Another thing to keep in mind when buying ANY welder and that is... If you have issues with it (one never knows), the HF welders are easy to return (so long as you purchase the extended warranty which guarantees them against everything for up to 4 years, whereas if you by a Lincoln or a Miller or an ESAB of even an Everlast, you have to take it to an authorized service center and then wait for it to be repaired. With the HF units. There is usually an HF store nearby so you take it back and they either refund your money or they give you a new one.
I know it works like that as I own a pair of HF plasma cutters and one pooped out so I returned it to the local store and they gave me a new one, no questions asked.
I sold my Lincoln TIG machine as well as my Hyper Therm plasma cutter and replaced both. A 205 Pro-Tig and the pair of plasma cutters. The 205 Pro-Tig is a fine machine btw. My good friend is a nuclear certified welder and he's used it in the past and was amazed at how well it welds (of course TIG welding takes skill) and the Titanium plasma cutters, the consumables are 1/4 the price of the Hyper Therm consumables, why I sold it as I use the larger one on my CNC plasma table so I burn through a lot of consumables. Other nice thing about the Titanium Plasma cutter is, HF sells it with the CNC interface already installed so it's basically plug and play CNC. Had to wire the HT to run on the table.
Only thing I added to the 205 was the Everlast water cooler and a CK Worldwide Series 20 flex head TIG torch. The 205 comes with everything including the foot pedal but the torch is air cooled and an air cooled torch don't work well with aluminum at higher amperage, consequently, the water cooled torch. I don't like getting toasted fingers.
I will say that Hobart does sell a nice series of auto dark hoods, just bought one to replace my ancient Hobart auto dark hood.
