I have recently purchased a brand new JBC CD-2BD soldering station. I have read mostly positive reviews/opinions about JBC products and that particular station in this forum and some other places. I guess all the good things are already mentioned by others, so I would like to point out something I did not like.
1. JBC claims their cartridges have superior thermal response and shows a graph as a proof where we see how in 2 seconds temperature rises from 20 to 350°C. My collected data shows that is a marketing BS. It takes 7+ seconds to do that (see the graph attached).
2. I have contacted JBC about that more than 2 weeks ago, but I have not received any response on this matter. I was really disappointed that they showed no interest and did not care to respond.
3. I have found two major issues in their "JBC Manager" software:
a) It looks like temperature displayed on the graph is not always actual temperature. It is especially visible when temperature is dropping in Sleep mode. For example, on the LCD screen I can see that temp is 150°C while at the same time on the graph it shows that it is 225°C.
b) It loads my i7 CPU by ~40% when it draws a simple graph. It does looks suspiciously high.
4. Other less important things:
a) No change log is provided for firmware updates, so you do not know what was fixed. Not that it is very important, but it seems to be a common practice to provide it and hence I a missing it.
b) There is no "Process Alarm" function (if the actual temperature leaves the preset temperature window, an acoustic signal is generated) that ERSA i-CON stations offer. I think it would be handy and could be easily added with the next firmware update if JBC decides to do so.