Vaporesso Luxe-S Kit
For anyone who has anything even remotely resembling a vape ‘collection’, and when I say collection…I mean you’ve probably been vaping 7 or 8 years and have kept every single device (regardless of whether it works or not), this stopped being a way of quitting smoking the very moment you nervously peered down the vape ‘rabbit hole’…and subsequently fell in…
You have a room dedicated to all things vape, all arranged on shelves and grouped in a way that makes sense only to you…as well as alphabetical…and probably chronological…colour…and all with a subgroup order of which you like the best…and those subgroups will maybe have a partition for those that work perfectly and those that need a little attention. You’ll probably have a dozen little sets of drawers dotted around the place all with ‘those special tools’ in a similar kind of order, as well as cupboards chock full of all the original packaging and boxes that contain all the correct spares for any given device…and then there’s your liquid supplies, boxes of steeping liquids and a desk that wouldn’t look out of place in a laboratory…in fact…this room would look unnervingly ‘problematic’ to any poor unwitting non-vaping soul who was unfortunate enough to stumble into it…
For those kind of vapers…of which…I know quite a few, you will probably have that one device, for reasons that might not make a whole lot of sense to anyone else…that you have a real soft spot for. It might be a dripper that has just your kind of airflow and seems to give better flavour than any other, or a tank that has never once thrown up its contents all over your hand…or is just so easy to build and wick that you could do it with your eyes closed…or…as is the case with me…it could be a mod that has never…ever…done anything weird, as opposed to some of the other devices in your collection, which even though you’ve had them for years, you still look at with disdain and maybe a raised eyebrow…because to this day you cannot work out what the fuck they were thinking…they just sit there…as shelf ornaments…with a knowing look on their dumb fuck faces…
Now…there probably aren’t that many vapers out there who have the same soft spot as I do. I mean, I don’t have many devices that could be considered ‘high end’ other than my custom Whiterose Lipo mods…but most vapers who do, will no doubt have one of those as there all time favourite BFF’s…but no…for me, there is a device that has gone everywhere with me, every time I travel abroad I have it with me, when I go for my weekends up in Snowdonia several times a year I never leave without it, it practically lives in my car because I know 100% that it will never let me down, it has all the power I need, takes a 30mm top, yet is one of…if not the smallest dual battery devices that I own. It’s ergonomic, lightweight and has every function I need and many that I don’t…I have what could be considered a rather substantial collection of vape gear, yet…when I look at this mod…I look at it differently to the others…
And the truth is…I shouldn’t…I mean not really. There was nothing particularly ‘special’ about it when it was launched…yet…it’s everything I need, when I need it, no matter where I am. It’s Mr Dependable, and it’s made by a company that also released my previous Mr Dependable, one that is now well over 4 years old and still works perfectly fine…although…now looks really shit. So when I am asked to review something from this same company which could well be the son of Mr Dependable therefore…possibly…my next Mr Right…(?)…(no really…??)…I’m…really not sure where I was going with that…
…
Welcome once again my fine fog billowing BFF’s, back again with more of the same…and this time…it genuinely kinda is.
Today’s offering comes from a company which, for me personally, has been one of the most consistently ‘good’ manufacturers to come out of Shenzhen. And it’s no accident - Vaporesso has been in this game now longer than the vast majority of us have been vaping…well…maybe not actually Vaporesso as they’ve only been around for 4 years, but their parent company SMOORE has been supplying the world with magical wizardry since 2006…so in all that time…they’ve kinda learned a few things…
Now, my personal experience with Vaporesso has been nothing short of impressive. I used to rock two Tarot’s back in the day, long before I started on this righteous path of award winning and internationally coveted literal wizardry…
Those things were out and out work horses and although they have now been put out to pasture I will always have nothing but respect and appreciation for their service. Then came the Tarot Nano, which I also still use occasionally as a back up in my car, and is by far my favourite mini mod due to the impressive power and unreal amount of features this lil fella possesses. The Switcher I probably could have lived without, the design was a little fussy for me, but the Revenger just had something about it. Yes, the screen was hard to see in daylight and the menu system was a tad finicky, but this was the ultimate pocket mod for me, and it would take something quite special to take its place as my guilty little pleasure. So…what’s next? Well…how about I stfu and just show you…(sounds like a plan)…rude…
Courtesy of my wise old friends over at Vaporesso, I present to you the Vaporesso Luxe-S kit with SKRR-S Tank…
Not the ugliest thing in the world…has to be said. In fact I’d go as far as to say that my first impressions right out of the box…had my Revenger glaring at me like a slightly unhinged and insecure girlfriend…
The Lowdown
The Luxe-S kit comprises of the Luxe-S mod…obviously, and the all new and improved SKRR-S Tank, something which…I can’t say…without sounding like I’m having a funny turn…or incredibly drunk, but we’ll come to the tank in a bit. The mod itself is a 220w dual 18650 powerhouse implementing the new and improved Omni board 4.2 chipset which boasts a firing time of 0.001s…which obviously I tested with my finest counting skills…have you ever tried counting in 0.001s increments?..
It’s quick…let’s just leave it there…
The chip-set boasts a full complement of functions to suit absolutely everybody. To be perfectly honest, almost all of them are completely wasted on me, but I have always admired just how much Vaporesso cram into the Omni board chip set. You get variable wattage obviously, and a full TC suite for all you tinkerers out there, but you also get variable voltage, variable wattage curve AND variable voltage curve, TCR mode, bypass mode and something called ‘Super Player mode’…
For those of you lucky enough to have it swinging past your knees, you can broaden your resistance spectrum from 0.03 ohms to 5 ohms…but I’ll be keeping my one-eyed spitting womb weasel right in the VW mode…thank you very much.
And this cornucopia of information is all displayed on a 2" TFT colour screen…which by the way, is not a touch screen, not really anyway… despite all of China’s mainstream suppliers trying to tout it as one.
The display itself is very easy on the eye and is navigated via a central menu button in between the plus and minus buttons…can’t see them?..That’s because …there aren’t any…(pause for dramatic effect)
What you get instead, is those two tiny white lights either side of the Vaporesso ‘V’ logo, and these are touch sensitive…and the V logo itself…is in fact…the touch sensitive menu button…
Oh…as shell shocked as I’m sure you all undoubtedly are, and probably somewhat…(what?)…the witchcraft and fuckery doesn’t stop there. Because these little magical areas…also vibrate - they literally violate your finger every time you touch them…do you know what it feels like to have your finger violated…?..Do you?..Here…let me show you…
As pleasurable as I’m sure some of you will find it, it wasn’t really something I felt like investigating further - due to the fact that I am actually banned from playing with anything that vibrates since the last time I discovered something that did… when I was looking for my juice bottle which had rolled underneath the bed…but that’s a story for another time perhaps…you can turn it off anyway.
Up top we have a very nice bolted on 510 plate…
Which once again has enough real estate to accommodate some girth - always a plus in my book - and a nice and springy gold plated pin.
The fire button is a nice size and has a very satisfying click to it…
But don’t be fooled by what looks like another tiny white light, it’s just a white dot…which is perfectly acceptable, because although I have seen tiny lights on fire buttons before which activate when you press them, they’re completely pointless unless you have transparent thumbs or fingers…which I don’t…and if you do…well…
The battery compartment, I’m glad to say, is largely unchanged…
Ignore the fact that the mod has ‘Omni Board 4.0’ stamped into it just above the batteries. I did notice this straight away and wrote a mildly strongly worded email to Vaporesso to see what the fuckety foo that was all about…and after a brief bout of small talk from them…
It came to light that actually…they just hadn’t changed it. I have to be honest, the reason was mildly anti-climatic.
But, I do however love the battery warnings on the back of the door - we should really see more of this on today’s devices I think.
As for the overall design of the Luxe-S, I really dig the one I got. This one is called ‘Iris’ and is supposed to represent a part of the eye, but there are a whole host of designs to choose from…
The only downside to opting for one of the designs with a black alloy body, is that it is painted, and even though I have only had mine a month…and been relatively careful with it…the sharper edges which run down the side, as well as the fire button, are already showing signs of wear. Not much, but the silver alloy underneath is showing through in parts and you wouldn’t have that problem with the Stainless bodied variations. As much as I’m absolutely confident that my Luxe will always perform…I’m not quite as confident that it will age well…
Now…the tank in this particular kit is the unpronounceable SKRR-S Sub-Ohm tank…
The SKRR-S tank…
Really…literally can’t…
Is a 25mm tank that comes with a pre-installed bubble glass which houses a whopping 8ml of liquid -even the included straight glass replacement has an impressive 5ml capacity, love that.
It’s a fairly straight forward tank, screw off sealed top cap for the top fill…
Which only has one hole, although it’s kinda big so I’ll let that slide…
and an AFC ring along the bottom which controls the triple air intakes. Nice and smooth and doesn’t round robin…no complaints there…
And following in Smok’s footsteps, it even comes with its own mask to wear at those special parties which I’ve only ever heard about but never been to, not even once…
As is the norm these days, it comes with two types of coil. Pre-installed is the QF Strips Coil (0…15 ohm), and in the package you will find the QF Mesh coil (0.20 ohm). These have apparently been improved since the previous standard SKRRSKKRRSRS tank…although I never tried them, so…don’t know what to tell you on that one. Here is my experience with both of these coils…firstly, the pre-installed QF Strip Coil…is a bit…weird. The flavours okay, not mind blowing, but…acceptable. The weirdness was with the way it fires; it kinda blows hard for a second then smooths out like you’re using a curve mode…even though I wasn’t…and when it goes smooth…it’s really, really…almost too smooth. On top of that, even though this is touted as a leak proof coil…it isn’t. I left this mod untouched for 2 days on my shelf and when I came to it, the liquid had pooled in the airflow…so there’s that. Onto the mesh coil…I installed it as normal after a bit of pre-lube…left it 5 minutes, tried it at 60w - wasn’t right. Left it another ten minutes…tried it…still wasn’t right. So I left it half an hour, and even then, I was getting a hint of a dry hit at 70w - not a full dry hit, but a little sting in the throat at the end of every toot. So I opened it up again and sure enough the wick was saturated…I literally have no idea what’s going on there. On top of that, the flavour was really off - not sure if its the flax fibre they use or the mesh but…what can I say Vaporesso…
Now…as I harped on about before, what I was really looking for in this thing was a future replacement for my vaping bosom buddy the Revenger, especially with my annual little family vaycay on the horizon. For me, you see, the Revenger is the perfect travel companion…so compare…is what I did…minus the tank…obv…
When your ex meets your current…eesh…I’m sure we can all be civilised…even so…best rush this along before these two get a bit catty.
Now, size-wise there’s really not much in it, although the Luxe-S is heavier with all it’s extra techno wizardry, and it also feels a lot bigger even though it isn’t. I can’t quite put my finger on why…
I mean the Luxe is a little bit thicker but when I hold it in my hand and feel it…it feels even bigger still…
Yet when you look at both battery compartments…the difference really is negligible…
I mean…I’m basically just stood there comparing them both naked…I feel so dirty…
The specs
Vaporesso LUXE-S 220W Box Mod Features:
- Dimensions - 146mm by 47.8mm by 30mm (Includes Tank)
- Dual 18650 High Amp Battery - Not Included
- Wattage Output Range: 5-220W
- Resistance Range: 0.03-5.0 Ohm
- Other Modes: Smart VW(H/N/S) / VT(SS, NI, TI) / CCT / CCW / VV / CCV
- BYPASS Mode
- TCR Adjustment - 2 Memory Modes
- Super Player Mode - Broad Tank Resistance ID
- OMNI Board 4.2 Chipset - 0.001s Insta-Fire
- 2.0" TFT Full Color Display
- Large Side Fire Button Operation
- Vibration-Enabled Adjustment Buttons
- Bottom-Loaded Magnetized Battery Cover
- Short Circuit Protection
- Burn Protection
- No Load Protection
- Overtime Protection
- Low Resistance Protection
- Low Power Protection
- Overcharge Protection
- ESD Circuit Protection
- Pass Through Protection
- MicroUSB Port - 2.5A Max Charge
- Centered 510 Stainless Steel Connection
- Available in Silver, Black, Red, Blue Iris, Green Ape, Bronze Rainbow
Vaporesso SKRR Sub-Ohm Tank:
- 30mm Diameter At Widest Point
- 8mL Max Juice Capacity
- Superior Stainlesss Steel Construction
- Pyrex Glass Reinforcement
- Quadflow QF Air Distribution System
- Vaporesso QF Coil System - Flax & Cotton Wicks
- 0.15ohm QF Meshed - Rated for 55-85W
- 0.15ohm QF Strip - Rated for 60-90W
- Vaporesso GT Coil Compatible
- Quad Trapezoid-Shaped Airflow Control
- Slide-n-Fill Design - Convenient Top-Fill
- 510 Connection
Includes:
- 1 LUXE 220W Mod
- 1 SKRR Sub-Ohm Tank
- 1 0.15ohm QF Meshed
- 1 0.15ohm QF Strip
- 1 Silicone Case
- 1 MicroUSB Cable
- 1 Spare O-Rings
- 1 User Guide
- 1 Warranty Card
Final thoughts
My final thoughts on the Vaporesso Luxe-S Kit would be thus: I don’t care for the SKRR-S tank, but then…I don’t actually recall ever really being a fan of any Vaporesso tank, and rarely do I end up liking any Sub-Ohm tank that comes with a kit anyway, so that was unsurprising for me - there are just far better mesh Sub Ohm tanks out there, which is a shame, because the 8ml capacity would have been really useful. The Luxe-S mod however, I like very much…apart from a few little mild annoyances.
Firstly, I get the whole clean look of the front without the usual eyesore buttons, those little tiny lights that denote where the touch sensitive buttons are look really cool, huge fan of that…and no…they are not activated all the time, that would be a huge pain in the ass because as soon as it was put in your pocket you would accidentally be turning it up and down constantly. You have to hit the fire button 3 times quickly to be able to turn it up or down, and to get into the menu you have to first hit the fire button 3 times, then hit the menu button 3 times…bit of a faff but nothing too bad. The annoyance comes with the warning that appears every time your finger goes anywhere near the touch sensitive buttons on the front, telling you to hit the fire button 3 times. This takes up the whole screen, and every single time I pick the mod up and look at the screen…there it is…‘Yes…I fucking know that…now fuck off so I can see what my mod is set at’. It goes after a couple of seconds, but my over-dramatic child like patience…or lack of…has a slight issue with it.
See…pure unadulterated violence…
To be perfectly honest…I would have preferred actual buttons, it’s all subjective obviously, and I’m all for progression and evolution…but the vibrating touch buttons - for me - are just too sensitive…keep it simple I say…
Then there’s the weight. It really is noticeably heavier than the Revenger…which is not an issue at all, this was never a comparison review with the Revenger …that would be silly - the Revenger is well over two years old…probably three…they’re two completely separate devices, so it’s really just a personal thing on this occasion. As a rule…I much prefer heavier devices, so I can’t really put this down as a con.
Amen sister…
Thereon in however…Vaporesso show their true colours. They really do know how to put a mod together. The build quality really is exceptional and they always seem to be switched on towards what the majority of vapers actually want from a device; a centrally located 510 plate, tasteful and classy looking designs and an interface that really is a pleasure to look at. It feels solid and…as the name suggest…luxurious.
As far as the Omni board 4.2 chip-set goes…well…it’s incredibly feature packed. I mean, I don’t think a single mode exists that isn’t on this device - and although I really have no way of knowing how accurate the TC modes are…nor do I care…the power in wattage mode certainly feels like it’s giving me what I expect to get. The fact that I can easily read the information on the ‘large and in charge’ super vibrant screen without my specs on…is a huge bonus for me. Will it replace my Revenger as the ultimate travel device though? I know that’s really what all of you want to know, as you sit perched on the edge of your seats in utter…and barely manageable anticipation…
No…it’s too heavy…so all that really was a complete waste of everyones time…
The Price
For a device that really does have everything and is called a ‘Luxe’…you’d expect it to be in the higher end of the mass produced regulated mod price range…and you’d be right if the RRP on Vaporesso’s own site was anything to go by, at around £74/$93 for the complete kit. Thankfully it can be found for a lot less. Element Vape, Vapesourcing and a few other Chinese suppliers have it for around £53/$67, which for me, is a lot closer to where it should be. Have a shop around though and you may well find it even cheaper than that, and even more so if you can find the mod on it’s own.
Do I recommend it?..Well I don’t recommend the tank. Sorry, but there are just a lot better choices out there. As for the mod…well, yeah absolutely. It’s so well put together and feature packed that you’d be hard stretched to find a different regulated device which performs as well, or is as well made with so much crammed into it for this price. Vaporesso’s consistency (with their mods anyway) shines through once again.
Is there really any higher accolade than a Michael Bolton double thumbs up?..No…I don’t think there is.
As always the doors over at Steampugs HQ are open 24/7, so feel free to peruse the site where you will find a treasure trove of reviews from myself as well as the rather awesome Steamteam. And if you’d like to come and chat with us and see where we talk this kind of crap on a regular basis, then head on over to our little corner of the Vapeverse we like to call our forum. We promise a warm…almost moist welcome, and we even have one of those rather clever e-liquid calculators for all you budding mixologists out there, which actually works because I played no part in it whatsoever…which is always a good thing.
Until next time
Pugs
very much appreciated sir
…awesome comments