YIHUA 982D

Incredibly good soldering iron with 2 sizes. Ideal for general soldering and for surface mounted components. Very fast temperature control.

Great bit of kit! Huge upgrade in my solder kit game

I have been using it for almost 5 months. I used it a little so I didn't notice it right away, but when I suspected it I immediately measured the temperature. I discovered that it was faulty or of poor quality, the temperature did not match the set temperature of about 100 degrees Celsius. When I set it to 450 Celsius, the soldering iron tip showed about 350 Celsius. Temp calibration does not help. I did not check it earlier, now it is too late to return it, I was disappointed with the purchase because it was not the cheapest

This arrived in very high quality packaging, everything is very well looked after and clearly somebody cares about this product. I won't talk about all the features this has, but I will focus on the build/quality and highlight some key points. The quality of the main unit is superb, it's heavy and well constructed. The combination of rubber feet and heavy weight means it stays where you put it, not one of those cheap plastic units that moves around as you use it. I was able to setup the whole unit in a few seconds, simply plug in the supplied cable, connect the lead and your away. Using the device can be as simple or as complicated as you like. It is intuitive to simply turn on the unit, set the temperature and start using it, but the detailed instructions provide all the information you need. As you will see from the video on Amazon, it has a great deal of detailed features that you can choose to use. The placement of the lead, lifting bar, power cable and all the other bits are very well placed. Having used budget versions of this in the past (which are OK) you find things are not quite placed in the correct place and get in your way. Not here, everything is where you would want it to be. Some of the features that stood out to me are the speed in which it heats up, the quality of the LCD display (which can be tilted) and the superb build quality. All in all, a very well designed and high quality piece of kit that at this stage I simply cannot criticise.

I ordered this for my partner, this is his review: I’m a hobbyist solderer at best and have been using an adjustable 30w (non-temperature controlled) Maplin soldering iron for the last twenty or so years so this Yihua soldering station is a massive upgrade. I’ve never done any SMD soldering so installed the larger thru-hole handpiece and chisel bit to give it a test with an old bit of protoboard. After pushing the tip into the hand piece and plugging the handpiece into the base unit, I powered it up. The first thing I noted was how quickly it got up to temperature. My old iron took several minutes to get to temperature, but this one took less than 20 seconds to reach its standby temperature of 200C. When I took the handpiece out of the holder it took only a few seconds to reach 300C and the temperature quickly dropped back to 200C when putting the handpiece back into the rest. The cable between the handpiece and the base is very flexible and doesn't get in the way or make the handpiece difficult to control, which I really like and the little bit of test soldering I did with the protoboard felt much easier than with my old iron. The supplied solder is lead free and even at 350C felt sludgy to me but my old 0.5mm lead solder flowed well.

EDIT: I have returned nearly 18 months later just to add that this soldering kit is still working perfectly, not a single issue to date having used it man many times. Still absolutely delighted with it. The YIHUA 982D is the first of its kind that I have owned. I have a couple of cheapo soldering irons and a soldering gun with accessories, all of which have served me well until small electronics became involved. I am not a professional in electronics but will always have a peep at a problem and if I can I'll fix it or try to. Not having small enough tips etc is a big problem for a Mr fix it or Mr try to fix it like me. Through the wonders of vine I was able to order this marvelous bit of kit, everything I could need in one very well put together package. Packaging was fantastic, and once set up it really makes my amateur life easy. Good instructions but also easy to figure out without. The tips are so precise, very easy to change and heat up quickly. The display is angle adjustable and just so crisp and clear. This really is a premium bit of kit and I will probably never do it full just with my repairs but none the less I personally cannot fault it.

To put comtext to this review, I have to admit that I'm no professional so I'll be sticking to the basics. Priced at £219.99 at the time of ordering, this isn't cheap, so is it worth it? PROS: The solder station feels weighty and everything seems to be great quality. The temperature range from 90 to 450 degrees makes it very adaptable to various jobs. The set includes two irons, one standard and one small The screen is clear and easy to read with all of the required information including power consumption to indicate that the iron is heating. It's quick, and I mean QUICK to heat up, and importantly, it also cools quickly too. CONS: The temperature selection is great, having the preset temperatures really helps, but it annoyed me that every time I put the iron in its holster, it defaulted to 200 degree's. It's only a small issue, but it was irritating. The twin iron setup is a good idea, amd for me it really helped with the more intricate work. However, swapping the irons is a bit of a faff, and if you don't plan well, there can be times where you're waiting for things to cool. The price, at £220, it's a big outlay for most DIY'ers. Overall I was really impressed with the performance of this solder station. It did everything I wanted it to, and I feel that I only scratched the surface of it's full capabilities. However, I have a station that cost less than half the price of this and I have to say that the results were comparable.

This really is a brilliant little soldering iron set. I’ve only had very basic soldering irons before, those that you plug in and let heat up until it melts a bit of solder - the tips have been about 5-7mm across so haven’t really been suitable for ‘delicate’ soldering. This lets you set the temperature to whatever level you need and it heats up to that temperature at a very fast rate. I don’t do a great deal of precision soldering so far but I will do in the future, I’ve started model making and some projects need wires soldering to components or to ‘anchor points’ - this lets me do the work that is needed without there being big ‘blobs’ of solder and flux at the joins. The whole set is very compact so it won’t take up too much space at your workstation, or wherever you store your occasional use tools. It is very well made and is of a good quality, it is also very easy to use - happy to recommend.