How To Choose The Best Harbor Freight Heat Gun For Your Needs

Heat guns are used for everything from removing stubborn carpet glue to roasting coffee beans, and they are crucial to putting together electric guitar cables and removing peel-and-stick wallpaper. They're also pretty good at melting things and starting fires, and since that's not always what you want, some heat guns are better than others for any particular purpose. When you're in the market for a heat gun, the key to knowing which one to buy is anticipating its potential uses.

Harbor Freight offers five electric heat guns with a variety of features that will cover just about any DIYer's needs. Identifying your needs involves understanding the item you're going to be heating — specifically, its materials and size. From there, you can select a gun that accommodates the temperature range for various projects, as specific materials have distinct heating requirements, as well as limits — you want to get the job done without destroying everything in the process.

Beyond temperature ranges, it's good to consider which standard features you might benefit from. Guns with flat backs or integrated stands can be used hands-free, which is helpful for specific projects. The corded Hercules 1700 Watt Heat Gun is the only Harbor Freight model with an integrated stand. You might also prefer a cordless model over the more common corded guns, despite the expense and performance tradeoffs. And heat guns often come with accessory nozzles for scraping, focusing heat, reflecting, and welding. Flat nozzles, for example, are helpful for focusing air, crucial for tasks like the hack for making your stair treads match your LVP floor. The Hercules corded and Hercules 20V Cordless Compact Heat Gun and the Bauer 20V Cordless Heat Gun come with 2 to 3 nozzles.

These features, along with automatic cool-down, LED lights, and long cords, are all useful, but a heat gun's precision heating is where the rubber melts on the road. Dialing in the right heat gun choice is a matter of knowing what temperatures are required for whatever your intended project, then unpuzzling whether a particular heat gun will achieve that temperature. 

For example, bending PVC pipes only requires that they be heated to 210 to 275 degrees Farenheight, while paint removal requires temperatures in the 752 to 1,112 degree range, and repairing leather and vinyl can require temperatures upwards of 800 degrees. The highest temperature a Harbor Freight heat gun can reach is 1200 degrees, so it's critical to make sure you choose one that can accomplish the task. As you might expect, the corded models outperform the battery-operated guns in this regard, with the Hercules achieving 1,200 degrees, the Bauer 1600 Watt Corded Heat Gun reaching 1,100, and the Warrior 1500 Watt Heat Gun managing 1,000 degrees. The cordless models are very similar to each other, with the Hercules reaching 905 degrees and the Bauer reaching 895.

But, it's not all about maximum temperature. Materials like electronics can be damaged by overheating, for example, and PVC goes from a viscous liquid state to a carbonized state at around 425 degrees. So the ability of the gun to be precisely temperature-controlled is critical. Here, again, the corded models outperform the cordless ones, with the Hercules having 108 temperature settings, Bauer having 14, and the Warrior only 2. But the cordless Hercules and Bauer models only have a single temperature setting.

While Harbor Freight's consumer reviews tend to be overwhelmingly positive, there are a couple of exceptions in this category. The $19.99 Warrior and $34.99 Bauer corded heat guns both get 4.7 stars on thousands of ratings, and are recommended by 96 and 97 percent of reviewers, respectively. Some Warrior reviewers complain about the gun's lack of durability and habit of smoking when used. A one-star Warrior reviewer wrote: "Add a few bucks and get something worth having." He recommends the corded Bauer, and even the Bauer's most lukewarm reviewers seem to like it. "I find it's a bit large in size and build quality is typical economy import all the way," writes a four-star reviewer. "But it works fine." 

The $54.99 corded Hercules is less well-received, with 4.5 stars and an 89 percent recommendation rate. A four-star reviewer writes, "Despite having 1200 watts, the gun barely dented glue used to adhere carpet to the concrete steps in our home."

But 4.5 stars isn't bad. On the other hand, customers were less thrilled with the cordless Hercules ($34.99, 4.2 stars) and Bauer ($37.99, 4 stars) models, complaining they don't get hot enough and suffer from poor battery performance. A four-star reviewer writes of the Hercules, "It worked good just not great. I was hoping it would be a little more effective." Regarding battery life, one Bauer purchaser said, "It will eat a battery before it gets up to temp. took me 3 batteries to melt down one [heat-shrink]" ... the kind of thing a corded heat gun can usually do in seconds. (reviews via Harbor Freight)