Here are my first impressions of my Hakko FX-951. It came today from TEquipment.net and came well packed. As you can see by the pictures, I ordered the .8 mm, 1.2 mm, 1.6 mm, 2.4 mm and 3.2 mm chisel tips, extra sleeves and a spare brass curl. These are the same tips I have for my Hakko 936 and I do use all of them. I will probably add a bent conical and bevel tip with indent or hoof tip to go with the rest of the collection.
The unit itself is well packed and padded by Hakko and comes with the control unit, cradle, wand, control key, tip sleeve, tip holder, heat resistant pad and interconnect cable for the sleep function. I do have to agree that the color scheme leaves something to be desired. I does look a bit toy like. That's where any comparison to a toy ends. The control unit has a bit of weight and heft to it at about 2.5 pounds. It is tall and narrow as compared to the short, squat design of my 936, but there is no sense of it being able to tip over easily. The display is small but very bright. There are 4 controls on the unit: the up/down buttons, the # button which initiates a data entry mode and * button for the end of sequence signal. Here is an example of how this works. The unit was defaulted to 750º F. I reset this to 700º. First make sure the control key is in place. Press the # and the hundreds digit lights up. Use the up/down arrows to set the digits. Press the * and the setting is saved and moves to the 10's digit. Same procedure until you have the temp you want. Finish with the * and the temp is set. Now you can remove the control key and no one can change any settings.
The wand has a very good feel to it. The cable is very supple, better quality than the 936. The connector is an 8 pin male DIN with a lock tab. The fit is snug and it takes a bit in insert the connector and to squeeze the lock tab to remove the cable. No danger of the cable falling out. The sleeves make for a comfortable grip, IMHO. The tips snap into the sleeves securely. The sleeve to wand fit is quite tight and it does take a bit of effort to unsnap the sleeve from the wand. There is no slop or wiggle and there is no doubt that the sleeve is going to stay put until removed. I feel that I have better control with the closer tip to hand distance than the 936. The tip to hand distance on the 951 is 1.95" and the tip to hand distance on the 936 is 3.87".
The tips themselves seem to be of a good quality. The tip holder has a bit of clever design to it. I discovered that there is a front and back to it even though it is round. The tips in the back sit higher up than the tips in the front, I suppose to easily tell which tips are which. The height arrangement is almost like theater seating, lower down in front and gradually raising higher the further back you go. The holder also has a good amount of weight to it. I can't see this tipping over and spilling the tips either.
The cradle is made of metal and has a very solid feel to it. There are diagonal slits cut in it as if to be able to hold a spool of solder. This isn't something I will use as I have a DIY solution that holds 2 different spools. When the wand is inserted into the cradle, the cradle moves down slightly, causing the end at the bottom to engage a switch at the back of the holder. This is for the sleep function. The sleep function is adjustable. Mine came set at 0 minutes, meaning it immediately goes into sleep mode when the wand is back in the cradle. This is fine by me. The iron is also preset to go into hibernation mode after 30 minutes, adjustable, which is also fine with me. The cradle also has a spot to hold the container that holds the brass curls. This sits very tightly in the base. I spent some time jabbing the wand in and out and there was no movement.
Now on to something slightly more interesting (I hope). I am not going to go into the technical specs. Those are readily available on the Internet. I used a stopwatch to take some time measurements. From a cold start, the 951 comes to 700º f in 15.12 seconds. This is about half the warm up time of my 936. I then tested wake up from sleep mode. If the wand is in the cradle just long enough to add the next component to the pcb, the tip is back to temp almost immediately. I let it sit in sleep mode for 5 minutes. In that time, the iron cooled down to 474º F. it took about 6.8 seconds to come back up to temp. Certainly not the fastest on the market but plenty fast enough for me. When soldering multiple pins/leads, thermal recovery is basically immediate. Now is the time to mention 1 nitpick. When the iron comes up to temp or goes into/comes out of sleep mode, there is a rather loud beep. This is on by default and I will probably turn it off. I am sure that it will get annoying quickly. While I had the cover off, I added a bit of electrical tape over the buzzer to mute the sound. We will see how that works. I also checked temperature stability but I have a $13 USD 'F'akko FG-100, not the real thing. The stability is supposed to be+/- 5ºC/9ºF. I tested the .8 mm(716ºF), 1.6 mm and 2.4 mm tips (both at 730ºF) I am definitely taking the readings with a grain of salt. I may adjust the offset down a bit, but that is still up in the air.
Naturally, I had to see how it actually worked. I had a partially done smd practice board laying around. First up was a couple of SOT23 transistors using the .8 mm chisel tip. That was very easy. The 0402 resistors were harder but that was more due to my eyes (yes, I did use magnification) than any shortcoming of the 951. Next I tried a quad flat pack 44 pin IC. I tacked it in place fairly easily. I drag soldered 1 side with the chisel tip and it worked surprisingly well. Just 2 solder bridges which cleaned up easily with solder wick. For fun, I tried to solder the pins on another side one by one. Much harder but, again, more due to my limitations. I did have a couple of solder bridges.
Overall, I am very happy with my purchase. I really couldn't justify the expense of a JBC CD-1BD, which I really like. Adding in the same tips that I have and that would have been over $200 USD more. The price, with everything I got, minus the EEVBlog discount, came to USD $286 and some change. If the purchase was work related, I could justify the cost of the JBC, mostly. Since I am just a hobbyist, the cost vs benefit difference just didn't add up. I can see me using this for years to come as long as parts are available.
I've included some pictures. Forgive the quality. I don't have a nice digital camera. I used my company iPhone 6 for the photography. I did open it up and had a quick look 'under the skirt' so to speak. Very neat and tidy as the picture shows. There are 5 screws that hold the case together. The grounding is neat and proper, with crimped ring terminals and star washers. I didn't take a picture of the back side of the pcb as I don't want to unsolder the DIN connector. If I can get my hands on a better camera, I might just take a second set of pictures under the hood with a better component view.
I hope the review/comments are useful. This is my first "in depth", at least for me, product review. You have Nanofrog to thank for this. He suggested it as there isn't much information other than basic "I like it"/"I don't like it" reviews. I typically leave a little more than that but I have never written as much as I did here. Probably has to do with the higher than average technical acumen of the EEVBloggers. I generally find that the minutia is appreciated here. Quite the opposite of SWMBO.