> Previous job had an iron that'd heat between you picking it up and moving it over to the PCB. That one was stupendously expensive from what I heard, but I can only imagine that tech has gotten a lot cheaper since then.

Metcal Fixed Temperature Induction soldering irons. Still the gold standard after decades because instead of using PID with a heating element and sensor, it exploits the curie effect. The tips are made of a special alloy that is only magnetic until a certain temperature after which it doesn’t absorb any more energy from the PSU, which just dumps a constant 25Mhz signal into the tip keeping it at the fixed temperature.

When their patents expired a couple of Metcal engineers left to found Thermaltronics, which makes the same soldering iron (they’re even tip compatible!) for 2-3x cheaper. They’re still more expensive than hobbyist soldering irons but well worth the cost for anyone doing a lot of soldering. The Metcal power supplies are beasts though so you can easily pick up a 20 year old unit for a couple hundred bucks on ebay and it’ll run till the apocalypse comes home to roost. I have an old unit made in the late 90s that is still going strong.