hobbyking hakko 936 knock off solder station

[JatoTheRipper]

For the price the zeny looks great. Maybe they hold together well over time? At that price it would be hard to complain about a year of service. But...

I would recommend the brand that Zeny copies, Aoyue. Aoyue has fantastic pricing for the quality and widespread parts availability. We use one at the shop for production alongside a few Hakko's. Twice the price as the one you linked, but still very affordable IMO.

Aoyue 937+ Digital Soldering Station - ESD Safe includes Spare Element UPDATED VERSION!! - Soldering Iron - Amazon.com

Do you know the OEM of the TrakPower soldering stations?

 

[Chumley54]

I don't know the OEM but here is the trakpower on Tower Hobbies (The first one I was looking at - then decided to shop around as it looked "familiar")):

Then I went on AliExpress and found this:

This says Hakko, but who knows?

Then there was this brand - A-BF:

They look alike, so who knows?

I suspect, as I have seen with other products, that there may actually a vendor with genuine Hakko, while others have clones that say Hakko but aren't, then others that have clones that are another brand.

I know with my SkyRC lipo charger (iMax B6AC) there are genuine ones, clones that look identical, and clones that look identical but are another "brand". Figure the same goes on with the soldering irons as there are so many look alikes and similar naming.

So trakpowwer may be a rebadged genuine hakko, or a clone of the hakko with it's own name....I can't tell. The only way to really be sure is to open a known genuine one and compare the internals. There are often a lot of differences.

 

[derek1387]

Ordered a couple of the ones from Hobbyking a few days ago. On backorder. hopefully not too long. Would be nice to have a quality iron in the tool box again!