I haven't come across Hakko before, but I use XYtronic gear and have always found it very good indeed. I have an older model unit, the XYtronic 988 rework station, with all the accessories. It's discontinued now, replaced with this one, but spares are still readily available. The 60w pencil iron is the most comfortable one to use for extended periods of any I have ever tried, and it very reliable. 8 years old and still on the original element, with pretty much daily use. The tips last forever as well. I've soldered literally hundreds of thousands of joints with it (quite a few empeg prototypes were made using this tool), and it's very good.

A much simpler, cheaper one is the XYtronic LF-1000, which is basic but very effective. 100W iron with motion detector, so it switches to half power when not used for a while, then ramps up to temperature when picked up. Quite inexpensive, a company I work with bought two of them for about £50 each on my recommendation recently.

I believe the lead-free irons have a tip that handles long periods at a higher temperature (probably thicker plating) and obviously have no lead used in their construction.

Personally I hate lead-free solder with a passion, the stuff is horrible. It's a nuisance to solder with, an absolute pain to rework, and always gives a joint that looks awful even when it's fine. Add to that the fact that 99% tin solder has a number of known long-term failure modes, and it's just a nasty solution to the problem.

Tin isn't exactly non-toxic either, although it doesn't act as such a potent neurotoxin as lead does.

Weller, nowadays, are crap, at least the lower-end stuff. I know of several people who bought quite expensive weller irons, and all of them failed within a year or so, normally by the temperature regulation steadily drifting until the iron says its somewhere past the boiling point of tungsten on the display, but would actually have a hard time melting a reasonably determined piece of butter.

Pca