This has worked well for me on many small tasks. I find the ability to control the temperature very useful, and the "helping hands" worked well for small wire work. I would buy this again

For the price, this is a pretty decent station. I'm downsizing from a Weller WX2021, and previously owned a Weller WES51 and WD1002T. I've also owned a cheap no-name station in the past.

The build quality is OK. It's plasticy. Most soldering stations are plastic, but there's a difference. This feels cheaper. And something in the iron rattles if you shake it. But, the handle feels alright. Higher end stations tend to have slimmer, shorter irons, and it makes this feel clumsy in comparison-- but that's not a fair comparison. Compared to name-brand stations twice the price, this feels similar. Cheaper, but similar. The cord is silicone, so it won't melt. The knob is metal and feels great. It's a nice touch on such a cheap station. One quality issue I did find is that the barrel is a bit crooked. It doesn't seem to affect anything, but it's weird.

When you turn it on, the temperature appears to rise very quickly. This is a lie. Well, not a lie. But the nature of these stations is that the thermocouple is pretty far from the tip, so there's a bit of lag. Just give it about 30 seconds to actually get to temperature. The temperature reading seems a bit low, but it might just be that I'm used to a different kind of station. I attempted to measure it with a thermocouple, but that's difficult to do accurately without the right stuff. I did manage to get a reading of 346C with it set to 350. But then I couldn't get above 335. So I dunno. It seems to hold temperature well enough, in any case. This tech is pretty old and simple, so it shouldn't be hard to get right.

I love the tip cleaner. A brass sponge with cleaning flux underneath. It's a great way to get gunk off your tip when you've let it burn a bit too long.

The tip it comes with is useless. The quality is probably fine, but conical tips are honestly the worst. Grab a 1.6mm chisel tip for general purpose stuff. There's almost nothing it won't work better for.

Overall, it's not the quality of a Hakko or Weller, but it's half the price, and it's perfectly fine for what it is.

Update 5/30/18:

After getting a Hakko tip, I realized the tip it came with was a bit too long and didn't make great contact with the heater. The new tip heats a bit faster as a result.

The handle gets hot after using it for a while. This isn't uncommon for cheap irons, but it's annoying.

The temperature control is sometimes different than where you last set it when you turn the iron back on-- only by a few degrees, but it's still weird.

I feel like the temperature regulation probably isn't super accurate. It's hard to say for sure. I may just be used to the kind of irons that have the heater built closer to the tip.

The unit is tiny and doesn't weigh anything-- which means it slides around the bench as you use it. I also realized having the stand integrated into the station isn't as nice as it seems. It does make for a very compact setup, though. It'd be a great option as a secondary iron to keep a specialty tip on, which is likely how I'll end up using it long-term.

I"m still satisfied for the price, I just noticed a few cheap station issues and thought I'd update the review.

I'm not a computer guy, I don't solder tiny or delicate stuff. I've always used super cheap solder guns so this is my first real solder setup. But Holy crap does this thing get HOT and does it incredibly FAST! I have no idea what other solder irons are like besides the cheap ones that take 20min to heat up and don't stay hot enough to do any real soldering with. I'm currently using it to make wire harnesses for muscle cars and man, I can't get over how sweet this rig is. I'm 100% happy with this purchase. I didn't expect the spool, tweezer, solder sucker or other tips... It was a nice surprise to find them in the kit.

3yr UPDATE:

This thing was a trooper, but the iron itself didn't like to stay together. The metal portion would fall off the handle pretty easy. The threads weren't stripped either. The only thing I can think of is the plastic locking ring grew from repeated heat cycles or the handle shrunk from the same cause. Very irritating! I used some thread tape on the handle threads and it helped, but still wasn't right.

I really liked this soldering iron; used it yesterday and it was fine. Today it wouldn't heat up no matter what. I tore it apart trying to find an obvious problem and couldn't find one. Everything Ohm'ed fine, continuity was good, no burnt spots, no damage..... It just won't heat. Even the element was good. I can turn the knob to command a temp and it'll flip to the actual temp in a few seconds. It just sits there at 100 degrees or so and doesn't rise. I can hold a lighter under the tip and watch the digital readout temp rise, but it won't heat on its own. I tore the base apart and inspected everything, all looked good. I used a thermal camera on the board and the hottest part was the potentiometer knob body, but I'd expect that. No other part of the board or the mini board inside the iron itself had any hot pots per my Ames thermal inspection camera. I cleaned all possible contact points inside the iron end to no avail.

I was at a complete loss as to why it wouldn't heat. Of course I started checking even dumb things and my unsteady hands touched the wrong thing. A single spark and it's now DOA. It was great until it wasn't..... I learned though, I'll have a cheap spare on hand at all times. Now I have to wait a few days to get a replacement. I went name brand this time.

After purchasing and returning 2 of these because they did not work, the owner of the company contacted me personally to apologize and offer me another one to try in order to see if it would work better. This third one worked perfectly, exactly as I had hoped the first 2 would. I can say that the customer service from X-TRONIC gets an A+ and their product works great!

This was my previous review:

I needed a soldering iron for some electrical/circuit board work I was going to be doing. I looked online and read articles and reviews of different soldering irons before I bought anything. This particular soldering iron from X-Tronic was rated as the best soldering iron in a bunch of head-to-head reviewed tests online. I always try to buy the best tools and the best quality that I can afford, and I figured that I should get the best when it came to soldering irons. My goodness, was I in for a surprise.

I ordered one of these soldering irons and I immediately noticed that it did not seem to melt solder very well. I kept it for about a day and tried to work with it, I thought initially that maybe I was doing something wrong. The solder that I was using had a melting point somewhere in the low to mid 400°F range, so I set the temperature on the soldering iron to about 530°F. You would think that this would work perfectly, but it seemed like the iron was not heating up properly and it just did not really want to melt the solder. I have never seen anything like it in my life. I turned the temperature up on the soldering iron to 600°F and it still was having a difficult time melting the solder! I would hold the iron on the solder for literally 15 or 20 seconds and it would deform the solder, but it would not melt the solder. Unreal!

I figured I must have gotten a defective unit, so I returned it to Amazon. I then ordered the exact same X-Tronic soldering iron again. I figured this time I would get a good one and everything would work the way was supposed to. Wrong again! This new soldering iron was just the same as the first one. It had the exact same issues where it did not seem to want to melt solder. I kept this iron for a couple of days, I even had my father-in-law try it out to see if I was crazy. I thought he might say that the iron was fine and it was user error. My father-in-law is much more experienced in soldering than I am and he's very good at it. After using it for about five minutes he looked at me and said it's no good, just return this junk. He pulled out a cheap soldering iron that he bought online for about eight dollars and he used it on the same stuff that he had just tried the X-Tronic on and it melted the solder like a hot knife through butter. There was no comparison. The cheap junk soldering iron was light-years better. So I actually returned my soldering iron for a second time and I bought a different soldering iron, from the same brand that my father-in-law purchased his cheap one from. I'm here to report that the new one from the cheap brand works great. Can't say enough good things about a soldering iron that came with a case and set for less than $20! Here is what I got: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0744P55YR/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I don't know if the two X-Tronic irons that I purchased and returned were both defective and from a bad batch or if the design is just no good, but it's just shocking to me that this iron has so many great reviews but yet I bought two of them and neither one worked well at all. It might be a defective heating element, it might be that the thermostat is calibrated wrong from the factory. I just don't understand it.

Does not include multiple tips or spare tips. Does come with a high temperature small pad.