Just in yesterday. Giving it some time to test but if you like great RDL air flow, this one is a good bet.
Voltrove 1.1 In The House!
Category: Hardware
Thoughts on vaping hardware.
Down The Boro Rabbit Hole
I decided to get into the boro game in January of this year with the VandyVape Pulse AIO but did not post, my bad. The AIO or All In One is a good thing and became popular with the invention of the Billet Box at the end of 2012. There are a few things I dont care for with an AIO set up. The atty’s are small and dont give a lot of airflow in general because they were initially designed for MTL draws. I prefer RDL or DL draws. Condensation… the atty is enclosed in a box and unless you draw out all the air after you take every normal draw there will be condensation created in the boro tank area and its can become a constant mess making you remove the tank and cleaning out the tank space, doors and inner space. In other words, they need constant cleaning. On the other had, flavor is generally good because of the small chambers that surround the coil. Most boro device dont give more than 80 watts. This is because most of the rba’s are built using small single coils. Accessories are king in this game sometimes costing more than the device itself. Everything beyond what you get from the manufacturer is custom made.
Things have changed, more airflow is trending. The tanks the rba’s fit in generally hold 2-4ml of eLiquid. The Stubby comes with a 9ml tank! The AIO Abyss mod (not pictured) is not only a boro mod but also a SBS or Side by Side mod. Search the blog for pics.
Dont get me wrong, the AIO is a good design but it is a niche design and not for everyone because of its fiddly nature.
Modern mainstream boro devices usually come with whats called a bridge. The bridge will adapt plug and play pre made coils, but not every one of them. Plug and play coils have been used by the masses for a long time in pods and pod mods and are very convenient if you dont want to build and install your own coils. I find them to be easier to work with and more consistent than RBA’s. They do cost more over time than building your own.
If you do decide to go down the boro rabbit hole, be ready for frustration and a learning curve. If you can get over those two things then you will be surprised how fun and good they can be.
Stubby In The House!
Wow! so stoked and surprised it #1480 came in 9/3. Kudos to Sam Bogen, Suicide and Orca for coming up with a game changing boro device and the tank ain’t bad either. I like the RDL draw and holding that/so much eLiquid is amazing although I change flavors a lot so I am only filling it up about half way. No dry hits so far and the the draw is perfect for me. I appreciate that the Bogan youtube video and availability deployed at the same time. There is nothing worse than watching a review video, deciding you want one and not being able to get the product right away. Bravo and Cheers!
Voltrove On The Way
Mark at Voltrove has informed me of shipment yesterday of his updated Boro bridge rba. I will finally be able to see what all the hype is about as I was never able to acquire one of the first batch. More later.
VM 18 On The Way
Acquired one of the last of the Vaporesso VM tanks available to me via Element Vape is on the way. Even Vaporesso itself was sold out. This tank uses the venerable EUC ceramic coils which are arguably one of the best pre-made sub-ohm coils out there for flavor and longevity. The decision was made because of the current cost, availability and selection of simple bridges for Boro style tanks. We will see how this goes. More later.
SXmini SL Class V2 In The House!
Just in today! Temp control is spot on and the chip is SUPER fast as usual. Good materials and excellent build quality. Interesting temp control variations but I still don’t like the joystick navigation. The only thing the joystick does well is take up less space on the faceplate. Love the form factor. Glad to see YiHi is going back to their roots as they have not produced a new SL class in around six years. Highly recommended.
Update: the interesting thing is that you cannot just adjust voltage like a “normal” voltage override mode without the chip doing its calculation on the resistance of the current coil, the battery level and the average room temperature setting. They call it “Intelligent VV”, It appears to always give you the safest setting it thinks is best by leveraging battery efficiency. You cannot override the coil resistance sensitivity and of course the chip sensing the battery level. You can manually adjust the resistance and lock the resistance. With the few atty’s I have tried, the chip takes over the computation of what it thinks is best. I have yet to see more than 6V applied. It will reach 100W shown but always adjusts voltage to achieve that setting. Also, it appears that the curves function is always on, there is no bypass for curves. You either run flat or pick the levels of heat they have picked for you. Where this chip shines is in TC and speed. In TC mode you can go in and adjust voltage and temp but you cannot override the sensing to go over what it thinks is safe for the coil read. It also has an average room temp adjustment which I think also adds to its equation on safety. In other words they have broken down the settings for manually tweaking into 5 presets making the choices easier for the “average” user. Making safety as the top priority. You can go into EQ mod and adjust each line in a graph for a percentage of temperature but I doubt anyone will tweak at this level as it takes so much time to do this which each coil you attach. One other thing is the manual says in the Menu Tweaks menu, there is a setting for Auto Watt when in fact the menu reads Auto Power. This would indicate to me that the manual was written and printed before they made a firmware update. The manual does not mention what Auto Watt/Power is for and what it does. Still trying to figure that out. If anyone knows, please let me know.
Stock Art
SAGA The Beast
Just in the other day, these were on sale over at Vaperz Cloud and had an impulse moment. I saw the Ultem model last year on line and was impressed by the look of the mod. I was not aware they had several other models as well and found the Iced Out was in stock and on sale for $75, so I picked it up. This is the first dual 21700 serial mech mod I have procured but not the first serial mod I have owned as I bought the Wismec Noisy Cricket designed by Jaybo back in 2016 for $40.
For those of you that are not familiar with a serial configuration, it is basically two batteries stacked on top of each other. You get 8.4 Volts (3.7V x 2) and about the same mAh as one battery. Parallel configurations, two batteries side by side, give you the same Voltage output 3.7V but twice the mAh. Most dual, triple and quad battery mods are set up in parallel.
Some mods like the Noisy Cricket give you both a Serial and Parallel connection providing you flexibility. It does this by changing the physical configuration on the bottom battery connections. There are some other mech mods that can do this like the Hammer of God but I am not personally familiar with them at this time.
It has been years since I built coils for a high voltage situation and had to review some you tube videos. I found Richard Vick’s video quite helpful also made in 2016.
Basically, I had to build a dual coil RDA to about .7 to 1 ohm which means I had to build each coil to about 1.4 ohm’s to 2 ohm’s.
I wanted more flavor than a single wire can provide so after about 4 attempts to get it right without too much fast heat I dug out/found some simple 26ga x 32ga Kanthal Clapton wire made by GeekVape that worked well and ended up using the Vaperz Cloud Asgard Mini RDA.
I was able to achieve .909 ohms with 12 wraps of each coil to get them to around 2 ohm’s each. As Richard stated, Kanthal has a higher resistance than stainless steel which I usually build with. The lower ohm builds prior to this one I found to be just too hot too fast and so a just slight push of the fire button to get totally blown out. I have a little more time with this build to heat the coils to a heat level that is more comfortable for me.
I love the aesthetic look of the SAGA. It is well made and feels nice in the hand because of the shape of the mod. All the connections are silver plated for better connectivity and less resistance. The center pin is adjustable for use with different rda’s center pin lengths. The switch feels solid and had a good resistance to the push and has room to feel the heat (not just on and off). The Acrylic is thick and solid. Ultem is stronger but it was out of stock and more expensive as well. This page explains the differences between Acrylic and Ultem plastic.
All in all, I can recommend the SAGA if you want something different and feel comfortable working with the high voltage it puts out quickly.
I have more information on mech mods here.
46800 Battery?
And we thought 21700 batteries were big…
KONG on the way…
Ordered one of three left of this “limited edition” master pack. Excited! I love my Mutation XL’s and glad to add it to the collection of 28mm atty’s including the Kennedy. You can find it here.
Vapemail Today…
The Reload S RTA has arrived today and is working well! After months of waiting, the S RTA finally came back into stock. I would call it a second batch even though no mention from the company that anything has changed.
The RTA has the same basic configuration as the beloved RDA except that it is enclosed in a tank. Perfect for a RDL or DL draw and the fit and finish is exceptional for an Asian made product. I think Reload has chosen to make sure quality is of utmost concern while lowering cost of manufacturing. Not a fan of a gold plated deck but the plating seems to be very high quality. Only time will tell if it holds up.
You get two sized glass tanks with extension, a drip tip and the well made screwdriver.
I prefer the smaller tank as I like to change flavors quite a bit and this makes it easy. The deck comes off easy after un screwing the bottom ring and is super easy to build on. I installed a whopping big 4mm SS alien coil and the flavor is amazing.
I am a fan of small single coil tanks and this fits the bill perfectly. You can find one here : https://thereloadvaporusa.com
Vaping Noir 
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