Atten GT-5150 desoldering station - Looks great, but no reviews?

[MrQuan]

I'm looking to replace my very old and rusty Rhino ZD-985 desoldering station.

My first option was to look at JBC, as I have a JBC soldering station that I'm happy with, but found their desoldering gear prohibitively expensive (~$3000 AUD), so now I'm looking for more affordable options.

I have been recommended the Hakko FM-2024 desoldering gun by someone. The cheapest station set this comes in is the FM-204 for ~$1300 AUD. So a definite contender.

Then I saw the Atten GT-5150 desoldering station for ~$1100 AUD, and was surprised by how professional it looks. I have an old Atten AT-858D hot air station from many years ago, still going strong. But that was *cheap*. Their new gear looks very professional and pricing increased to match.

I also noticed that the Atten desoldering gun is 150W vs the Hakko at 70W. Atten interface also looks much more capable. There are a few promo videos on YouTube showing it's features.

However, I can't see any reviews or videos that show the Atten actually put through it's paces. So I'm interested to hear if anyone here has used one, or knows if they perform well. Your thoughts are appreciated.

[richardlicker]

would love to hear anyone's review of this. I've been trucking along with one of the updated proskit models, and while they are better than nothing, I have to use it i conjunction with a hot air to get any reasonable performance. the FR-410 looks promising but it's been a decade since I've used hakko anything, since they have been drastically overpriced and underperformers compared to the stuff coming out of china. I've been using an atten 862D for years now and it is better in every way than my old hakko 810D, despite costing 1/4 of the price, but considering the atten GT-5150 is only a few hundred less than the hakko, the hakko might be a safer choice.

it's weird how swamped the market is with soldering equipment, yet there are hardly any options for desoldering

[sigsauer]

Did you finally buy it? I'm looking at it now.

[Shock]

The 150W could be neither the heater or the vacuum power and heater, for all you know it could be the power the tweezers use or just overrated or exaggerated station spec like other chinese brands.

For a thousand bucks you'd want it to be rock solid. This should be like a $300 product on Ali not have some eye watering markup on a reseller.

It's laughable that it's still basically a knockoff of both Hakko desoldering iron and JBC soldering iron with a Metcal like model number in a chinesium plastic case with what seems an smps and tiny pump.