Swag 2. My thoughts

Just received my Swag 2 kit in the mail today, and I’m loving it. I have two other mods on the way to me as I write this.

Ideally I wanted to add various mods, tanks and other accessories to my collection slowly, but the imminent USPS vape mail ban changed all this. Now I find myself fighting against time.

Hopefully I’ll have enough mods and tanks in a daily rotation to get the maximum longevity out of all of them.

There’s already a ton of reviews done for this tiny powerhouse, so I won’t venture there. Instead I’ll put down my likes and dislikes.

What I like:

  1. Small, compact and light weight.

  2. Wide enough to fit up to a 25 mm tank with no overhang. I don’t own a 25 mm tank, (yet) so I personally can’t attest to this, but the tank included in the kit is 24.5 mm, and it fits perfectly.

  3. Battery cap is female threaded. This (to me) makes it easier to screw/unscrew the battery cap, and it also makes the threads less likely to become stripped. My Pico mod’s cap threads stripped long ago, and is now held in place with a rubber band.

And while we’re on the subject of the battery cap, the Swag 2’s is large, even more so than the Lucid’s, which makes handling much easier with my fumbling fingers.

  1. The rubberized external coating makes it easier to hold/grip. I won’t have to order a silicone sleeve for this.

  2. The screen is monotone, with white alpha-numerics over a black background. I don’t really care for a multi-color screen. To me, the simpler, the better.

And the screen is noticeably larger than both my eLeaf Pico and Geekvape Lucid mods, with correspondingly larger letters and numbers, making it much easier to read.

The real test for this screen will come later, to see if I’m able to read it outdoors. My Lucid’s screen can barely be read, even at max brightness. I have several other mods, and all suffer,
to some degree, difficulty in reading the screen outdoors, but none to the extent of the Lucid’s.

What I dislike:

  1. The menu system is something I’ve never seen or experienced before, so I had to refer to the user manual and several YouTube tutorials. But I eventually caught on. ‘Eventually’ being the key word here.

  2. I can’t for the life of me figure out how to lock the resistance in TC mode, with SS316L. This makes for sometimes erratic vaping. There are times when I have to do a short primer puff to heat-up the coil, because I was getting a ‘pulsing’ effect. BTW, I make my own coils, using my ancient, but still fully functioning Kanger Subtank Mini with the RBA.

  3. Battery life is not that great. But then again, my batteries are over two years old, so I should replace them ASAP. I’ll do a future update as soon as I replace my batteries.

  4. Mode changes are not as intuitive, and at first, not very user friendly.

  5. The ‘Plus’ and ‘Minus’ buttons are placed on the side of the mod, which took some getting used to. But I think I understand Vaporesso’s thinking when this mod was being designed. They wanted a fairly good sized screen, and placing all the usual buttons in all the usual places would’ve necessitated a smaller screen, or taller device.

  6. The addition of a separate ‘Menu’ button adds an extra step or two when switching modes.

  7. In TC mode, temperature is adjustable in 10 degree increments. Five degree increments would’ve been easier to find my “Sweet Spot”.

Summary:

Despite some of the initial shortcomings, this is a quality and quite eye-catching mod. It has the bells-and-whistles of a more expensive mod, but still simple enough for even a technology-challenged guy like me to eventually figure out.

Please note that the Con’s are purely subjective. YMMV. More like nit-picking when you really get down to it, but they were my honest, personal observations.

Oh, and did I mention I can’t figure out how to lock the resistance in TC mode?

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Lock/Unlock resistance: In TC-Ni/TC-Ti/TC-SS/TCR (M1, M2) mode, press down button and mode button simultaneously for 2s will lock/unlock the resistance level. Attach a new atomizer will not change the locked resistance.

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Tried that, but it didn’t work, or at the very least, did not show any indication that it was locked.

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What, not even any pics?

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You *know how it goes dood: “No photo it didn’t happen” :smirk:

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Hmmmm, may be the other way. Try the mode and up button.

If that doesn’t work I will have a look at mine tomorrow. Have not used it for ages so cannot remember off the top of my head.

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Thanks! The erratic vape is kinda irritating for such an excellent mod

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I’ve got a number of Vaporesso Swag2’s. I like them.

But biggest negatives i’ve had are:

  • If your eyesight is not perfect, you won’t be able to see the battery level. Same with coil ohm rating.

  • On a silver colored mod, the plastic coating peels off easily and it’s black underneath. Could be from hand sanitizer? For whatever reason i haven’t seen any peeling on blacks ones.

  • The failure rate on them is very high. I have two with broken fire buttons. And 1 that keeps resetting it’s watts back to 10 several times a day for whatever reason (it remembers the rest of its settings though).

  • The machining of the battery cap is low quality. While the battery cap looks good, its threads are low quality and feel like they are easy to crossthread. Though i havent done that yet.

Other then these things, everything else about them is great. Especially for a $20 mod. I haven’t had any battery issues with any of them, battery life is excellent.

Tip for those running kanthal: Turn on Smart VW (settings menu). Turn off Auto Eco (settings menu). Then set it to DIY mode VWN (diy mode menu).

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I like that “I like them, other than the whole mod being prone to failure, the battery cap suckin’, the LSD screen being small, the mod resetting several times a day, the paint practically wiping off…” :joy:

So I can sratch it off my list of reliable mods to grab before the bans mm? :slight_smile:

Pity though - it does look good and since my Pico died I’ve kinda missed the compactness of that - shape.

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Right! Yah, my post does makes them sound like a terrible mod, but they really are quite good. The swag2 is currently my favorite low priced mod. I replaced 80w picos with the swag2. Heres a little extra info

I’ve only had the problem with the plastic coating peeling off on the silver colored swag. The black color swags (2) haven’t had this issue at all and the coating is still perfect on them after 5 months of daily use. Its possible that i just got a defective one.

The Swag2 coating is worlds better than the Pico painted coating. Its both more durable and it feels much better in the hand. The painted coating on the pico scratches ridiculously easy and it generally looks like ass after only a few months. The black swag 2’s look near perfect after 5 months. The silver one, not so much, but it still looks better than a pico after similar amount of use.

The battery meter gui on the swag is straight awful. Theres no way to defend it. With the swag, you’ll have no idea what the battery level is until it shuts off if you have less than perfect eyesight. Seems like Vaporesso should be able to change the % meter to a graphical meter with a firmware update, and they really should. It’s the swag2’s biggest downfall imo. While the pico has a small battery level meter at least its readable.

The battery cap on the pico is better. Both aluminum. The pico cap feels better machined/thicker. Though its not all that glorious itself, I have some worn pico’s that are a bit of a bother to get the cap on.

Pro’s compared to the Pico: The swag2 is MUCH lighter, feels great in the hand compared to the pico, the battery life is improved, the LCD screen is bigger, and it tastes much better imo. And it’s a 24 mm mod instead of a 22mm mod. The swag2 cost less too. I paid $17 for the swag2’s and $27 for the picos. When both are in front of me, i’ll grab the swag2 every time.

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The circuit board in my Pico just BOOF started smoking one night a few weeks ago after it started auto-firing the coil continually until I ended up having to unscrew the battery cap and remove it.

Yeah I like that shape: fits perfect in your hand being more or less regular for some reason.

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That stinks. I’ve got a small box of dead picos myself. My last one still works, but I cant make out whats on the screen anymore. Think i had it for 2 or 3 years before it failed so i can’t complain about that at all.

If your looking for good inexpensive mods (sub $40), i think the swag2 is one of the best out there. I liked them enough that i own 16 of them if thats any marker. And thinking about buying 8 more this week just in case.

I prefer inexpensive disposable mods. Every mod i’ve ever owned breaks or wears out in time regardless of how much money is spent on them. So I just prefer to have something i can toss in the trashcan when that time comes without worrying about it one bit. Plus, a new replacement is always nice to a worn mod.

When a $300 mod breaks before its time, it just angers me.

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Yeah I had my Pico about 2 years too doo also felt alright with the mileage before it died.

I only object to smok miss really since the OG Alien I got just stopped working after only having it a few months.

I’ll have to get a swag just because the Pico broke so I’m even less inclined to go with another one of those.

And because I never see any of the nicer side by side mods on Australian sites I order from - whereas the swags are pretty much everywhere so easily order able :+1:

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