I was doing some prototyping of the TI TPA2011D1 3 watt Class-D amplifier that’s in a 1.2 x 1.2 mm 9-ball BGA package. Unlike my tries with the bq27421, these chips are downright painful to solder. Out of 5 chips that I’ve tried to solder, only one of them actually worked. That’s a 20% success rate. Bummer. The only thing that’s preventing me from being any more angry about these chips is that my back and shoulders hurt quite a bit after hunching over to try and solder these bastards for a good 6 hours.

“Thumbs down!” –Dave Jones