Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsBare minimum functionality - good enough if you dont plan to use it much
Reviewed in the United States on August 30, 2020
From a strictly functional perspective this does the job and is better than nothing. The occasional hobbyist will do fine with this.
The construction is very cheap - flimsy light weight plastic, poorly fitting threaded knobs for adjustment, and no vertical adjustment.
The claim that it allows 360 degree rotation is mostly false. Technically its true if you are working on a very small board. But it only has 2 inches of vertical clearance above the bottom bar, so if your board is more than 4 inches wide you wont be able to rotate 360 because your board will hit the bottom bar. A much bigger vertical clearance would have made a big difference, and an adjustment for it would have been great.
No provisions whatsoever for holding a board that is not square/rectangular. You need at least two parallel straight edges to use this tool. Round/oval/oddly shaped boards wont work with this tool. Also will not work with very small boards < 1 inch across - the tool holder will cover the entire board. You need at least a 1/4 margin on each edge of the board between the board edge and the first component/trace. The margin is for the board to fit into the board holder.
The rotation lock is very very weak and although there are two of them, one on each side, it wont hold the board still if you are pressing on it with your soldering iron and you can forget completely about using a screwdriver on heat sinks and other items with Phillips screws - the board will just rotate when you press into the screw.
Half of the adjustment knobs are on the wrong side of the tool because the two pillars on each side are the same part, but with one of them turned around the other direction. They should have made it non-directional so that the adjustment screws could have been on the front on both sides. Plan on reaching around to the back for the adjustment screws on the right side pillar. Could just use only the left side for adjustment - but did I mention the rotation lock is weak and you need to set both of them to have a prayer of holding your board still?
All in all I do not recommend this tool for anyone other than a very occasional hobbyist. Regular/advanced hobbyists and professionals should look for a better quality tool. But you get what you pay for I guess.
