Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really don't understand how that can actually be a good iron in any way, shape or form. I've been doing hobby and production soldering for about 25 years. What you need is an iron that will stay at 700oF whatever you throw at it tip or workpiece related. That means power, lots of it. That doesn't come from USB. Considering my current iron is a 50W Weller TCP, that can switch between soldering 0805 packages immediat…
Probably better than the cheap Radio Shack iron I've used to do all my projects.
Oh man, life got significantly better for me when I threw that one out and bought a Hakko with temperature control. I didn't realize just how much of the difficulty I was having with soldering was from using a junky iron.
I think it's worth the price for even light users. Infrequent use means they're not getting very much practice to know what to expect with a cheapo iron and how to make do with it.