As an all-around electronics nerd and tinkerer, I've always had some sort of soldering iron. I started soldering and building electronics kits when I was 7. Soldering irons today are quite a different beast: much smaller and more portable ones exist, they have screens with advanced controls, and they can be powered via USB-C PD.
I don't need to solder that often these days so I couldn't justify spending more money for something like a TS101. I came across the Pinecil by PINE64, a maker of open source computing hardware, that looks like it can do a lot of what the more expensive soldering irons can do at less than half the price.
My only annoyance is that there's quite a few menus and settings that are hard to get around and I often found my soldering iron quickly ramping its temperature down (I likely just need to figure out the settings for it). I recently used it to repair my Casper Glow.
