In a Rush? Here's our Winner!!
Everlast PowerTIG 200DV
Top Reasons to Buy
- Very lightweight
- Easy to use
- Color coded controls
- Great power output
- 120V/240V Dual Voltage input
- Weight: 60 lbs
- Warranty: 5/3/1 Years (Industrial Warranty)
TIG welding is a delicate art. It requires a steady hand, fine attention to detail, and a lot of patience. That makes it especially important to have good equipment to work with, particularly when it comes to your TIG welding machine. You want something reliable, powerful, and affordable.
But it can be hard to sift through the everything when online shopping and find what you’re looking for. Products can be misleading or poorly reviewed, or be fine for some purposes but not for yours. This list is here to help you choose the right welder with a list of solid products, and teach you a bit about how to choose the right welder for yourself as well.
Our Favorite TIG Welders on the Market
The 10 Best TIG Welders – Reviews
1. Everlast PowerTIG 200DV TIG Welder - Top Overall Pick
Pros
Cons
This is a higher end model, but well worth it for the TIG welding professional. The main striking thing about this one is how great the controls are. A lot of these higher end models have a bunch of the same looking knobs on them. All red, all black, whatever other color they decide to go with.
Once you get the hang of it, those machines are fine, but it can still be a pain years later to reach down at one of over a dozen buttons that look exactly the same and realize you put your hand on the wrong one, or need to double check. This machine gets around that by color coding all the buttons. Everything involving flow is green, everything that controls pulse is in blue AC controls are yellow, and arc and amp control is red.
Everything else, as you might expect, is very high quality. It welds up to 5/16” in steel on 240v, and 3/8” on 120v. It’s sturdy stainless steel, and surprisingly compact for a machine of this quality, weighing only 60 lbs and not taking up an overly huge amount of space. You’ll still need a cart, of course, but hauling it up and down isn’t as much of a chore as with these huge nearly 100 lb machines.
2. PRIMEWELD TIG200-DC - Top Inverter TIG Welder
Pros
Cons
Another excellent inverter model (they’re a bit more common among TIG welders than MIG or other welders), this unit weighs at 58 lbs and it's dimensions with handle is (27.2 x 11.8 x 22.3 inches). While failing our “easy to use” metric, that can be forgiven for the sheer number of options this TIG welder provides, with options for up and down slope, as well as a plethora of current options and knobs for AC balance. It welds up to 1/8” aluminum and 3/8” in mild steel.
It’s a high powered TIG and MMA (stick) welder that is perfect for a professional welder. It’s a little less justifiable at the price and weight for a hobbyist. All of the materials are high quality and made to last. Anything that doesn’t is covered by a comprehensive 3 year warranty.
The head is of particular note; a CK 17 Worldwide Series Superflex TIG Torch gives you a lot of flexibility to weld at weird angles than a fixed or stiffer flex torch head would allow you to do, which increases the range of delicate projects you can complete.
3. AHP AlphaTIG 200X TIG Welder - Top Choice Under $1000
Pros
Cons
This is a heavy duty inverter TIG welder. It runs on both 110 volt and 120 volt power, with advanced pulse width modulation technology. It does ¼” in aluminum and up to 3/8” in mild steel, respectable numbers for a machine of this type.
For a full sized welder it’s actually relatively light at 69 lbs (around 75 to 80 lbs is close to the average for some of these machines). While large and powerful, it lacks a bit in the versatility of what it can weld. It is a TIG and stick combo welder but primarily excels at the above mentioned mild steel and aluminum, while having varying degrees of usefulness on materials like copper or stainless steel.
Mild steel and aluminum will get you a long way, so that’s not a downside for many professionals, but may be a bit less useful for those who use TIG welders for art or hobby projects instead. That said, it is an exceptional welder for thin materials, so is great for welding very thin sheets of whatever metal you’re looking to work with.
4. Weldpro Digital TIG ACDC 200GD - Top Choice for AC-DC TIG Welder
Pros
Cons
This unit trades in a multitude of knobs for a bunch of buttons, which is a nice change of pace. Digital readouts are always great, and help prevent the issue with “floaty knobs” later in life that just don’t click into place like they used to and might drift between two similar options.
It comes with a rocker style pedal, making it less fiddly to use than some others (it has no amp control on the pedal, it’s all done from the machine face), and has good all around performance, with a 60% duty cycle on AC TIG and 40% on DC TIG. It can also be used for MMA stick welding in a pinch.
The machine itself is sturdy and lightweight, similar to our top model. It weighs about 61 lbs, making it far easier on you to lift and drop it when you need to do so. For the middle of the road price it’s a great model; I’ve seen ones of similar quality go for about $100 more, so it’s well worth it to pick up if it meets your needs.
5. Lotos CT520D TIG Welder - Top Choice for Home Use
Pros
Cons
This is a great all in one machine. It does just about everything, though is primarily marketed as a TIG welder and plasma cutter. It does both quite well, especially the plasma cutting; it will cut a half inch clean cut or a ¾” severance cut (rough, but serviceable). It’s great for mild steel, stainless steel, and thin materials (like aluminum) as a TIG welder as well.
As I mentioned though, it’s all in one, so works as a solid MIG, Stick, and arc welder too, for a pretty reasonable price. This makes it an excellent all rounder machine, perfect for someone who has a lot of odd jobs to do around a house, farm, or similar setup and needs a machine that can do it all without breaking the bank on a higher end but less versatile machine.
While it won’t do any of the jobs it does as well as a dedicated machine, it does them all surprisingly well for the price.
6. Amico TIG 160 - Top Choice for Small TIG Welder
Pros
Cons
This is an excellent handheld TIG welding machine. It weighs only 15 lbs, making it easy to transport. This makes it perfect for multiple small projects spread over a wide area, or anything that requires you to walk around a bunch (like farm work or art projects).
It’s versatile enough for what it is, being a 2 in 1 combo welder (stick arc welding and TIG). Probably its best feature is it runs on 110 v or 230 v power, so it runs on most household outlets. It welds up to 3/8” on most materials (mild steel, stainless steel, alloy steel, copper, cast iron, and chrome). Notably it does not perform well on aluminum, so be careful with that.
This is a great, adjustable, flexible TIG welder for a hobbyist or someone who only needs the welder for light duty work around the homestead, at a great price for what it provides. It can’t be overstated how handy it being so light is; portability is not something you generally look for in a welder, but sometimes you really need it, and it’s hard to come by.
7. Mophorn Tig Welder 200 Amp - Top Choice Under $500
Pros
Cons
This is an excellent, cheap, and versatile TIG welder. It’s a 2 in 1 combo welder, that acts as both a TIG machine and an arc stick welder. It welds up to 3/8” in mild steel, stainless steel, titanium, copper, and brass. It’s designed to be used for a wide variety of professional applications in manufacturing (automotive and machinery), iron and steel processing, home projects, art, and so on.
In addition to its uses, it comes with a wide variety of protections, including thermal overload, overheat, and over-current protections. A 60% duty cycle gives you a lot of leeway for activating those protections too, all thanks to it being an inverter welder, which is far more energy efficient and less prone to being over used.
Keep in mind that inverter welders are a bit more sensitive and harder to repair than traditional welders, though much less so than in decades past. They get kind of a bad rap for being “unreliable”, but the technology has improved significantly since people formed that opinion of them.
8. SUNGOLDPOWER ARC MMA 200A - Best TIG Welder for Beginners
Pros
Cons
Finding a TIG machine for beginners is difficult. TIG welding is inherently complex, or more so than some other common processes, and machines tend to have an overwhelming amount of options and information to process for newcomers. This machine handily sidesteps a lot of those issues with as barebones a TIG machine as you can get. One switch to swap between TIG and MMA, and a single current adjuster knob with 10 presets. It also has the benefit of being the cheapest TIG welder on this list by a fair margin, and has a number of features that help a newbie TIG welder get a feel for things.
It has all the standard safety features we look for: over current, overheat, and over voltage protection, as well as a low voltage shutoff. It produces arcs that are stable and well compensated, making them easy to use for whatever project you’re working with at the time. Plus it’s easily hand portable at only 16.5 lbs.
It’s hard to do better for a beginner machine. It’s cheap enough you’re not feeling the hurt if TIG welding isn’t right for you, and as easy to use as any welder can be. A solid purchase to learn on, but doesn’t scale up well.
9. HITBOX TIG200A - Best for Aluminum
Pros
Cons
To be perfectly honest, I’m not particularly impressed with the power of this machine. It’s fairly weak, and not the greatest if you want a versatile TIG welder. However, it excels at very thin materials, especially aluminum, which is what earns it this spot on the list.
It’s an inverter welder, meaning it has an excellent duty cycle and very low power consumption. It does materials as thin as .3 mm, on up to 5 mm and can weld a fair bit on a single pass. As a dual volt welder (110 v and 220 v) you can use it on many household outlets or generators without issue, making it a great small machine for domestic use.
It’s not so hot at doing larger jobs, but for the price you can’t complain too much, it being one of the cheapest welders (of any type) I’ve ever seen.
10. VIVOHOME TIG 200CP - Top Choice for 110v
Pros
Cons
This is an exceptionally small, lightweight, and portable TIG welding machine. It weighs only 25 lbs and comes with a convenient carrying strap to complement its compact frame, making it easy to haul around.
This machine is perfect as a portable machine you keep in your car or truck for spot repairs or similar scenarios as a handyman or some kind of light welding work. It runs on 110 v or 220 v power, meaning it works on household power pretty much anywhere. On top of that it is highly energy efficient, being an inverter welder, so you can use it as long as it needs to be used without too much fear or overheating it.
While not the most powerful machine around (welding up to 9 mm), it’s great for the sort of light duty work its tiny frame lends it to. The price doesn’t hurt either, being as cheap as the Vivohome unit above, but slightly more powerful and a little less bulky.
Final Verdict: Our Favorite For Your Money
Everlast PowerTIG 200DV
Choosing the best product was a difficult decision this time around, but it ultimately goes to the 2019 Everlast. It was between that and the Weldpro and Lotos models; all excellent all rounder machines for most users. Ultimately I settled on the Everlast because it was the best for professionals, which is ultimately what I think a ‘best overall’ machine should be for items like this.
The others are arranged so you can find them based on what niche you need them for, be they price, use, or some other factor. There are a number of great cheap machines on here in addition to a range of higher end ones, and all are great in their own niche.
Buyer’s Guide: How do I Choose the Right TIG Welder?
There are a large number of factors that go into picking the right TIG welder. You want to pay very close attention to the machine’s ease of use and safety features, as well as the power of the machine (both how much it draws and how much it puts out). Of note Is also the quality of the machine’s materials and construction, along with its accessories, price, and warranty.
Ease of Use
You want a machine with clear and easy to read buttons and readouts. Knobs with clear options and proper labels.
It may sound like something small, given you can get used to using any machine eventually, but lowering that curve helps a lot in the early stages, and if a manufacturer skimps on something this basic, there are likely other issues with the construction that may not be immediately apparent.
Safety Features
The machine should have protections against overheating, overloading, and going over safe levels of current. These are the core safety features you look for since it’s easy for any and all of these features to trip, especially on machines with lower duty cycles.
In addition to the protections against overuse of the machine, look for other less common and vital, but still nice to have safety features, like wires that are kept electrically cold until activated by the trigger.
Power
You want to keep a close eye on both power input and power output for your TIG welder. It’s important to make sure that the machine runs on a voltage you can supply. 110 volt, 120 volt, 220 volt, and 240 volt.
220 and 240 are most common in Europe, while 110 and 120 are the most common in the US and some other countries.
There are a few other odd voltage types you’ll see on occasion (like 115 volt) that will usually require an adapter of some kind (and you’ll likewise need one if you buy the wrong voltage for your country’s outlets).
Try to stick to the most common voltages where you are if you can.
For output, you’re mostly looking for adjustability. The more available voltages the more options you have when welding, both on different materials and for different jobs on the same material.
Materials and Construction
You want sturdy materials that are lightweight. This makes steel and aluminum the preferred options, with a hard plastic a very distant second place to those.
The outside shell should be durable with the internal components properly secured for transport and storage.
Generally, you need to choose whether you want the machine to be small and light enough to carry, or simply durable and make sure you have the proper cart to haul it around. The larger machines will generally be more powerful, but for TIG welding smaller machines are often more viable than their equivalent MIG counterparts.
Price and Warranty
Somewhere in the ballpark range of $500 and $1000 is the average price for a solid TIG welder, with some higher-end machines cracking that $1000 limit.
For warranties, you want the best you can get. Pay attention to exactly what each section of the warranty can cover, as some companies will bandy about a “lifetime warranty” that only covers exterior damage, for example. Long term warranties for internal components are preferred, as they are more difficult to repair, and could force you to replace the whole machine if and when they break.
Accessories and Extras
Some minor benefits to look out for are accessories, like a starting spool of wire, a free mash, or added brushes and similar items so you can get straight to welding out of the box.
Likewise a nice extra to look for is multiple modes on your welder. A TIG welder that also does MIG and/or stick welding, or doubles as a plasma cutter or something similar is often preferable to a dedicated TIG machine for most users.
Visit the Best Welding Helmet page for your protection equipment.