Samurai V2 RDA, courtesy of FocalEcig.com!

What’s up vapefam!

Sirrisc is back with another review courtesy of FocalEcig.com!
I’ve been tooting away on a Samurai in the passed couple days, though I have to say I haven’t learned how to handle a sword just yet.


Premise

I’ve been dealing with FocalEcig for a while now and besides their excellent customer representative called Doris, they have a lot of good deals going.
FocalEcig has been running groupbuys for some really cool vaping gear, like the recent Smokeless Owl squonker, and always has nice deals going.

When Doris asked me to review this Samurai, I went online and tried finding a bit of info on it.
From what I read it was a mini styled RDA, that was mainly aimed at flavorchasers.
Coïncidently it’s my first mini styled atty and I had to make some compromises coming from larger atties like the Doge V2.
The deck is considerably smaller and so is the chamber, so the coils need to be a bit smaller too.


Samurai V2 Style RDA

Specifications:

  • 304 Stainless Steel/Copper/POM
  • Copper center pin
  • 2 in 1 POM driptip
  • Adjustable airflow ring
  • 3 airflow rings included (Stainless, copper and anodized black)
  • Quad post for dual coil
  • POM driptip adapter
  • Anti-spitback screen

Unpacking

The Samurai comes in a little black box with silver lettering, simple but elegant and sturdy.

Inside are the RDA, and a couple of bags with spare parts like the driptip adapter and the different colors of airflow ring.

Everything still has a slight layer of machining oil on it, so you’ll have to clean it properly before using the atty.
Other than that, there are some minor imperfections on the airflow rings consisting of small pieces of metal left on the airflow holes.
A quick poke with a screwdriver against the edges solved that problem, but it is something you’ll have to keep in mind.
Inhaling a piece of metal would be a very bad thing indeed.

Performance

In terms of performance, especially with the premise of flavorchasing in mind, I was rather disappointed with the Samurai.
The airflow is rather oddly done, the flavor wasn’t all that great, the juicewell is too small, I don’t like copper driptips, …
There are a lot better atties out there with the same small size, atties like the Derringer or the Freakshow Mini, or even the REM atty.

The way the airflow is done on the barrel is simply put: wrong.
If you’re running a single coil, you can turn the airflow ring so that you have a single hole fully opened, making the draw very airy and pleasant.
But if you run a dual coil, you can’t get a fully open airflow because the holes won’t line up.
You can get about 1/4 of the airflow on each side making the draw very restrictive for a dual coil.
Keeping that in mind, these mini styled atties really do work better with a single coil in my opinion, with dual coils they just run hot too quickly.

Flavorwise it’s not the greatest atty I’ve tried. It does give you some flavor from your vape, but not as much as you’d expect from a chamber this small.
Once it runs hot it loses flavor, much like the Derringer does.
Running a single coil at 0.4ohm, or 0.8ohm, or even at 1.2ohm didn’t yield any different results for me.
I tried a twisted coil at 0.8ohm and that performed slightly better but still not on par with expectations.

In terms of juicewell… it’s almost as if it’s not even there.

The Samurai holds very little juice and seems to leak very easily from overdripping.
In comparison I can have about 12 drops in my Plume Veil, which is fairly nice for flavortesting. The Samurai holds about half of that, which I can pull in one single drag.
Given that it’s a small chamber and the airflow is relatively high on the deck the juicewell could’ve been made about 2mm deeper, which would hold a lot more juice.

Aesthetics

If there’s one thing I am happy about with the Samurai, it’s the way it looks.
You can switch out the airflow rings to three different colors, you can run the 510 driptip adapter or the 2 in 1 driptip, or the anti-spitback screen.
It’s absolutely tiny, especially with the driptip adapter and copper driptip.
Put this thing on an iStick or an rDNA and you have the stealthiest of vapes.

On the airflow rings there is an engraving stating “SAMURAI” on one end and “Competition” on the other, I’m not too fond of the competition part myself.
The airflow rings come in three colors: copper, stainless and black. A nice touch which allows you to personalize the Samurai a bit.

Building

As I mentioned above, the deck on this is fairly small and the chamber doesn’t allow for any crazy builds.
I’ve tried multiple builds but always stuck with an inner diameter below 2.5mm because any larger would start touching the barrel and short.
The postholes are fairly large and will take thicker wire though, handy for those of you who want to run the Samurai at higher wattages.

Pros and cons

Pro

  • Tiny
  • Small
  • Stealthy
  • Little
  • Not big
  • Did I mention it’s small?
  • 3 colors of airflow ring
  • POM driptip

Con

  • Not as flavorful as expected
  • Copper driptip
  • A bit rough around the edges
  • Runs hot quickly
  • Almost no juicewell
  • Restricted airflow for dual coil

In conclusion

Despite not being as flavorful as it should be, the Samurai does perform fairly nice with a single coil in terms of vaporproduction.
The small juicewell is a bit of a pain if you like taking longer drags but playing around with wicking can do wonders.
It looks very cool and the different colors of airflow rings are a nice bonus in my opinion, but not enough to make me advise it.
All in all it’s not terrible, but it’s not good either. It sits somewhere in between.

In closing I would like to extend my gratitude to Doris from FocalEcig for sending me the Samurai for review. I highly appreciate it!
And of course thank you all for reading, be sure to stick around because I’m far from done reviewing gear for you! :wink:

I’m always looking for more opportunities to review, so get in touch if you want me to review something from you!
I can be reached on via DM on Instagram, via DM on Reddit, or via DM on ELR.
Juice, RTA, RDA, mods… it’s all welcome and I’m sure we can work something out!

#staycloudy !

SirRisc disappears in a blackcurrant scented cloud of vapor

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