Aoyue701A++ Dual Function Digital Soldering and Desoldering Station with a Smoke Absorber

I have a 20+ year old Pace desoldering station that is worn out and has been packed away for around 7 years now. I looked at ordering parts to get it going again and was looking at about $500.I had seen good reviews on a couple of the hand-held, stand-alone desoldering tools and was looking at them when I came across this. I was a little hesitant, but finally decided to order it. It arrived this week and I've been using it today. I am extremely happy about my choice at this point.It works great. I wet the filter and pulled an old board from a scrapped Tektronix o'scope. In less than thirty minutes I had easily pulled off five trimmer resistors, seven trimmer caps, seven transistor sockets, and two DPDT switches. Figuring out which leads on the back of the board went to what I wanted to remove typically took as much time as removing it.Things I like: The spring filter is a really cool idea. I had not seen one before, but it does a great job of letting air flow while catching solder. The desoldering and soldering iron both heat quickly. There is an auto-off function you can set for up to 60 minutes. (I have my soldering iron plugged into the same outlet strip as the overhead lamp because I would sometimes forget to turn it off.) It is a little rough around the edges, but seems to be fairly solid. It comes with three desoldering tips (one installed, two in a bag), a cleaning tool, a cleaning drill, a spare spring filter, and several of the rosin filters.Things I would change: I packed away my Weller WC CPT a few years back when I got a digital soldering station on sale at Radio Shack. I liked the three memories so I could crank down the heat when I wasn't going to use the iron for a bit. I think that is less stress on the iron that turning it off and then back on. The 701 has no memories. It does keep your setting through being powered off and it is quick to run the temperature up or down, but having two or three memories would be nice. I really don't like the power switch being on the back instead of the front. It is easy to reach, but just not where I think it should be. I have mixed feelings about the fume sucker on the iron. To turn it on, you hit the temp up and temp down buttons on the station--that isn't convenient. Also, there is only one vacuum port on the front, so you have to manually change the tubing to switch between desoldering and defuming. It looks like most of the fume removal portion could be taken off and the iron seems to be a decent one. I was going to pull it off, but I'm actually thinking maybe I'll get the fan from an old power supply, install it in a box, and use it to pull fumes back. It would be less powerful than the vacuum pump, but I figure it is worth a try. The instructions are inadequate--look at the picture to figure out where the desoldering holder goes because the manual doesn't tell you. And mine seemed like it had been handled by a gorilla at one point--the back was slightly bowed in and the bottom is bent, I think from the weight of the vacuum pump when the case must have come to a very abrupt stop. I seriously thought about returning it, but eventually decided to give it a try and, to be fair, it works fine even after having apparently taken a beating at some point during shipment.I am happy, I would recommend it to a friend, and I would buy another one from what I've seen so far. The desoldering iron does need to be cleaned frequently. After pulling the parts I mentioned above there was a decent wad of solder stuck in the spring filter and the rosin filter had dried out and was looking a little scorched in the middle. The solder was stuck in the spring filter pretty good, but setting it on a piece of wood and touching the narrow end with the tip of the soldering iron cause the clump of solder to fall free. Actually I think that in itself says something about how good it was at getting the solder from the board back to the spring filter--with my Pace desoldering station it seemed like solder would gather around the inlet to the filter tube and it was always a pain to remove.I got my first soldering iron before I was ten and have managed repair shops. These days I am mainly looking for gear for hobby use in repairing and restoring vintage test gear and radios. This isn't a Pace or a Weller. If I could spend a few thousand dollars per work station, I would probably go with something I knew would stand up to 8 hours a day, five days a week of use for several years. But this costs about a tenth as much as going with a high-end set up and it gets the job done. As a hobbyist, this seems like the way to go to me.

Ok so the gun takes a bit of practice, and you aren't going to completely ditch your desolder braid, but overall it's still a HUGE improvement over braid or one of those soldering irons with a sucker bulb attached. The trick that I've found with the gun is you have to leave it sit on the solder for at least 3-5 seconds so that it liqufies the solder all the way up the leg of whatever you're attempting to desolder. This obviously goes against conventional wisdom to leave the iron on the joint for a little time as possible, but in this case since you're attempting to REMOVE a (likely defective) component, you need to unlearn all those years of "remove the heat ASAP".Once you get that down, this thing is a treat. Removing 30-45 pin chips used to take an hour or a ton of heat with my rework station and potential board damage or warping. Now I can safely remove a chip in 5 minutes with minimal risk to the board or the pads.Again, you'll still need desolder braid around sometimes for certain places - this thing isn't that great with ground planes or removing leftover patches of solder - it more or less only works when there's a decent sized blob of solder to both transfer heat and liquefy the rest of the nearby solder and to get pulled by the vacuum action, but man, this is an indespensible tool if you find yourself in a position to regularly remove and replace through-hole components.Also the included soldering iron with smoke sucker is a major improvement over my previous iron. It has a solid hold and feel to it and gets warm fast. The smoke sucker is a very nice addition and helps keep my soldering area from stinking up the house and polluting the air. You'll still want to keep the windows open and air flowing, but it definitely minimizes the airborne byproducts of soldering.Only real gripe about this thing is that you have to switch the hose on the smoke absorber and the desolder gun back and forth, there isn't a dedicated port for each one. It's not a tragically difficult task, just a minor nuisance, but I'd still have preferred one where I didn't need to juggle the hose.

Works well for the price. Don't expect miracles here but it does the job. The fume extractor feature is kind of useless and gets in the way. You can remove the tube but the mount for the tube is molded into the handle which is slightly annoying as it makes the handle a bit bulky. I'm sure another Aoyue or other soldering pencil with the same plug end would work as well though. Required some fiddling to work with hakko tips.

Pros:Great price! Similar alternatives can be much more expensive.Both irons heat up quickly and are able to heat a lot of mass quickly if needed.The tips are decent. I have not used them long enough for a complete review, but so far so good (had this a few months now).Cons:You must wet the sponge inside the desoldering iron each day that you use it, which is just a bit of a time nuisance to me, and it can be a bit annoying to remove sometimes. Not a major issue but worth noting. I prefer the Pace method with a metal strip and oil. It allows you to see how full the reservoir is, and you don't have to do daily maintenance.The soldering vs desoldering iron pinouts are different, which means that if one side goes out, you will have to repair or replace the main unit, instead of just operating with one functional side.Overall:Buy it. It is a great unit for the price.

On the (slight) downside, I had to tighten a couple of screws on the desoldering gun when I received it, but it and the soldering iron both work just fine so far. Some reviewers don't like the sound of the air pump, but to me it has been OK for the short periods I've been using it. (I'll probably just pop in my earbuds and listen to something if I end up soldering for longer periods.)And on the upside, I thought using my DS017 hand desoldering pump all those years was a pretty good experience, but now I wish I'd had a desoldering gun with a vacuum pump like this one long ago!

This is really a superb quality soldering /desoldering station.Having a long and excellent experience (in my electronics laboratory, in Europe) with ZD soldering /desoldering stations, I must say that when I saw this station I was a little bit skeptical.You can say that I was so familiar with those stations (I've worked with) that I didn't want to work with another brand. And I was looking for a soldering /desoldering station with a desoldering gun not an air gun but here in north America it was pretty difficult to find that anymore.My previous soldering station (in Europe, 2009) had two lighted LCD screens for each use, thermostats, a micro-processor etc.and this station has also two screens but with 3 digits each instead which its not bad of course. Also this station has a micro-processor which controls all usage of this station's abilities. It's all metal and heavy to carry but what actually surprised me was the awesomeness inside the unit. It has a large great quality air-pump, a large heavy transformer and on the front the control circuit board. Even the wires inside are very neat put and the 'high voltage' parts are all covered with thermo-shrinking tubes. A really awesome job done! So when I saw that I was really satisfied.In front except the two digit screens it has three buttons for each use. Also a Power OFF' feature for both gun and iron too. On the back of the unit it has the power switch, a fuse box and a detached power cable.It heats up both gun and iron almost immediately which is great. I didn't want the carring handle on the top, so I took it off. Also I used my own holders for both gun and iron.The only minus on this station (until now) is the quality of the gun. Its a low quality, made with a material between rubber and plastic (according to other desoldering guns in the market which are good quality plastic) but it does the job. Also AOYUE uses this gun to all their desoldering stations.Overall its an excellent professional soldering and desoldering station for long use...

Well built, well designed, the finish was a litle rough on the case, (looks like they painted over rust) pump is fairly quiet but seems to not have a very high airflow. I would recommend a 1/4" "Y" tee with a twin ballvalve for the air suction port as it only hooks up one air line at a time. Temperature of the tips for each can be independently calibrated if required and both sides can be independently set from 1-60 minutes for sleep shutdown when not in use.The supplied silicone grease is somehow supposed to be used to clean things but the manual does not tell you anything about how.Compaired to the $2000 brands, if it lasts its a steal! I can't look inside to see the quality as it has warranty sticker seals.But it seems ok, the hoses are very flexible but we will have to wait and see if the rubber is going to break down quickly like a lot of other lower priced rubber from that area of manufacture.All in all its probably worth what I paid for it compaired to the other overpriced choices.

I had an ANCIENT Weller desoldering station I got for free but it sucked (in the wrong way) and had a really noisy pump. The pump in this thing is very quiet - even compared to some other modern brands like Pace etc. I have used. I'll probably never need the smoke extraction function on the iron part - but the iron it comes with seems pretty decent and will make a useful complement to my other irons. It wasn't immediately obvious to me which side the desoldering gun holder goes on - all the pictures show it on the left side of the faceplate but mine had it on the right - which actually turned out better for my setup. Just a heads up if you're confused while setting yours up - other than that everything was pretty obvious to plug in and go. Only time will tell if this thing is durable but so far everything seems good.

Has a few quirks but works pretty good for how much there asking