Hi! I've tried reading the long discussion but it went rapidly to quick suggestions to in depth analysis. Is there any kind of consensus regarding what the best material would be on which hardware? Are these Geeco mods mentioned in the first thread reliable? Or is the Dicodes the only one with reliable settings for different materials?
The key question is whether the mod features TCR adjustment. If the mod features TCR adjustment, you can use any of the wires mentioned without a temperature offset - you set 230°C and you get 230°C, regardless of what wire you have in (once you have set the right TCR for it.)
These mods have TCR adjustment:
- The DNA 200 chip, available in an increasing number of mods
- The Dicodes chip, available in Dicodes 2380, Dicodes Dani Extreme v2, and Pipeline Pro 2.
- The SXK chip mods - which includes the Geeco
- On these mods, compared to DNA 200 and Dicodes, objective accuracy and subjective "vape smoothness" will not be as good. But of course the price will be far, far less.
- In terms of objective accuracy, the SXK chip will always be within 20°C of the setting, and usually within 10°C. This is fine for a successful TC vape.
- The 'vape smoothness' is more of a noticeable issue - the chip tends to be a bit 'pulse-y'. In that you can feel it applying power, stopping power, applying power, stopping power. But this only happens in situations where it's needing to limit the temp a lot, ie when you're low on juice (or have a bad wick), so most of the time your vapes are fine.
- The Smok XCube 2 and Smok Koopor Mini - but TCR cannot (yet) go as low as is required for Stainless Steel
- We are expecting the XCube 2 to be updated to support SS any day now; no word on the Koopor
- The XCube 2 does not seem as accurate as the above mods. I find I always have to set the temperature about 20-30°C higher than the temp I want.
- The vape smoothness is better than the SXK, not as good as the premium DNA 200/Dicodes.
- The newly discovered Apollo Reliant 60W - with a TCR range of 0.001 to 0.01
Mods without TCR adjustment:
Can use any of the wires mentioned, except Stainless Steel. SS requires a TCR adjusting mod.
All the other wires, meaning Titanium and the various NiFes, can be used on any other TC mod. You just have to adjust the temperature.
For example, on a DNA 40, you can vape Titanium by setting the mod to between 155°C and 185°C, which will give you an achieved temperature of 200 - 240°C respectively. Vaping NiFe on a DNA 40 will depend on the exact type of NiFe, with some needing a greater offset (set it to say 160°C instead of 180°C to achieve 235°C) and some needing a lower offset (set it to 200°C to achieve 235°C)
Same applies to Yihi chip mods, except the offset is usually greater. For example, to vape Titanium at 235°C on a Yihi mod (in Ni200 mode), the setting is around 145°C.
Many mods now have dual Ni200 and Titanium modes. If you're vaping Titanium, of course you just choose Titanium mode and you (theoretically) don't need an offset. If you're vaping another wire, such as NiFe, you will still need an offset but it may be less than the offset needed in Ni200 mode.
I suppose it might also be theoretically possible that a Titanium mode mod could vape Stainless Steel with an extreme offset, as the TCR of Titanium (0.0035) is much closer to Stainless Steel (0.001) than is Ni200 (0.006). But I haven't yet tested that.
I will be doing more real temperature testing and graphing soon, to come up with a list of recommended mod temperatures for various wires in both Ni200 and Titanium mode. I already did one for Titanium on the DNA 40, which is where I got those figures of 155-185°C. (
Here's a picture of the graph if you're interested.)
What mod to get?
That depends. If you'd really like to use SS, then you need a TCR adjusting mod. If you don't think you'll care about SS, you have a much wider range to choose from.
I believe that NiFe52 is going to prove to be the ultimate TC wire, and once it is readily available in a good range of wire gauges, there will no longer be any compelling reasons to use SS. We know it will soon be available to buy in sizes up to 0.40mm (26G) from ZiVipf in Germany, and
@WileE has somewhat mysteriously told us there's a US vendor planning to stock it soon.
Once NiFe52 is available, I expect I will be happy recommending it as the One True TC Wire. (One wire to rule them all, and in the coil-glow bind them.)
And because NiFes can be successfully vaped on any TC mod - including Ni200-only mods like the DNA 40 - there is no need to get a special mod.
So the choice of mod is up to you. The SXK chip mods are very cheap, and do provide SS support if you want to try that now or at any point. But the TC vape is objectively and subjectively not as good as others.
A DNA 40 or Yihi chip are good, high quality TC mods. As are many DNA 40 clones (or emulators) - the Snow Wolf 200W for example, or the cheaper 50W clone chips like the Kangxin Mini VF. The latter example, using the Rayn board/chip, is not quite as good as the DNA 40 - it lacks pre-heat for example - but will still give a good TC vape, better than the SXK.
Be aware that vaping Titanium or NiFe on DNA 40 clones need the bigger temperature offsets of the Yihi, not the smaller offset of the authentic DNA 40. The authentic DNA 40 is rather unique in that regard, possibly because of its implementation of the exact Ni200 curve.
A DNA 200 or a Dicodes are ultimate quality TC mods, able to do all wires with guaranteed high accuracy and high smoothness. If you can afford one or the other, they are the no brainer purchase. The Dicodes are only available as tubes, so that's either a major bummer or a big plus, depending on your preferences. I will say that while I thought the tube would be a downer, my Dicodes is by far my favourite looking mod. Whenever I want to take a photo of a fancy new atomizer, it goes on the Dicodes. And being a tube does give flexibility in batteries - I can run it with 1 or 2 x 18650, 1 or 2 x 18500/490 or 1 or 2 x 18350. Some new box mods are providing a little flexibility, like 1 or 2 x 18650, but no box mod can allow all those variations.
But the flexibility of a tube comes at the cost of control - having only one button makes using the (complicated and extensive) menu system somewhat slow.
The Dicodes also beats the DNA 200 in on-mod adjustability: you can change the TCR any time on the mod itself, as well as a number of other settings. The DNA 200 can only be configured fully from a Windows PC. But when you do connect it to a PC, you can then configure far more on the DNA 200, and more easily. And you can set up profiles which store the TCR and preheat settings, and then change those profiles on-mod. So it will be much quicker to switch back and forth between different wire types and TCRs on the DNA 200 than the Dicodes, once you have once used a PC to set up the appropriate profiles. Therefore the DNA 200 wins on overall configurability and control, just at the cost of most of it not being on-mod, and requiring a Windows PC.
The DNA 200 also has more advanced TCR control - it supports TCR curves, rather than a single figure. This sounds very cool in principle, however in practice the wires we're mostly talking about here, Titanium and NiFes, have very flat, linear curves. So I don't expect te 200's curves will make a huge difference to ultimate accuracy. They might help a bit more with SS though.
Hope that covered most of it, let me know if you have any more questions.
