If you are a subscriber of the channel you’ve seen me review this Best soldering station in Voltlog #340 This is a clone of a JBC station and I’ve been happily using this station for the past year as my daily driver. But is this very different in terms of performance or build quality from a genuine JBC station? In this video we’re going to answer that question because thanks to welectron.com I was able to acquire this JBC station for a 50% discount so if you are looking to get yourself a new soldering station please check them out, they have a pretty good offer, a link will be in the description below.
So as you can see these two have a fairly similar size & shape but upon comparing their weight I discovered the JBC original is 2.5KG while the Best station is 3KG. The soldering hand piece which is model T245A is fairly similar for both units if not identical, you don’t get the soft foam padding for the BEST but otherwise very much the same plastic, same silicone wire, same length. However as you may know, the handle piece from my BEST station failed at some point soon after I got it and I did an autopsy in Voltlog #387.
I’ve replaced the failed handle with a genuine JBC T245 which I got for like 20EUR from ebay as new old stock. So generally speaking while the two handle pieces are almost identical, you can expect lower quality control on something like the BEST and you might be unlucky enough to get a bad handle that will fail at some point like mine did. There is ofcourse a bunch of happy users who didn’t have this issue but the bottom-line is, there is no guarantee on the quality control.