I ordered a Aoyue 852A ++ SMD Digital Hot Air Rework Station with Vacuum Pickup from SRA Soldering (top notch service)
The unit arrived packed well - the units box itself wasn't really held together in any way. Design was a bit disappointing. The vacuum runs off the pump that blows the hot air, which makes using the vacuum while the hot air gun is in use - well not so useful for picking up freshly desoldered chips. It requires turning off the hot air and pushing two buttons to switch to vacuum mode. Not really going to happen while the solder is molten.
When the unit would work, besides the extreme light flickering when you turned it up to 340c, it worked pretty good. However a majority of the time it wouldn't really work at all! When turning on the rework switch most of the time the air flow indicator would bounce up and down, and of course the compressor action reflected this in a pulsating non consistent airflow. To SRA's credit they were really quick in getting back to me regarding my purchase and troubleshooting the device.
I did try a few things to no avail (in hindsight wish I had taken that puppy apart to see what it looked like inside) but alas did not. Their service tech seemed to think by what was going on that it was a 220V version labelled as 110. Not really confidence instilling. Of course, this isn't one of the fancy units with the 110/220 switch for the PS.
I have returned the unit with no real hassle from SRA (seem like really decent folks).
I wish I could get the Hakko, but the price range is just to high so... Up next Yihua