Well I guess we can safely say RDA’s generally have a bit more flavour than a tank (there are of course exceptions to the rule).
The hardest thing for someone to get right on an RDA is wicking, the next hardest thing is getting coil building right - lets take a look at an RDA that puts both of those things in the easy column, but at a cost.
Meet the NCR otherwise known as New Concept RDA also known as Nicotine Reinforcer - it appears to have undergone the name change on some sites but not others.
I bought this RDA and that fact will have everything to do with how pissy I am about it.
Contents:
The box is a rather small affair which contains the RDA, a goodie bag with a couple of grub screws, some O rings, a heat insulator ring(to go between the mod and RDA), a few small clips (apparently used to segment the heating plate) and an allen key and the instruction booklet.
Observations:
Nothing ground breaking really until you open the top of the RDA and see a small cage, which once removed shows the new ceramic plate heating element. I bought this particular RDA as a flavour tester, from everything I saw before I had it in my hand, it looked perfect for the job. If you have ever seen a stovetop coil for flavour testing - this had all the pluses of that but with a ceramic plate that is touted to have 600000 cycles in its life.
Looking at the RDA a few things stand out, there is no drip tip, the top cover is all one piece - as a result the airflow is not adjustable and consists of 12 holes of about 1 mm diameter (adjustable only with a drill). The chimney I.D. is around the 7mm mark, also adjustable with a drill.
Now this RDA is probably the easiest wicking job in the history of wicking - cut an 8mm (5/16") x 40 mm (1 37/64" ) strip from your favourite cotton pad, lay it over the top and poke it into the well - now you can add juice or put the little cage on and add some juice. Either way it is simple and quick.
Remove the cage.
Lay the cut strip over the top.
Replace the cage and add juice.
A quick read of the instructions inform you of a suggested power curve…yup lets go with that idea.
So I followed their instructions with the curve. They suggest 70-80w for .5-1 sec then drop to 60w this just didn’t float my boat at all. I cranked it to 90w then 100w then 110w. 110w gives me an okay vape, okay flavour but light on both - this doesn’t appear to be set up to chuck the fluffies. At 110w I would expect to be drowning in flavour and clouds and I was doing neither, don’t get me wrong here I had some amount of flavour and a reasonable cloud - just not exactly what I was hoping for. Back to the drawing board - I must be missing something.
After a 6 second re-wick - yup it is that quick. I tried it with two bits of cotton which fell on the shit side of vape nirvana. Unsure if the plate will crack or explode at high wattage - I thought I would give it a shot as it really wont make much difference to my looks if I blow my face off, plus it will save me time on Halloween. I was a little nervous turning the power up and chickened out at 180w, and much to my surprise it was still lacking in just about everything. One last shot - I rewicked again and loaded it up with a juice I reserve for recent converts - it is fairly high in flavouring. Sadly, it still gave me an overall poor vape. I swapped it onto different mods, all with the same result.
Lets have a peak at how long it takes to get a bit of a glow happening on the plate. At 10 seconds I had a faint glow at 110w, hmm maybe this is why I was hitting it for about 8 seconds before I started to get anything close to a hit?
Conclusion:
Normally I would use a bit of gear for a minimum of a week and usually 2 weeks before writing a review. Over the 3 days I used this and played around with everything I could think of (including eek!!! some store bought juice which a friend gave me to try), it just failed to deliver.
Unfortunately, my conclusion is save your money and buy something else. There are a lot of great RDA’s around at the moment that deliver a far better vape than this - think Dead Rabbit, Drop, Bonza, to name just a few.
I hear people all the time say reviewers always find a positive in every review, saying things like this doesn’t suit my style of vaping but xzy type of vaper may enjoy it. Not wanting to break from this tradition, here is my positive in this review - this RDA is an awesome concept and it may well turn into a really really good idea, however right now with this model, it is lacking so much in flavour and adjustable features that it makes this review a “Don’t buy this RDA”.
Let me list the Pros and Cons and be done with it.
Pros & Cons:
Pros
- No coil
- Super fast and easy wicking.
Cons
- No adjustable anything
- Ceramic plate is .4ohm and that is all that is available as of now. Edit: apparently there will be a .2 ohm wafer out soon.
- No Air flow adjustment
- No choice of drip tip size
- Lacking Flavour
- No colour options
- No using it on a mech mod (specifically stated in instructions and, to be fair, on the purchase page)
- No squonk pin (even though it could be used on a regulated squonk mod I could not find a BF pin that I had that would fit)
I know that overall this review is negative and I really hate that, because this is a really good idea - it just needs a little more thought from the vape boffins in China.
This is an exclusive product to Heavengifts but can be found cheaper elsewhere (no links - if you really want to find it, you will).
To check out how poorly this scored against other far more awesome bits of vape gear head on over to http://www.steampugs.co.uk/ and check out some of the reviews.
