Best Soldering Station

Is A Genuine JBC Station Better Than A Clone? | Voltlog 401

If you are a subscriber of the channel you’ve seen me review this Best soldering station in Voltlog #340 This is a clone of a JBC station and I’ve been happily using this station for the past year as my daily driver. But is this very different in terms of performance or build quality from a genuine JBC station? In this video we’re going to answer that question because thanks to welectron.com I was able to acquire this JBC station for a 50% discount so if you are looking to get yourself a new soldering station please check them out, they have a pretty good offer, a link will be in the description below.

So as you can see these two have a fairly similar size & shape but upon comparing their weight I discovered the JBC original is 2.5KG while the Best station is 3KG. The soldering hand piece which is model T245A is fairly similar for both units if not identical, you don’t get the soft foam padding for the BEST but otherwise very much the same plastic, same silicone wire, same length. However as you may know, the handle piece from my BEST station failed at some point soon after I got it and I did an autopsy in Voltlog #387.

I’ve replaced the failed handle with a genuine JBC T245 which I got for like 20EUR from ebay as new old stock. So generally speaking while the two handle pieces are almost identical, you can expect lower quality control on something like the BEST and you might be unlucky enough to get a bad handle that will fail at some point like mine did. There is ofcourse a bunch of happy users who didn’t have this issue but the bottom-line is, there is no guarantee on the quality control.

Best T245 JBC Clone Handle Teardown | Votlog #387

Welcome to this short Voltlog where I plan to take a look inside this JBC clone soldering iron handle. This is the handle that came with the Best-933B JBC clone station, I reviewed this in Voltlog #340 a year ago and I’ve been using this station as my main soldering tool for the past year. I plan to do a future video where I tell you my opinion about this station after 1 year of usage but the short story is obvious due to the fact that it’s my main soldering tool, I like using it.

The soldering handle that I received with this station had a problem since day one, first use, when I inserted the soldering tip into the handle I could kind of feel like there was something wrong, there wasn’t a clear stop when pushing it in and after powering on the station the screen was flickering, it couldn’t read the temperature and this cable got hot which is a good sign that something is shorted inside the handle.

I’m not sure if I am to blame because I might have pushed the tip too hard into the handle the first time. It’s also possible that it had a factory defect inside the handle.. Other users of this station don’t have this problem but long story short ever since I got it, I had to be really careful when switching tips because I needed to seat the tip very accurately in a certain position, otherwise it would short circuit causing the station to go crazy.

Best BST-933B JBC Clone Soldering Station Review & Teardown | Voltlog #340

Soldering tools is a big subject as there is no electronics bench or hobby without a soldering iron hence why I have several videos on the subject and why I will continue to do such videos when new tools are presented. Everyone knows and probably wishes for a JCB or Metcal station since they are very well known in the industry, they are reliable and most importantly very capable soldering stations but their price tag keeps them out of reach for the average hobbyist.

That’s why clones of the big names appear on the market and they can be bought for half the price of the original one, sometimes even less. That’s why the KSGER T12 soldering stations are so popular and why I use them. They support the original Hakko tips and so they provide identical performance to a Hakko station as long as you install a good quality T12 tip.

Which brings us to the subject of this video, this is the Best 933B, which is a clone of the JBC CD-B series compact soldering station. This has been on the market for a while but I recently got a chance to review this station when banggood offered to send me one for free. I would appreciate it if you would check out the links I place in the description, this will ensure I can get more gear to review in the future. Price wise, if you were to order one of these it would cost you about half the price of the original JBC station. Depending on where you order the original one is around 400EUR while the Best station is about 200EUR on banggood.