Sunstone Permanent Jewelry Starter Kit Review

How we rated the Sunstone Permanent Jewelry Starter Kit

A starter kit is a shopping list with a price attached, and Sunstone publishes the lists. Each of the three kits names the welder that goes in it, the footage of chain, the number of jump rings, the argon tanks, the tool kit and the training that arrives with them, which is the material this score is built from. No welder was bought, no jump ring was welded and no bracelet was closed to produce this review.

The machines are the one part of a bundle with published figures behind them, so the welder is weighed as its own criterion rather than folded into the rest of the box. Where the company gives an estimate instead of a figure, the review names whose estimate it is. The pages each fact came from, and the day they were read, are set out at the end of this review.

What comes in the box

Three kits are sold and the contents run in a straight line. Momentum costs $2,399 and brings the Zapp welder, 21 feet of certified chain, jump rings for 50 bracelets, two Argon Mini tanks with a regulator, a tool kit and the online course. Dream costs $3,199 and moves up to the Zapp Plus 2, 27 feet of chain, rings and connectors for 100 bracelets, a display case, and a one-on-one mentor beside the video training. Legacy costs $4,999 and carries the Orion mPulse, 45 feet of chain, rings and connectors for 200 bracelets, four argon tanks, the display case and the same mentoring.

The tool kit does not change across the three: two precision pliers, a chain cutter, an electrode sharpener, three feet of silver practice chain, a leather safety patch, two pairs of shade 5 glasses, cleaner and a door graphic. Argon is the item that decides how a kit travels, and the tanks are sized for a bag rather than a bench, which the company presents as the reason to take the work to a pop-up instead of waiting for one to come to you.

The chain is where the tiers separate most, in footage and in material. What arrives in a kit is drawn from a range running through gold filled, sterling silver and 14K gold, with the design named against each entry. Everything a first order needs to weld and finish a piece is present. What the entry kit leaves out is the part that faces a customer: no display case and no connectors, so the cheapest way in needs a second order before a market stall looks like a shop.

The welder

Two of the three machines publish an energy range and the third leaves it out. The Zapp Plus 2 runs 30 settings from 1 to 30 joules with a digital dial and a setting lock, and its design carries a United States patent. The Orion mPulse tunes in half-joule steps from 1 to 15 joules, the band the company says matters for delicate chain and jump rings, and it adds a touchscreen and more grounding ports. The Zapp, in the entry kit, is described as the affordable and utilitarian machine, and no energy figure appears against it on its page.

Where they are built is published and the same for all three. The company says it designs, manufactures and assembles each welder in Payson, Utah, with more than fifty workers, and that the mPulse was tested and certified for safety. The Zapp Plus 2 carries a Good Design Award from 2025, and an ISO 9001 certification page is listed among the company’s credentials.

The warranty is given in two places and the periods differ. The kit pages say the welder is backed by a three-year manufacturer’s warranty, with an optional longer cover through the company’s circle plan. The terms of sale set the warranty period for goods at one year from the date of shipment, with laser welders on two. The two figures are worth setting beside each other before an order goes in.

Training and launch support

The training is the same course in every kit and it is also sold on its own, which is what makes it possible to put a value on it. PJ University is described as forty video lessons with mentorship, and the complete certified programme is listed separately at $1,499, with a single hour of personal instruction at $200 and an introduction series free. The introduction videos are led by a named coach.

What the count does not tell a buyer is what those forty lessons cover. The company describes them as teaching technique and launch, and the outline behind that description is not published, so this criterion is read from the description rather than from a syllabus.

Mentoring separates the tiers rather than the kits as a whole. It comes with Dream and Legacy, where the company describes being walked through setup, the first welds and getting ready to sell, and it is absent from the entry kit, which rests on the video course alone.

Price and value

The three kits are listed at $2,399, $3,199 and $4,999, each shown against a struck-through reference price and a saving of 30%, 25% and 16%. Those figures move with the finish: the Legacy kit costs $5,059 in the four colours other than black, and the Dream kit runs from $3,199 to $3,308 depending on the welder and stylus colour, so the first number on the page is not always the one that gets paid.

Set against the parts, the bundle is where the arithmetic gets interesting. The same three welders are sold on their own at $1,249, $1,699 and $3,199, so the money above the machine buys the chain, the argon, the tools and the training rather than the equipment. The chain is a consumable that will be ordered again by the foot, which makes the first batch a starting inventory rather than part of the kit’s lasting value.

The payback figures on the site are the company’s own estimates and are labelled as such. It describes artists generating as much as $300 an hour in gross sales, and a break-even point of roughly fifty bracelets, with both qualified by pricing, attendance, local demand and expenses. They are a useful shape for the costs of a market stall and they are not a forecast.

Ordering and after-sale

Returns run for 30 days and they start with an email. The company asks for an RMA number before anything is sent back, applies a 10% restocking fee to returns, adds $35 on an argon tank, and issues refunds by check. Training that has been delivered and shipping already paid are not refunded.

The commercial terms are firm in a way worth reading before the order rather than after it. The terms of sale state that an order is binding once accepted and cannot be cancelled, that deposits are non-refundable, that delivery is made at the shipping point with title passing there, and that duties and taxes are not collected by the company. The same document gives the buyer two days from receipt to inspect the goods.

Argon is the constraint on where a kit can go. Kits containing it ship by ground service inside the lower 48 states, and buyers in Canada or further afield are asked to call before ordering. That is a rule about compressed gas rather than a limit on the welders, which the company says it sends worldwide every day.

Who the Sunstone starter kits are for

This suits a first-time operator who would rather place one order than assemble a setup from four suppliers. The welder is the piece that lasts, the training is attached to it at every price, and the chain and gas arrive in quantities a first month of markets, or a small studio, will use.

It fits two readers less well. Someone who already owns a welding machine will be paying for inventory and mentoring rather than equipment, since most of what the higher tiers add is stock. And a buyer who wants to keep the option of changing their mind should weigh the commercial terms before paying, because they are firm rather than provisional.