I see a fume extractor under the desk. As someone who was in the market for one recently, I'd love some discussion (like loudness, price, performance, etc).
Absolutely essential. Fumes from lead-free solder fluxes are nasty [1]. I find that bench-top "fume extractors", consisting of a fan and thin dust filter, are extremely noisy and essentially useless. I love my Hakko FA430-16. It's relatively quiet such that a regular conversation can be had in its presence, and it really works with the right hose & hood setup.
I wouldn't call the simple fans useless - just the fact that the fumes are being blown away from your face is a huge improvement over not even having that.
Of course there needs to be somewhere for them to go, but if you can have an open window close to your bench, that solves that problem quite nicely.
As someone who owns a FA430 and has a sensitivity to flux fumes causing headaches and drowsiness, I agree with everything in this comment. Keep in mind you can become sensitized to flux fumes after repeated exposure (happened to me) so IMO it's better to go overkill on fume extraction before it becomes a problem.
I use the simple fan+filter ones at work, I've always found them to work fine.
Although the comparison is against normal lab air conditions, which aren't great, as opposed to something like a home lab. At home I just open the window.
The coarse carbon mats don't even filter half of the fumes.
These super basic fan+mat fume extractors do get the fumes out of your face, which is the most important part, but the particulate and VOC levels in the room will quickly exceed acceptable levels.
But even with a proper filter stack which filters over 99.9%, you can only filter what's actually captured. You still need some ventilation and it's also a good idea to run an air purifier in automatic mode to filter what wasn't captured at the source. What isn't filtered by filters is filtered by your lungs.
I solder in the garage, never indoors. My bench has a 6" inline duct fan near the soldering station and I just run the fumes out a long section of ducting. These fans high cfm and crazy quiet. Everything stows away easily when not in use.
