Yeah, maybe. I have been spoiled by the TS100/Pinecil, it's the first soldering iron I've owned (besides a $5 trash iron) so I don't know how bad other (otherwise good) irons are.

I never knew about the Pinecil before this post. Thanks for that.

Personally own the TS100 and absolutely adore it for mostly building keyboards.

Yes you are absolutely spoiled by both of these. Before them were super terrible irons or the expensive brick sized ones with minimal optionality. Having come from the 'dark ages' it's night and day.

I just got a pinecil and it’s great! I have a long workbench and I mostly use the pinecil with a usbc battery because I can put that in my lap and have the power cable totally free from my work.

The debug board, which I don’t have is a great example of using usbc for development and debug (as opposed to test contacts inside the device).

It does need a version 2 though as the tip holders are not great.

Its not that people consciously choose bad soldering irons, its more of an awareness problem and flood of chinese hakko 936 clones. Nobody knows why 60 year old technology (heater behind separate tip) is bad until they meet their first ground plane on modern multilayer board.