Hi. In a previous video, we took a look at a $5 USB soldering iron and whilst it worked and it might be kind of useful for some applications, it's not something I would have any faith in whatsoever about you know, being like robust and reliable and everything else. so I thought I'd take a look at another USB soldering iron and this is the brand-spanking-new T SAT soldering iron. Yes, it's kind of I Guess the little brother is it of the TS 100 which everyone absolutely raves about.

But the good thing about this is that it is a USB powered iron as opposed to the DC barrel Jack used in the TS 100. So not nearly as convenient if you're out in the field. so this could be really interesting. It's a 70 I think it's 72 US dollars at the moment, delivered on Aliexpress It's an order of magnitude more expensive than that cheapest $5 iron, but as will no doubt see, it's much higher quality, so let's take a look at it.

I Got the iron itself, including that some adapters we'll have a look at I've got a nice little a carry case here, which is really good for a portable soldering iron. obviously some sort of portable stand, but what? it doesn't fit in the provided case? Unbelievable. I've got an adapter because the adapter inside here. We'll take a look at the iron in a minute.

Let's see what else we got. Safety instruction. There you go. knock yourself out I Mean they care about that solder and Alain gets hot.

That's all you need to know in there. We get an Allen Key, We get a USB see that feels real? Ah, that's silicone that feels really sex on a stick. That does. Very nice.

We've got ourselves a grounding strap. neat server yes, do you don't know where that hooks in? And we've got a power adapter because this is not actually five volts USB It's actually nine volts, two amps which is part of the quick Charge 3.0 standard which here we go. so we need an adapter. There we go at nine volts, two amps so it'll ramped up if it, you know negotiates the higher power.

That's all part of the standard temperature range from 100 to 400 degrees C 9 volts input and a rated power of 18 volts 9 volts times 2 amps of course, designed by a design and made in China So let's try the stand out here. Okay, well figure out how to use that later, will we? Yeah, it's all sharp. really don't like it I Don't know why they bother. Now you have to be careful which one you actually order because it only comes with the one tip.

So I ordered the one with the beveled tip like this: normally I believe that the standard one comes with a fine point conical tip which I don't particularly like for general use I believe I'm sure you can buy these things separately, but I haven't looked, but as you can see, it uses a 3.5 millimeter TRS jack to plug into this thing and get the power through and the temperature sensor back because unlike the five dollar USB crap when we looked at, this one is fully temperature controlled as well as being a higher power at 18 watts now. I've got to say this looks and feels really good qualities as the TSD 2025 is it their tip and it looks and feels like really good quality. I'm I'm suitably impressed by this. and yes, it is a direct heat technology iron.

so the element is integrated into the tip and it's right at the tip so it's thermal. performance should be pretty schmick well for 18 watts anyway. I Have no idea why this part here screws off because this doesn't come out if you buy a new tip. I Believe you get the whole lot so I can only presume that's like a finger type thing to.

you know if your fingers touch that, that's not going to get as nearly as hot as if it was completely integrated with the whole thing. Now the pencil itself looks and feels superb quality it has off. there's our little ground strap. very nice.

Anyway, anodized aluminium I Really like it. Now this piece just screws off here, but once again I'm not sure why because it's not like it locks in place. you can just plug your tip in like that. so I don't why that rings there.

Hmm okay. it looks like we've got two buttons here. Temperature? is there one in the middle as well? I'm not sure and let's peel that off. Tada we've got ourselves a little OLED screen but yeah that looks and feels great quality.

Oh I Didn't know that it actually has a sleep mode look at this at half of what 5 Volts standby mode and but it's got standbys presumably different to the sleeping temperature There it goes down to 200 presumably to reduce the to increase tip life and they tell you're here at continuous use of 350 which is probably where you're going to be wanting to operate and iron like a small capacity iron like this up to 40 minutes. the handle surface temperature will reach 50 60 degrees ie. too hot to touch. So yeah, it's not going to be a production high-end but hey, you don't expect it to be because this is designed for just you know, 5-10 minutes use in the field.

and the earthing strap was certainly a nice touch. So you could you know put that onto a computer chassis or or to your field ESD mat or whatever you want to hook it on to. Neat and it fits in the case very nicely. There's room for another tip in there.

plus you can put a whole bunch of US solder in there but the stand doesn't fit so you ever find something else or just don't bother. Ok let's pair it on and see what happens. Oh, there we go. That's the sleep mode.

So it's in sleep heating set in heating setting. It's not doing much heating with that sort of current draw. Oops. I Just hit the UP button.

sorry now it's not particularly heating up quickly at all. There's the magic smoke escaping from the tip and but we are at the 9 volts and it's not quite the two am so it's not certainly not delivering the 18 what's claimed. Certainly not delivering full power. Ok, now the first thing.

I Don't know if this is the same interface as the TS 100. I've never used the TS 100 but I would have expected that up down think are there we go, you've got to hold it down and then that goes in 10 degree increments. Ok, that's alright. and the center.

There is no center button by the looks of it. it's got a velocity control that's really quick. There we go, you just have to let it timeout and 15 watts. There you go.

So not quite the 18, but there could be some loss in the USB thing like I don't know I'm not gonna quibble about that and just sitting there doing nothing, it's gonna draw. you know, five odd watts. Okay, let's not muck around. Let's go straight for the ground plane test.

I Don't know if it's going to do it. We'll try it out using my standard lead-free Loctite solder. so let's give it. a ball.

Here we go: Ah, nice. Smooth as silk. no worries whatsoever. Beautiful.

once again. it seems to be drawing about 15 watts into that ground plane. Okay, let's see if it's full of it. It's set the 350 degrees already.

got some solder on there? Well, it's certainly not accurate. It's a good 20 degrees over. Hmm, not not great. and when you're going down in temperature, it gives you the display like that.

By the way, the OLED display. it's okay I don't know what it's like outside, but anyway, let's go down to just 270 just because we can and it's more accurate down there. It's only seven degrees out where we're pretty confident this. We've measured it with other ions and cross correlated with other temperature sensors.

So yeah, by the way, I really do like that it shows the voltage on there. That's really well good. I'm not sure what this other display here is supposed to be I don't know. Thank you.

mm-hmm Okay, just for kicks, let's see if we can solder a To-220 down to this ground plane, shall we? So let's give it a burl. I've got a set to 350 by the way. so it's a bit how you doing I know, but I'm just curious to see if it can do that or not it's going on the tab. Geez you know like this is not something that I'd expect out of an 18 watt iron.

but gee, look at that. Wow that's not bad at all. You can't complain for your 18 watts the the capability of this thing, it's really quite quite impressive. It's not easy, maybe we can ramp the temperature up a bit and it probably do a better job with that leaded solder to.

By the way, one thing I've found is that using this iron I'm always like hitting these buttons. So yeah, whether or not you know you can get it in a mode where that's a problem, it's I'm sure it can happen here. we go, let's just get some 6040 stuff and see what we can do here. Once again, still set to 350 and there you go.

You can't actually get in there like that and that is very impressive I Know I'm taking way too long to why I do this I just want to see capacity iron and see that it flows. But yeah, I mean I didn't expect that and of a direct heat 18. What iron? So yeah, this has got really good direct heat technology in it. Neat.

and with that actually on there, it's saying it's about you know, 270 degrees or something like that. So and of course, if you set it to 400, then it's just going to go through that like butter. Wow that? okay let's try some 15 gauge wire. I'm back to our 350 degrees and lead-free solder.

So let's give it a bill and it makes light work of that. Just finish that off on the other side there. Wow Yep, no problem whatsoever. Sweet Ass! Alright, so let's look at some of the other menu options here.

We hit this: Well, you've got a hold down this side of the button. we're into the settings and we can go into the working temperature through 50 the standby temperature which goes down to 200. I'm not fussed about a standby mode on an iron like this is sleep time 180 seconds Power: that's 18 watts. Presumably we can change that temperature stop.

don't know what that is I don't have a manual for this. They didn't actually provide a manual off voltage 10 volts. So I guess anything over 10 volts, it switches off temperature degrees C or the Celsius and right-hand use or left-hand use. Nice.

So it'll flip the screen around and that's just what the current, voltage and temperature is. So to change the setting, we just hold down that and bingo we can go in and the power. we can actually go up to 24 so that's interesting. Give me more power I'll take that and to set it, you've just got to let it go in like that.

And of course we have to find out if it can burn its own lead. That's pretty good burn. Priscilla Can lead sweet as by the way. I've had this on for like you know, 10 minutes and I can keep my fingers on there and that's not even warm.

The other good thing about it's got a relatively short grip to tip distance, which is really important for getting fine work. Not quite as good as a JBC but geez, you can't complain. And as far as I'm gonna mix, go with the cable on there like you don't even notice that the cables on there. It's absolutely fantastic.

It's waited quite well. The balance is like really nice. I Rather like this One thing though. like I've been using this for 10 minutes and check out that tip.

it's like it's blackened around there already. Not terrific. I Guess One thing this ring is useful for is that it does actually allow you to screw that tip off without touching it. Okay, I'm very curious to know what happens if we actually don't have a quick charge power bank available and we've only got a regular power bank.

In this case, five volts are two point four amps capable. See if it still works. Oh okay, no, it's really drew to most power is switched my power bank off. Okay, but we're up.

We are up and running so it might just simply draw too much power. So let's go. let's go to heating mode low volt. damn it's really disappear.

Kappa Bulow bank doesn't work otherwise or other you know, suitable power source. but hang on if we turn the power down, can we still do it? I'll go down, to 16. That's the lowest we can go. I Couldn't get to this menu when it was plugged in that power pack.

We needed the other power pack to do it though. Nope. Low volt. Nothing we can do about it.

So let's just do a very unfair comparison with the Jb sheet. and GBC shall we calibrated this to our 300 So precisely 300 degrees and it can just bite that ground plane there? the JBC Also, at 300, let's give that a bell and that just goes through that like butter. But of course there's no comparison there because this is a hundred and 30 watt capable line. You can see that you know it's for an 80 watt iron.

It's super impressive. Alright, how does it handle multi-layer board at 350 degrees? Celsius No problem whatsoever. Alright, I Set the standby timer there. it is bang on 60 seconds so it'll go down to 200.

So if we pick that up, hopefully it'll come back. Nope. Oh yeah, you got to shake it a little bit. There you go.

so there must be an accelerometer in there to do that. You know that's alright. I Don't think it's a feature needed on something like this, but some people like it. Aha.

Check this out. I Just discovered that if you turn the off voltage up, it was 10 volts before, but if you go up to its maximum of 13 volts, we can get more power out of this thing. I'll show you. So look at this going up.

We're now drawing 20 20 Watts There you saw it. and if we start some soldiering. I Was able to get it up to over 20 watts. 20.4 so higher than its rated 18.

Very nice. You can see the voltage now at least on this with this particular supply shopping up to 10 volt. so it's not like it's jumping up to that 12 volt quick charge mode. so I'm not sure what's going on there, but it certainly can get extra power out of that.

Nice. Okay, let's do the old wet sponge test. Shall we? Here We go, there, we go. It's yeah, but hey, for the capacity, its root stuck.

it's stuck. Oh, but of course it's more than good enough for the job. We're just mucking around now. Okay, let's open up this puppy.

have a look inside. How do we get in there? Hmm. the I reckon this switch has to has to come off somehow. There's probably a screw under there.

Well, that's the trick. You get your knife in there like that and it's almost purposely designed to do that. And today, the supplied Allen Key fits. Winner winner chicken dinner And this hysterectomy.

Oh yeah, there we go. It pops off. Tada. we're in like Flynn Check it out.

there's our little OLED display. Let's just stuck down. Just got some sponge there and we've got our micro. It's an STM 32 micro I Believe Let's flip the board open.

Looks very nice from the top side. If we slide that forward a bit we'll come out And Tada Esad there you go. I mean the the design of the casing and the design of the board and everything else is really very very nice. Ts Ad version 1.7 for those playing along at home.

So they've gone through a few revisions in here and that so8 there's obviously the power MOSFET You can tell by the pin out the nice chunky trace has gone across there surface mount three and a half millimeter socket. This looks a reasonable quality. Like how do you tell a poly switch fuse on the input? That's very nice and this that that's an inductor. So this is obviously a DC to DC converter.

Why? So there we go. We've got a diode there and the inductor so we can look up the data sheet for that DC to DC converter. a Q 4335 MOSFET I'll include the datasheet if we have it. Got a little trainee there by the looks of it and up the front that is going to be our thermocouple tip sensing amplifier there.

so that's really quite a nice design. Let's flip it back over and there's our switches again. And there's our St Stm32 our micro so don't know if there's any because there's open source firmware for the TS 100 I believe. so I'm sure it won't be long before people hack this thing as well, but like, do you need to I don't know.

It seems to work, just find the interfaces a bit fiddly, but I wouldn't wouldn't quibble about that. And there's no accelerometer and there's a spare footprint next to it unpopulated. that's probably for an alternative type, just in case they can't get it. I Thought maybe it's a JTAG header like the programming interface, but it doesn't seem to be so I Don't think you know this thing doesn't have any ready programming interface for it.

So there you go. That's the new T SAT USB C soldering iron and I think this has got Weiner written all over at the design and build. Quality is excellent. The thermal performance is excellent.

For the power available in this thing, it's more than what you'd need in most cases unless you're doing really super heavy you know, the bullet connectors or something out in the field. I Don't know the T is 100. maybe better in that respect because it's a higher wattage iron. But for me I know a lot of people won't agree.

But for me, the USBC interface is just much nicer than the DC barrel jack on the TS 100. And for those who think that the strain will be a problem on this, this applied silicone leaders not only burn proof, but it is super lightweight and there's no stress on that at all. You don't even notice it. So I think it's fantastic.

It's really hard to fault this thing. The only thing wrong with it, of course is that it doesn't work on anything but a quick charge compatible. IVA AC adapter like we used here or a power bank. and I don't have a quick charge power bank.

You may not have a quick charge compatible power bank, so you might. That might be an extra expense. You might have to go out and get one, but I think it's gonna be really worth it. This is a real nice quality.

I and if you're looking for a portable temperature controlled iron, it's fantastic. That's really the only downside is that lack of compatibility with existing I don't mind that it uses USBC is great. It's the it's the connector that they should be using, but it should be backward compatible with our previous standard because the existing USB standards can give like five charging ones can give 5 volts at 1.5 amps. No problems whatsoever.

So you can get you seven half eight watts which we saw in the previous soldering iron. So I don't know why they don't do a fallback for that. Maybe it's just a firmware fix that'd be nice if it was, but if you can't it's a bit of a shame. but still even having to buy a quick charge our power bank which I'm going to do now so that I can carry this thing around because it's just great I love it I'd rather have it over the even though I haven't used the TS 100 I don't need in the field I don't need any more power than this thing's got.

it's more than capable enough and I just like the fact that it works with an existing power bank. and I don't have to dick around trying to find some other power source. so I hope you enjoyed that. And if you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

And as always you can discuss it down below on the EEV blog forum. And for those who don't know, I do often although not always release my videos early to patron supporters. So link down below if you want to become a patron. Thanks! Catch you next time.