I have been a huge advocate of the pinecil and haven't used anything else in years. It's just so easy to grab my pinecil and temporarily use my laptop's power supply for the iron, or use a mobile battery, instead of moving myself and the things I am working on to the location of my soldering station. These look like upgrades compared to pinecil:
- comfier grip
- shorter tip length and presumably a more solid feel (the pinecil's mechanical interface to the tip is pretty loose-feeling)
- higher power over usb-c (actually can't think of a time I've needed more than 60W for hobby stuff, but I can imagine use cases like large ground planes)
- storage cap (this is a major improvement for working in a temporary, tight space)
All of these would be worth the price increase over pinecil, but unfortunately I think the lack of on-iron temperature settings is a dealbreaker. The pinecil in my toolbag is practically the size of a sharpie and works with my existing usb-c cables and batteries with no extra space taken up, and the killer feature (portability) is broken once you need a proprietary battery or a laptop to change temperature.
- comfier grip
- shorter tip length and presumably a more solid feel (the pinecil's mechanical interface to the tip is pretty loose-feeling)
- higher power over usb-c (actually can't think of a time I've needed more than 60W for hobby stuff, but I can imagine use cases like large ground planes)
- storage cap (this is a major improvement for working in a temporary, tight space)
All of these would be worth the price increase over pinecil, but unfortunately I think the lack of on-iron temperature settings is a dealbreaker. The pinecil in my toolbag is practically the size of a sharpie and works with my existing usb-c cables and batteries with no extra space taken up, and the killer feature (portability) is broken once you need a proprietary battery or a laptop to change temperature.