Voltlog #243 – TS80 VS KSGER T12 Soldering Iron Comparison

Welcome to a new Voltlog, yet another soldering iron comparison video and today it’s between the TS80 and the KSGER T12 station. Everyone knows the TS80, is quite a popular portable soldering iron, works with USB type C input, it needs a quick charge compatible adapter to reach full power and it’s quite a capable soldering iron. The drawback is the cost of the tips, it uses this proprietary type of tip and the cost is about $20 a piece.

On the other hand we have the KSGER soldering station which I reviewed in Voltlog #232. This station has a built in power supply and uses the well known T12 tips which are widely available on aliexpress, for example you can get KSGER T12 branded tips for about $3 a piece. I think that’s important, because I have 2-3 different tip shapes that I use regularly and maybe another 2 or 3 that I use occasionally for odd jobs. You can’t just rely on a single tip shape and purchasing the same number of tips for the TS80, is not going to be cheap.

Voltlog #234 – The Problems I Found With The KSGER T12 Soldering Station

In a previous Voltlog I reviewed this KSGER T12 soldering station, it was the first station I got my hands on from this manufacturer, it’s version 2.1S and I was pleasantly surprised by the features it has. If you haven’t seen that video I will link it on screen right now. Since then I’ve been using it as my main soldering station and I’ve been pretty happy with how it works but some of my viewers who have been using these for longer have pointed out a few things I missed in the video so this will be a quick update video to show the things I’ve missed previously.

Voltlog #232 – My New Prefered T12 Soldering Station KSGER V2.1S

Out of the three T12 stations that I have, this is now my favorite and will be the one I use daily. I’m not sure if the performance is higher or similar to the other I have, I’ll probably do a separate video to compare them but it’s just the user interface, the menu options, the nice handle that make me wanna use this instead of the others. Yes it has a few disadvantages regarding this handle, it does get warm and it doesn’t really fit that well with a regular stand but I can go past those disadvantages for how nice this station is. If you’re looking for a T12 station this is definitely the one to get.

I also did a second video where I showed the problems I found with this soldering station and if they can be fixed by the user or not.

 

Voltlog #85 – STM32 OLED T12 Soldering Station

Today we are taking a look at this soldering station which I got from Taobao (Chinese Ebay). This unit is fully contained, power supply is built-in, it works with T12 Hakko tips and it has a nice 1.3 inch OLED display. It’s powered by the STM32 microcontroller which should make it easy to hack if anyone is interested.

Here are links to the items shown in the video: