Review on Powerful and Precise: Discover the Aoyue 852A Digital Rework Station! by Robert Berio

So there has been a discussion about hot air stations lately. You have the $800 Hakko and the $270 Quick-DW, and then you have this $130 Diamond in the Rough. The Aoyue 852A was introduced online to counter both of the previously mentioned hot air stations in terms of performance. If you are just getting into micro soldering, this station will do everything the others do and at a fraction of the price. I had a choice between this guy and Quick, I've been repairing circuit boards for about 2 years. I chose this device for one reason: the same performance at a lower cost and an easy business decision. So now I sang the praises of the back. The suction tool is useless, just remove it. The device uses a pump to pull air out of the suction unit. When I removed mine, I actually got more accurate heat and flow readings. Build quality is chunky and the C on the digital display turns into an L at times. It's noisy and rattles on cooling if you haven't leveled it or have loose components on it. Finally, there's a small button on the pen holder that cools the device down if it's not used for a period of time. Do not rely on this button for it to work, the handle must be inserted perfectly into the mount. I've already updated mine to work as it should by dragging the knob and adding a slide switch. Gave 4 stars only because of the poor build quality, the performance is amazing!