/diy/ - Do It Yourself

The top one is a rebranded Yaxun, but even without knowing that you could assume it's Chinese just by virtue of the fact that it's Hakko-colored and some genius decided to brand the thing after a Swedish city as though you'd be dumb enough to associate it with Ikea.

The bottom one just seems like a weird combo. If it's going to have a third feature I'd have preferred a desoldering gun over the PSU.

Other things to watch out for include brands that don't turn up anything relevant in a simple google search, or amazon/ebay sellers with a euro-sounding name and the country's abbreviation (eg: BrusselsElectro-BE). Pretty much guaranteed to actually be Chinese.

That said there's nothing wrong with a good Chinese soldering station, assuming you can tell the difference between a good one and a house fire waiting to happen. Yihua makes some decent stuff but the Chinese will knock off their own just as readily as they do western brands, so once one of their brands gains some traction you get all kinds of poor quality clones and knockoffs of those too.

>>1208013
Leaded solder is way easier to work with. No-lead solder has way worse handling properties and is not for beginners.

>>1207970
The T12 kit works great but the calibration will likely initially be in the wrong time zone after you put it together and you'll need a tip thermometer to calibrate it. Any cheap Hakko 191 clone should be enough to get an accurate temp set.

>>1208050
A TS100 is handy for that. It'll run straight off a 24V truck battery or laptop PSU, or lower voltages for lower wattage.