Hakko FX888D-23BY Digital Soldering Station FX-888D FX-888 (blue & yellow)

Im using this for various applications, from soldering tabbing wire on delicate solar cells, soldering components on perf boards, to soldering wires of various wires together. The temperature control is a necessity for these various uses and the Hakko works great. This Hakko is great if you plan to solder more than a few things as its quite affordable for the semi serious, but quality enough to please a professional. The time to heat up is very quick and you can start to solder within 10-15 seconds. Other fixed wattage irons Ive used take a minute or more and you cant really tell if its reached its proper temperature. The Hakko will show when its reached the desired temperature. Simply turn it on seconds before you need it and itll be ready. I was impressed. Setting the temperature is actually quite nice, but you might need to read the instruction manual (gasp!) to figure out how to do it the first time since the two button interface isnt intuitive. The iron holder comes with the sponge and wire, which makes cleaning off the iron very easy. Its also very stable feeling and made of metal so it feels like a quality stand. The iron cable is a nice soft silicon which makes handling and moving the iron effortless as the wire wont stiffen up, twist, or get in your way. Fixed irons with their stiff cables retain the bends and twists that they get so you might knock something off your desk thats three feet away. But not with the Hakko and its those little things that make this unit a joy. This is my first variable wattage iron so its leagues above a fixed wattage iron. After using a variable temperature iron, you cant go back.

I’m a college student and we work on electronic circuits and boards and as a complete novice at soldering I found this iron a breeze to work with as other students with different soldering iron/guns were struggling! Definitely worth every penny!

Well built adjustable temperature this is the one to buy

Just buy it. I Needed to do quite a bit of soldering for a low voltage LED strip light installation. Professional results were the only option. Having realized the assorted hardware store irons and soldering guns I had would quickly make a mess, I decided to get a proper soldering station. Quite simply put. Worked like a charm. Made me feel competent at soldering, when I had generally succeeded in making a mess before. Ergonomics are great. Feels like a quality tool. Doesnt even flinch when soldering larger wires, that even my soldering gun would struggle with. +1 The brass sponge works really well for cleaning the tip. Once you use one of these you wont be able to live without one. +1 Stand for the iron is metal. Thought it would be plastic from looking at the pictures, so I was pleasantly surprised. +1 Power unit is compact, but the iron heats up in seconds, and did not even flinch at soldering 14 gauge wires. +1 Includes a small chisel tip that everyone seems to recommend. Not one of the pencil tips every other iron seems to come with that are generally not recommended by people who know what they are doing. - 1 Printed manual seems to lack information on using presets. - 1 Tips could be easier to change, but this is not a problem for me since I can set it up with the tip I need, per job. Overall. I am very happy. Best $90, I could have put into a soldering station.

Ive been soldering for about 55 years and am an electronic hobbyist. In the 50s, I had a Weller gun. It looked like a gun, had a trigger like a gun and worked fine on radios and TVs that I worked on. As electronics got smaller and more sensitive to overheating, I switched to a Weller or Unger iron. I think one has since bought the other. These irons and 1/8 tiplets served me very well for many years. The only problem was that the tiplet would eventually break and need replacement. They are threaded but it is impossible to get the old one out unless you drill it out. Too much work so I just bought a new heating element and put in a new tiplet. My tiplet broke and I decided to search the internet. Perhaps someone had by now figured out a way to replace the tiplet without drilling. No luck, but I kept seeing replies that essentially said toss your Unger and get a Hakko soldering station. If youve looked at soldering stations, you will see that prices are all over the place with some too expensive for a simple hobbyist like me. I think you could find something for less but then I dont know if it would be as well rated. So, I purchased this unit. I really dont need precise temperature calibration so I just set the dial in the middle. The reason that I like temperature regulation is that the the iron heats up extremely fast, about 15 seconds to melt solder. Im so old that I cant afford to wait 3 to 5 minutes just to solder one joint. Temperature regulation also ensures that the iron wont cool off if you have several joints to solder. I also like the very small handle and very flexible cord. The smaller handle gives you better control when you have to very accurately position the tip. It wasnt clear which tip the unit came with so I ordered a D16 chisel point separately. I was afraid it would come with a pencil tip which I dont like because its sometimes hard to put enough heat into the joint. It did come with the small chisel tip I prefer so I should have waited to order the extra tip. The two tips will outlast me, Im sure. Lastly, the base unit comes with a sponge and a metal cleaning wire which looks like a cross between a Brillo pad and a wad of metal shavings. This seems to work pretty well. Ive always just used paper napkins to remove excess solder and clean the tip. This is not a perfect process as sometimes solder goes places where you wish it wouldnt. Like, I have a solder-splash shaped tatoo on one foot. The quality of this unit looks very good on the outside. There is an article online which shows how to modify this unit so that the light on front indicates ON as well as Tip Heating. As it is, the light only shows when the tip is heating so one might be concerned about leaving the unit on because there isnt an ON light. I wont make this mod because Im very careful about leaving stuff powered. The point here is that the article gave me a chance to see what the guts of the base unit looked like and it also looks to be of high quality. Soldering is not that hard, but there is a learning curve. I would recommend this unit to beginners as well as experienced solderers because it just makes it more easier to make precision joints where connections are closely spaced and parts are more heat sensitive. If youre just soldering railroad track together, you dont need this. For IC and microprocessor work, this unit will save you time by not having to rework cold or bridged joints.

We have two Hakko 936-12 irons, which we use in a daily production environment. The FX-888 is the updated replacement. Its smaller, but packs a bit more power than the 936. The handpiece is comfortable for day-long use and the new holder incorporates a slot for brass wool (better than a wet sponge), so you dont need a separate tip cleaner. Theres still a sponge plate for traditionalists. Hakko supplies both a sponge and a wad of brass wool. The thermostatic control is accurate and the iron heats quickly. More important, the more powerful 70W ceramic element brings the tip back up to temperature quickly when you heat a large surface, and the internal thermostat prevents overshoot. In other words, the Hakko maintains your chosen working temperature, making it easier to do clean, consistent work. Using brass wool to clean the tip causes less thermal shock than water does and theres essentially no thermal recovery time. The supplied screwdriver-shaped tip is small enough for standard printed-circuit board work and can also lay down enough heat to attach a braided ground to the back of a potentiometer. The silicone-coated cable on the handpiece withstands occasional accidental contact with the tip or barrel without damage. The brightly colored components are a departure from the usual somber black, looking like they could have been made by a toy manufacturer. Some have teasingly called it My First Soldering Iron, but its a quality tool that will likely last you a lifetime of hobby soldering or years of production work.

This should be everyones 1st iron. Well built, aesthetically pleasing, ergonomic, powerful and accurate. This would have made my journey into to soldering a lot smoother and more enjoyable had it been around when I started. Night and day from the cheap irons. Maybe the programming needs an instructional video watched, but Youtube has plenty of how to videos out there. This setup will handle any casual or hobbyists tasks with ease. It really is a quality soldering station. Tips are cheap enough, but the included 1.6 x 10mm chisel will handle 90% of jobs, and last a long time if taken care of. Watch a few tip care and maintenance videos and this will be the only station most will ever need. Parts are easy to acquire and cheap to replace if necessary. This also performed better than the Weller WE1010 head to head. Warmed up quicker, held temp better, and has less recovery headroom than the Weller. Cheaper too.....!

Ive been doing electronics work for a long time - both for fun and at radio stations and my home recording studio - and Ive used a lot of irons. Ive used mostly the pencil sort and not paid any attention to how worn the tip was and such, because Ive always thought of the extras more as frills, and if I can do surface-mount laptop motherboard repairs with a 25w Weller, why do I need anything else? Because it makes life easier, thats why, and I was an idiot. Sure, its not as portable, and I still have my pencil irons for when I have to reach into cabinet equipment, but on the whole I wish Id had one of these 10 years ago. Mostly I just love the speed; theres no wait to speak of for heat up or cool-down, you dont have to dive in and out super-quickly for temperature-sensitive components, and, most of all, I dont have to worry so much about some of that stupidly fragile (and heat-sensitive) insulation thats floating around out there in audio cables these days. I havent had to re-do a cable end due to insulation heat failure since I bought this iron, and I _very_ much like that. I put extra tips in the back behind the metal sponge, and it all just fits together nicely. Its a lovely little design. If you dont like the looks - and I think it looks fine, I dont know what people are complaining about - wait till its out of warranty and paint it. But buy it, regardless. Its a good little iron.

It looks like a toy but is built like a tank. It heats up really fast and maintains the exact temperature while you work. Sure, I wish it had more than two buttons so if you dial in too high a temp you can go one down instead of cycling back around, but I wouldn’t give up any of the FX-888D’s excellent qualities for that one button. There is a Weller that is pretty similar for around $100-110, but this Hakko has a larger heating element and so it will maintain its temperature better (in theory), but that Weller would be the only other unit I would consider.

Yes, the build quality is good, and yes, it does the job well. Theres something you should know before buying it, though. I wish I had known. Other reviewers have been very charitable in describing the controls as not intuitive. For the sake of forewarning future buyers, Ill be blunt: The user interface is a steaming pile of... um... garbage. You get a three-digit display and two buttons that each serve multiple functions. That design decision alone was foolishly stingy, as others have noted. A knob and another digit (for displaying short words) would have done wonders, and I would gladly have paid the extra $3 in hardware costs. Especially since these controls are required for even the simplest of operations, like setting the temperature. The two buttons you get are labeled: UP and ENTER, but those labels are misleading, because neither matches the corresponding buttons function in the devices normal operating state. If you find your way into the settings menu (which you cannot do with the buttons alone) the four top-level categories are represented by mysterious, disjointed numbers: 01, 03, 11, 14. Even if youre a programmer who habitually translates decimal numbers to binary, this menu is still meaningless. Its all the more insulting to discover that letters *can* be displayed, as they are in the submenus; just not here, the menu where they are arguably needed most. Want to raise the temperature while youre working? Pressing the UP button wont do it. You must hold the ENTER button for a while, then wait, then repeatedly press the UP button until the first digit of your target temperature appears (and then nine more times if you overshoot), then press ENTER, and then do it again for each additional digit, until the display shows your target temperature and you press ENTER a final time. Its like having to program a 1970s/1980s videocassette recorder... just to adjust the temperature of your soldering iron. Okay, that madness is not the end of the world, but adding injury to insult, can you guess what happens if you accidentally (and understandably) hold the UP button instead of ENTER to adjust the temp? It takes you through the same procedure, making it look at first like you succeeded, and then reverts to displaying the original temperature. Want to know why it didnt work? That was the procedure to recalibrate the machines temperature control. Congratulations: Now every temperature the machine displays is wrong, and will remain wrong even after a power cycle, because the machine tricked you. Oh, and it doesnt tell what happened, so its very possible that youre now soldering at a much higher temperature than you think. I hope you didnt damage any components. What if you somehow figure out what happened and you want to fix it? Too bad. The manual doesnt tell you how. It doesnt even mention that it can be done. Youll have to wait until you can reach Hakko support, or else find a note online from some other unfortunate soul who was also burned by this unforgivably awful excuse for an interface. I hope it happened during business hours and you have a phone nearby, or youre someplace that has internet connectivity. For the record, here is the secret factory reset procedure: 1. Turn off the power switch. 2. Hold the UP and ENTER buttons. 3. Turn on the power switch with those buttons still held. 4. Wait until the display says A. 5. Release the buttons. 6. press UP to make the display say U. 7. Press ENTER. I hope that saves someone some trouble. Dear Hakko, Please do better in the future.