Having said the above, it is a cheap, useful, quite high power iron with substantial metal tips which should act as a heat reservoir when soldering larger, heat absorbing jobs.FOLLOW UP COMMENTS AFTER USING A FEW TIMES.I began to suspect my setting of 350C was not really hot enough for reliable work so I dug out my temperature probe kit for the Fluke meter. This revealed that as suspected the temperature display is so far out as to be meaningless. I found that to maintain a temperature of about 330C in free air, the setting needed to set to 460C and the iron will take a good 5 minutes to stabilise at this temperature. This seems to be ok for soldering components on to a pcb. I use leaded solder but lead free solder needs a higher temperature so use the maximum of 480 which produces a tip temperature of about 350C. If you are soldering metal parts just whack it up to maximum anyway.There is no temperature control and even tinning a piece of thick wire or blowing on the iron will cool it significantly. There is no evidence that the iron can sense this and kick in the power, it will just slowly creep back up to temperature.The most frustrating thing was the damn thing kept going into stand-by and switching off! The instructions are completely confusing but I think what you do is to press and hold the + button, in the OFF mode for 3 secs. ON will now show and you can toggle ON and OFF with +/-. Select either and hold the button down for a further 3 secs. When you release, ON or OFF will flash on the display a few times.Sadly, setting neither ON nor OFF prevents my iron from going in to stand-by so I think this feature on mine is faulty.I'll keep it as a spare but I'll spend a bit more and get a decent temp controlled iron. I recommend you do too.

For months I have struggled with inadequate soldering irons not staying hot! This one does not suffer with that! It’ll do XT90 plugs almost instantly and never looses heat, @ 460°c it’ll solder scaffold tube… lol. Cable is abit stiff but a small price to pay. But this one with confidence!

This was bought purely on price, being less than half of anything similar. I thought the heating element area looked smaller than the competition, so plugged it in via a watt meter, which showed 196 cold going down to about 170/0 when on its thermostat, which is fair enough for a 200W rated device.So the next thing was to measure the tip temperature. I have a device for doing this and whilst it's not super accurate, it gives an indication at least of where you're at. Disappointingly, it only reached 180, just enough to melt 60/40 solder... I adjusted the set temp up from 240 to the max 480, and at this it managed around 300 tip temp. I see there is adjustment for temperature offset, but I haven't delved into that yet. The manual seems to suggest + or - 99 degrees.It was then I noticed that a magnetic screwdriver was attracted to the spare tips in the bag - and a quick file confirmed that the tips are all iron - not a trace of copper at all.With this in mind, I will try and and make a copper tip for it with some 12mm copper rod, a 7,5mm drill bit and a lathe, and use the offset function to get the tip closer to the alleged control temperature.I still think this is worth the money for the real 200/170W power input and the temperature control - as long as one is aware that the indicated temperature is not correct. Bare copper bits should last ok as long as they aren't overheated, and transfer the heat much better.

I brought one of these around a year ago on the suggestion from a post on a fb stained glass group. I had just brought a hakko as my main soldering iron, but that's a bit delicate for some of the soldering I need to do. This is now my restoration go to soldering iron. It does all of my dirty jobs, resoldering old joints, taking borders off etc. I figured if it only lasted 6 months it was worth the money saving my lovely hakko. I even brought 2 more as back ups. My original is still going strong though even through rather a lot of abuse.

The iron has temperature control and good temperature indication. It's my go-to choice for basic general soldering and has enough thermal capacity for cables up to 1.5mm which is great for auto electrics etc.Highly recommended.

Only given it 4 stars as the iron rest that comes with it is flimsy and easily collapses when the iron is placed on it also would be good if it came with a smaller standard slopped soldering bit rather than 2 pointed ones.Heats up quickly with digital temp control and on off switch (plugged it in and it didn't heat up then realised you have to turn it on on the handle - DOH!)