Having spent most of my early shirt-pressing days using an iron before graduating to an automatic clamshell-style heat press, the HTVRONT Auto Heat Press 2 really does make life easier. While I haven't used the original HTVRONT Auto Heat Press, the Auto 2 has several more features, like adjustable pressure, a wider heat range, and a few small design changes. That calculates out to roughly 50% more, right?
The Auto 2 is a 1,500-watt, 15 x 15-inch (38 x 38-cm) automatic heat press that does the pressing for you once you plug in your parameters. Load your drawer, slide it in, and the machine can automatically clamp down and run its cycle. No lever pulling, no guessing how hard, not even any extra button pushes. It might sound lazy, but it's surprisingly convenient when you're crunching out items back to back to back.
Compared to my old clamshell press, this feels like a solid upgrade, not that my Panda press is at all bad. This is just better! The menu makes it easy to dial in time (from 1 to 999 seconds), temperature (up to about 410 °F / 210 °C), and pressure (44 lb to 170 lb / 20 to 80 kg) depending on what you're working with. There are even four custom memory functions for swapping between your preferred settings when switching from DTF, HTV vinyl, sublimation, and other transfer types.
I've gone so far as to purposely misalign shirts when pressing, like pressing near edges instead of dead center, just to see if heat and pressure held up evenly across the platen. And several hundred presses later, so far so good. Most of my work has been DTF, but I've also run cut vinyl transfers, and everything has come out clean. I may have even used it to iron out a few wrinkles in a pinch.
The Auto 2 heats up pretty quickly – usually about 3-4 minutes before getting me up to my usual 305 °F (152.8 °C), so you won't be waiting too long to get to pressin'. And if you forget to turn it off, it'll auto-off after 15 minutes of no use for you. HTVRONT says it'll heat up to 410 °F in five-and-a-half minutes, but I haven't needed to go full scorched-earth on anything yet, so I've not put that stat to the test. And as far as I can tell, it maintains your desired temp really well without fluctuating.
There are a couple minor quirks that are more of an annoyance than a real flaw: more often than not, the Teflon sheet will stick to the platen when it lifts – I'm guessing it's probably just static. It just means I have to give it a gentle tug, or it'll fall off on its own after a few seconds, but annoyingly to the side and off my bench, forcing me to chase after it. And every now and again, a koozie might stick to the platen if I don't use a Teflon sheet on top of it. I keep a wooden paint stirring stick next to the machine to poke anything that might get stuck, just in case.
Thick hoodies can also be a little tricky. While the press has plenty of height between the platen and tray to handle thicker items (1.77 inches / 4.5 cm), its rear clearance could use a little work when sliding the tray in. Toward the back, where the hood and extra fabric hang off the tray, the fabric will bunch up on you. Space gets a little tight in general if you're doing a large design on a large shirt, making it a little more difficult to keep your project aligned.
Another thing worth noting is the press mechanism itself. I didn't see any warning stickers suggesting not to stick an arm or a leg in there while pressing, but common sense advises against it. As far as I can tell, there are no obstruction sensors or an automatic safety release on the press. Should a fleshy bit become stuck in the press, your only option is pressing the manual "R" button to interrupt the timer and raise the press, which isn't going to happen as fast as you'd prefer in that situation. So far, in 100+ presses, I haven't even come close to burning myself.
Physically, the Auto 2 has a nice, little, compact, rectangular footprint, so it doesn't take up all your workspace. The slide-out drawer helps keep it compact when not in use and makes loading easy when you're going full tilt. Even the display screen tilts forward. Not a feature I really use, but I can see someone appreciating it, depending on their setup. It feels like it was designed by someone who's pressed a whole lot of shirts in their day and knows exactly what features this auto press needs, and which it doesn't.
That being said, I do wish it were just a tad bit bigger – after all, I do live in Texas, where the average human, myself included, isn't average-sized, so I'm often working in 2XL territory – but that's where press prices jump into a totally different tier. But as it sits, it's a solid choice for hobbyists who love making things at home. And perhaps even for a small custom apparel business, I'd say, but if you're crunching out hundreds of items per day, stick to an industrial press, for sure.
This US$350 machine punches out presses about as fast as you're ever going to get outside of an assembly line, it's versatile, and arguably most important, it's consistent. Oh yeah, and mine is purple – but they have white and blue too, if you're not a cool guy like me. It has 4.5 stars at Amazon on 880 reviews at the time of writing, so it looks like others agree with my thoughts that it works as advertised.
Product Page: HTVRONT
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