Disclaimer: the experiences described here are my personal opinion. I bought the product privately and paid for it myself.
So far I have used “traditional” soldering stations consisting of a base for power supply and temperature control and a handle with heating and replaceable soldering tips, like the Hakko FX-888D.
The crucial thing is the way the soldering tips are heated: the heating element is part of the handle and the soldering tips are only made of metal and are heated by the heating element. As a result, it takes a relatively long time for the soldering tip to reach the temperature of 350 °C required for lead-free solder after switching on. With the Hakko FX-888D this takes about 30-40 seconds. Since the temperature is also not measured directly in the soldering tip itself, the control can react to changes only with a delay.
Due to the long heating-up time, devices of this type also lack an automatic “sleep mode” to reduce heating power if the soldering iron is not used for a few minutes. This can lead to residues on the soldering tip oxidizing heavily and the soldering tip then having to be laboriously cleaned so that it accepts solder again.