Hi All, Anthony Vapes back here with my review of the Cthulhu Zathog rda, please see the bottom for disclaimers and links
Introduction:
The Cthulhu Zathog rda is the latest rda from long time vape company Cthulhu. They aren’t super popular because they don’t flood the market with products every month but they have a good reputation for making solid affordable products in the vape community and their azathoth RDA was one of my personal favorite RDAs in 2017. The Zathog is a collaboration designed by Morten Oen. It’s a 30mm dual coil RDA with top dual airflow. It’s available in 2 colors SS and black for around 37 bucks direct from cthulhu.
Manufacturer's Specs
album
Initial Impressions and features
When I first got this RDA I was pretty excited. It checked all the boxes for something different that I would like personally. Dual coil high watt squonk RDA i could throw on my drone with a postless deck advertised as a flavor monster. That for me is “shut up and take my money” territory. Things went quick south though after i opened it up and used it. Also i feel i need to mention this and it won’t effect my review at all, but i really dislike the cartoon “south park styled” morten oen on the front of the cover. Vaping is under way too many attacks for complaints of advertising to children so why would anyone think it’s a good idea to use a cartoon character on the box as a logo? Really poor taste IMO. But that’s all i’m going to mention about that.
Build Deck and Wicking (pics above)
Let’s talk about the build deck now. It’s made for dual coils only. The deck itself is in short a postless deck that has a ceramic plate on top of it then the double U shaped skate ramp looking block that goes over that. All of it is removable via a small flathead screw on the side. Mine came loose but no big deal as i take everything apart and clean it before use anyway but worth a mention if you don’t make sure you tighten that screw up so the U shaped metal block stays in place. The block itself is a nice solid quality but really sharp on the edges which would poke me when installing coils. The postless deck uses good quality flat head screws which is normally fine however they are so recessed into the deck that it creates an issue when building. It should have been hex screws and doesn't feel like it was designed by someone who has built a lot of atomizers. Just by using hex screws it would have been way easier than putting a small flat head screw into a large and deep recess. It makes the included screwdriver pretty much unusable and even my tools were a pain to use. I found it much easier to build without it on a meter and just in my hands only but it’s way too annoying to build on. I didn’t think i’d come across a postless deck i didn’t enjoy building on, but in this case that is how it is. The posts are very deep into the deck as well due to the U shaped block so coil leads need to be between 7-8MM to position your coils correctly. Much longer than your standard postless deck so take note of that. Overall i found this to be a poorly designed deck to build on that could have been good enough had they just used bigger hex screws
Wicking on it is interesting. The included manual tells you to build a cotton wall on the sides which i did but it didn’t make any difference ot help with the lack of flavor so in reality it’s really easy to wick and just do it as you normally would dropping the cotton in the wick slots on the sides. It’s really easy to wick and just ignore the manual.
Performance
Performance wise, I used it as a Dual coil RDA only. I ran 5 builds in this and they were all massive builds. Nothing ran under 100 watts as the recommended wattage on this is 100-250 listed on the site and 120-250 in the manual. It’s obviously designed with high watts in mind as a 30mm RDA. All the builds were large fancy dual coil builds ranging from 3mm ID to 6.5mm ID and as many wraps as i can fit comfortably with each. Coil lead length is 7-8 mm. Overall I found this to be really poor for flavor. Very muted and almost non existent. I was chucking huge clouds and going through juice but the flavor just wasn’t there. Overall just a very poor performer for flavor but i can chuck some clouds. Definitely not the flavor monster it’s advertised to be.
Overall Impressions, Details, and Extras
Let’s talk about the airflow now. It has 2 top airflows. The top top one is an adjustable airflow angled down. The AFC on it is a little tight which would be fine if they added knurling for grip but the combination of the AFC being so smooth and it being a little tight makes it harder to adjust than it should be. It can be closed off completely. They should have added some knurling or texture for grip. The lower top airflow isn’t made to be adjustable really. You can adjust it by spinning the top cap but it can't be closed off fully as the hole passes the U block into full open area making it open on the wrong side so it’s best to leave that one fully open.
It comes with a standard 810 friction fit delrin drip tip in black. They also include a 510 adapter. The tip fits great and isn’t too loose or too tight and o-ring “TFV8” style tips also work in it perfectly.
The quality on the Zathog RDA is really nice. The o-rings feel like the right size and the top cap is easy to pop on and off. The AFC adjust would be easy if it has some knurling or texture for grip but that’s a design flaw not a quality issue. It does get a bit hot but that’s to be expected when vaping such high watts so not a big deal. It comes with a standard 510 pin and a BF 510 pin. I used it both as a dripper and squonker. The juice well is very deep and you can just drip down the tip. It has great over squonk and over drip protection. It’s a 30mm diameter so should it will overhang on most mods on the market today but there are plenty of good choices that do take a 30mm atomizer as well and are affordable. There is plenty of spare o-rings and spare post screws. I also experienced no issue with whistling on the airflow either, it’s quite smooth and quiet. Branding is nice and simple. It’s a very plain RDA with the only branding done on the bottom as it should be so nice job on that.
Pros:
So with all that said, do I recommend this RDA?I don’t like to do a hard yes or no, this one is going to be an easy no for me. It’s a well built RDA that suffers from a lot of design flaws and lacks flavor production. It makes a good cloud chucker but it’s marketed as a flavor monster and it’s not even close to being decent in that department as well as being bad to build on. I’m all about the performance and can overlook small flaws if ti performs but this just doesn't and is filled with too many issues. I won’t be adding this to my sheet and that’s a shame because i would have loved this to work well as there aren't many good flavor 30mm RDAs out there
This is Anthony Vapes just keeping it honest, hopefully you all can say the same and i’ll catch you on my next review.
Product Disclaimer
This product was sent to me from cthulhumods
Review Disclaimer
Due to possible QC difference your experience may vary.
Reviewer Disclaimer
I’ve been doing vape reviews since late 2016 and have done around 200 reviews to date. I enjoy helping vapers on forums as well and helping contribute to the great vape community. I’m not an “out of the box” reviewer. I do my best to be thorough at all times and have enough experience with many products to tell what’s good and what’s not. All mods get tested with an oscilloscope and stress tested and results are posted in my reviews.
Recommendations and Past Review Links
written reviews list here
Youtube Channel here
Spreadhseet of Recommendations here
Best of 2018 so far list here
Best of 2017 list here
Introduction:
The Cthulhu Zathog rda is the latest rda from long time vape company Cthulhu. They aren’t super popular because they don’t flood the market with products every month but they have a good reputation for making solid affordable products in the vape community and their azathoth RDA was one of my personal favorite RDAs in 2017. The Zathog is a collaboration designed by Morten Oen. It’s a 30mm dual coil RDA with top dual airflow. It’s available in 2 colors SS and black for around 37 bucks direct from cthulhu.
Manufacturer's Specs
- Squonk Friendly.
- Flavor monster for high power vaping.
- Compatible with 810 drip tips.
- Recommend power: 100W-250W
- WIDTH: 30mm / 1.18 in
- HEIGHT: 40.3 mm / 1.58 in (without drip tip)
- Adjustable 45 degree top airflow
- Efficient independent U-shape airflow channel. The U-shape design is based on Morten Oen’s airflow analysis.
- 1 x Zathog RDA
- 1 x Soft bag to carry RDA in
- 1 x Screwdriver
- 1 x allen wrench
- 1 x Squonk Pin
- 1 x 810 drip tip
- 1 x 510 adapter
- 1 x Manual
- 1 x spare ceramic plate
- Orings & Screws
album
Initial Impressions and features
When I first got this RDA I was pretty excited. It checked all the boxes for something different that I would like personally. Dual coil high watt squonk RDA i could throw on my drone with a postless deck advertised as a flavor monster. That for me is “shut up and take my money” territory. Things went quick south though after i opened it up and used it. Also i feel i need to mention this and it won’t effect my review at all, but i really dislike the cartoon “south park styled” morten oen on the front of the cover. Vaping is under way too many attacks for complaints of advertising to children so why would anyone think it’s a good idea to use a cartoon character on the box as a logo? Really poor taste IMO. But that’s all i’m going to mention about that.
Build Deck and Wicking (pics above)
Let’s talk about the build deck now. It’s made for dual coils only. The deck itself is in short a postless deck that has a ceramic plate on top of it then the double U shaped skate ramp looking block that goes over that. All of it is removable via a small flathead screw on the side. Mine came loose but no big deal as i take everything apart and clean it before use anyway but worth a mention if you don’t make sure you tighten that screw up so the U shaped metal block stays in place. The block itself is a nice solid quality but really sharp on the edges which would poke me when installing coils. The postless deck uses good quality flat head screws which is normally fine however they are so recessed into the deck that it creates an issue when building. It should have been hex screws and doesn't feel like it was designed by someone who has built a lot of atomizers. Just by using hex screws it would have been way easier than putting a small flat head screw into a large and deep recess. It makes the included screwdriver pretty much unusable and even my tools were a pain to use. I found it much easier to build without it on a meter and just in my hands only but it’s way too annoying to build on. I didn’t think i’d come across a postless deck i didn’t enjoy building on, but in this case that is how it is. The posts are very deep into the deck as well due to the U shaped block so coil leads need to be between 7-8MM to position your coils correctly. Much longer than your standard postless deck so take note of that. Overall i found this to be a poorly designed deck to build on that could have been good enough had they just used bigger hex screws
Wicking on it is interesting. The included manual tells you to build a cotton wall on the sides which i did but it didn’t make any difference ot help with the lack of flavor so in reality it’s really easy to wick and just do it as you normally would dropping the cotton in the wick slots on the sides. It’s really easy to wick and just ignore the manual.
Performance
Performance wise, I used it as a Dual coil RDA only. I ran 5 builds in this and they were all massive builds. Nothing ran under 100 watts as the recommended wattage on this is 100-250 listed on the site and 120-250 in the manual. It’s obviously designed with high watts in mind as a 30mm RDA. All the builds were large fancy dual coil builds ranging from 3mm ID to 6.5mm ID and as many wraps as i can fit comfortably with each. Coil lead length is 7-8 mm. Overall I found this to be really poor for flavor. Very muted and almost non existent. I was chucking huge clouds and going through juice but the flavor just wasn’t there. Overall just a very poor performer for flavor but i can chuck some clouds. Definitely not the flavor monster it’s advertised to be.
Overall Impressions, Details, and Extras
Let’s talk about the airflow now. It has 2 top airflows. The top top one is an adjustable airflow angled down. The AFC on it is a little tight which would be fine if they added knurling for grip but the combination of the AFC being so smooth and it being a little tight makes it harder to adjust than it should be. It can be closed off completely. They should have added some knurling or texture for grip. The lower top airflow isn’t made to be adjustable really. You can adjust it by spinning the top cap but it can't be closed off fully as the hole passes the U block into full open area making it open on the wrong side so it’s best to leave that one fully open.
It comes with a standard 810 friction fit delrin drip tip in black. They also include a 510 adapter. The tip fits great and isn’t too loose or too tight and o-ring “TFV8” style tips also work in it perfectly.
The quality on the Zathog RDA is really nice. The o-rings feel like the right size and the top cap is easy to pop on and off. The AFC adjust would be easy if it has some knurling or texture for grip but that’s a design flaw not a quality issue. It does get a bit hot but that’s to be expected when vaping such high watts so not a big deal. It comes with a standard 510 pin and a BF 510 pin. I used it both as a dripper and squonker. The juice well is very deep and you can just drip down the tip. It has great over squonk and over drip protection. It’s a 30mm diameter so should it will overhang on most mods on the market today but there are plenty of good choices that do take a 30mm atomizer as well and are affordable. There is plenty of spare o-rings and spare post screws. I also experienced no issue with whistling on the airflow either, it’s quite smooth and quiet. Branding is nice and simple. It’s a very plain RDA with the only branding done on the bottom as it should be so nice job on that.
Pros:
- Standard 810 delrin tip and 510 adapter included
- Good build quality
- standard 510 pin and squonk pin included
- good protection for over-dripping or over squonking
- huge juice well
- smooth and quiet airflow
- nice looking simple design with no visible branding
- the build deck is poorly designed and not builder friendly
- this really needed hex screws
- lack of texture or knurling makes AFC hard to adjust
- lack flavor (very poor flavor)
- lack of color options (only SS and black)
So with all that said, do I recommend this RDA?I don’t like to do a hard yes or no, this one is going to be an easy no for me. It’s a well built RDA that suffers from a lot of design flaws and lacks flavor production. It makes a good cloud chucker but it’s marketed as a flavor monster and it’s not even close to being decent in that department as well as being bad to build on. I’m all about the performance and can overlook small flaws if ti performs but this just doesn't and is filled with too many issues. I won’t be adding this to my sheet and that’s a shame because i would have loved this to work well as there aren't many good flavor 30mm RDAs out there
This is Anthony Vapes just keeping it honest, hopefully you all can say the same and i’ll catch you on my next review.
Product Disclaimer
This product was sent to me from cthulhumods
Review Disclaimer
Due to possible QC difference your experience may vary.
Reviewer Disclaimer
I’ve been doing vape reviews since late 2016 and have done around 200 reviews to date. I enjoy helping vapers on forums as well and helping contribute to the great vape community. I’m not an “out of the box” reviewer. I do my best to be thorough at all times and have enough experience with many products to tell what’s good and what’s not. All mods get tested with an oscilloscope and stress tested and results are posted in my reviews.
Recommendations and Past Review Links
written reviews list here
Youtube Channel here
Spreadhseet of Recommendations here
Best of 2018 so far list here
Best of 2017 list here
