A few days ago genebren asked about experiences with the SAG-55 Hot Air Gun. It's quite new and looked pretty good on paper although no E14 members admitted to owning one. I've had an Atten ST862D hot air gun on my wish list for ages (since Feb 2023) - currently it's priced at £178 (VAT included) on Amazon. The FNIRSI offering is much smaller and neater, and from AliExpress cost me £57.79 including VAT. I ordered it on 03/07 and it turned up on 10/07 which was pretty good.
This won't be a full road test, just a quick look.
I don't normally bother with the unboxing stuff but the camera was handy:
They sensibly put the key instructions on the box, right where you'll see them !
What you get for your money.
Ready to go
There is an instruction booklet, which seems fine.
The power supply is hardwired to the hot air gun hand piece but uses a nice standard IEC main inlet. It's very light. It doesn't have all the approval marks that you often see but does have a manufacturer name and CE mark.
Start up screen.
I tried to show the display and the thermometer at the same time, but you'll need to take my word for it that the SAG-55 was set to 350C during this test.
I pulled this board out of the scrap bag and removed some parts. I was able to remove a SOT23 transistor with the temperature set to 250C. Not using any board heating.
Impressions
Good things
- Cheap
- Nicely made
- Heats up (and cools down) fast
- Pretty display, bright and legible
- Fairly quiet compared with other hot air things I have
- Hand piece is light and a reasonable shape
- Automatic shutdown when put into the holder
- Fits standard nozzles
- IEC power inlet on PSU block
- There is an instruction booklet
Not quite so good things
- Hot air is pointing at you when the display is the right way round for reading, flipping the display would be really nice.
- Only one nozzle supplied
- No mains switch on PSU - so for a true power off you need to unplug or have switch in the mains lead.
- None of the usual regulatory/approval statements in the manual so possibly not legal to sell in UK or Europe.
Things
- Lots of settings and twiddles, perhaps more than you need
- Temperature accuracy looks fine (+/- 40C ref my thermocouple) - rather hard to measure but that's the way with blasting hot air through nozzles.
Should you buy one ?
I can't comment on reliability (it's only been out of the box for couple of hours) but the first impressions of performance are very good.
The lack of clear statement of compliance with regulations is disappointing - I bought mine directly from China so probably not illegal - you need to decide if this bothers you.
(An aside - I've just been fixing a fancy electric kettle that belongs to my wife's sister. It is sold by a German company, made in China and has all the CE bumf. It failed due to a combination of bad design and poor quality parts. I was puzzled by the high resistance from kettle metal parts to mains plug earth pin (2R). It turned out to be due to a Shuko to UK mains adaptor (made in the UK) but supplied with the kettle. This is a fancy adapter, not intended for consumer fitting, and clamped over the Shuko plug by screws. The point is that this properly documented but badly implemented product was both a fire and electrical risk.)
Today is Prime day on Amazon and (in the UK) you can just about get a hot air gun with three nozzles and some tweezers for less money, but the SAG-55 is much nicer looking. Most of the competition is a lot more expensive ( a Weller WTHA-1 will set you back £1255.81 !!!!).
I think the SAG-55 is very good value for the money.
So right now I can't think why you would buy anything else, if you need a hot air gun.
MK
