Questions about Preheaters

[alphaai]

Hello,

I own a hot air reflow station and I saw this guy on youtube using a preheater.
Preheater let me guess just warms up the pcb.
Do I really need to preheat the board to mount some components on the pcb?
There must be pros and cons for a preheater.

Is it worth buying one?

Ben

 

[3v0]

Perheaters have been discussed on ETO in the past year.

Would be nice to have. Few if any of us with home hot air units have them. It takes a bit longer to solder a part without.