- Personal Experiences, Testing, and Observations -
I received this FreeMaX Maxus Solo Kit exactly two weeks ago as of today. As you can see from the picture above, you'll receive everything you'd need as a starter kit, minus the e-juice & external 18650, 20700, or 21700 battery.
The polished aluminum portion of the mod will be painted the color you choose when ordered. That includes pretty much everything but the curved rear-facing partially transparent plastic shell, and the clear front-facing plastic pane that exposes the FMOS 3.0 chip and 1.06 inch screen just behind it. The large gunmetal colored fire button above the UI, two smaller directional buttons below the UI, and a USB Type-C charging port at the very bottom keep the front panel nice and clean while still providing a nice look at the chip. This will become even more apparent when we get into the lighting below. The Type-C port is advertised at a 2A recharging speed, and I clocked it at 1.8A which is close enough to be considered a 2A. Nicely done here. The port also picks up a 3.0 QC cable so you won't have to worry if you have the correct Type-C cable if you're forced to recharge this device via the USB port. I would never recommend charging any mod via the USB port unless the mod uses an internal battery, or you simply do not have access to an external charger. I would strongly suggest getting an external charger if you don't already have one. Lastly, the chip does have pass-through vaping which means you can vape while it's charging although again, I would strongly advise against this. Running a consistently live current through the chip is unwarranted wear and tear to its circuitry.
Just to the right of the directional keys on the side, is the Slide Switch lock. How this differs from the A-Lock found in the newer Aegis series mods by Geek Vape, is that the Slide Switch is much smoother to lock and unlock. I've often found myself having to try to unlock or lock the A-Lock on the Aegis mods 2-3 times before getting the button to traverse properly. The screen also notifies you if you try to activate the fire button that the Slide Switch is engaged. To lock just the Wattage setting, hold down both directional buttons for 2 seconds.
These are the screens you'll see when it's locked, unlocked, and activated while locked helping to remind you that the Slide Switch is activated.
The 510 plate on the Maxus Solo sits nice and flush. I've been noticing recently that a lot of recent mod releases have been using raised 510 plates causing a slight gap between the atomizer and mod. I'm assuming those mods was intentionally designed that way to disperse heat, but there are definitely OCD folks that cannot stand it. If that is something that annoys you, you can be sure that you will find no gap between the mod and atomizer with this kit.
The bottom of the mod has a small swinging door for the battery cover. The door itself has no excess play and feels tight when opening and closing it. Unlike other failing doors that use the same concept such as VooPoo's single battery Drag mods, this battery door requires you to press in when sliding the door out to unlatch it. This feature secures your battery from accidentally falling out. I have dropped this kit a few times, once on hard concrete while getting out of my car and the battery door stayed securely shut.
Indicated above in the bottom left picture, there is a negative symbol carved into the plastic plate that surrounds the negative connector on the battery door, but it's very hard to see. To the right of that picture, you can more easily see the red plus sign at the bottom of the battery bay indicating that to be the positive end for your battery. Pretty much all newer regulated mods have reverse battery protection, so don't worry too much if you end up putting the battery in the wrong way with this kit - it simply won't turn on unless you have the battery in the correct orientation.
I popped the 510 plate off to see what material the screws were fastened to. I'm happy to report that the 510 plate is secured to the aluminum frame of the mod. While this isn't as strong as fastening into a steel frame, many will appreciate how light weight this mod is by the use of aluminum, and it's certainly better than screws fastening into a plastic portion of the mod.
You can also see from this picture, the spring that spring-loads the 510, as well as the 510 pin having a clear silicone O-ring around its base to help keep e-juice and debris from entering the interior portions of the mod. I'm very happy to see this, FreeMaX.
- FMOS 3.0 Modes & Menus -
Changing and setting modes for this mod may take a little bit of getting used to, but once you start flipping through it and changing stuff, you'll pick it up in a jiffy.
The available modes are as follows:
- Power: Eco (battery saver), Norm, Sport (initial Wattage boost when firing)
- While in Power mode, Wattage adjustments are made in 0.5W increments. Holding a directional key down accelerates the adjustment the longer you hold it down. There is no round robin and it isn't really needed here.
- VPC: Variable Power Curve (each of those bars represent 1/2 second)
- Bypass: If you want the performance of a regulated mech mod
- TCR: 3 customizable TCRs; Wattage setting & Resistance Lock are available
- TC: SS316, Ni, Ti; Wattage setting & Resistance Lock are available
The SETTINGS menu:
This is the main SETTINGS menu of the FMOS 3.0 chip accessed by clicking the fire button 3 times in quick succession and then scrolling down to SETTINGS using the directional buttons. Alternatively, you can hold the [-] directional key and the fire button down for a few seconds to access the same menu, directly. I will run through what each sub menu does with the exception of the "LED CONTROL" menu, which I'll go more in-depth with, below.
- COIL TEST: This allows you to force the mod to retest the coil resistance. Usually this is pretty accurate and I haven't found any reason to use this really, but I suppose there may be a time and place in which you may need to use it.
- TIMEOUT: This menu allows you to change the timeout between 5s and 15s. To be quite honest, I'm not exactly sure what this controls. I have my timeout set to 5s, and the UI and lights stay lit for 30 seconds. Switching the setting to 15s also keeps the UI and lights lit for 30 seconds. Hopefully FreeMaX will address this in their final release.
- THEME COLOR: This allows you to change the color of the UI display. The default color options are light blue, dark blue, purple, green, and orange. There's also a "random color" option that will randomly select a theme color. Clicking through this randomizer netted me a lot more options than just the 5 default color options, but I don't believe it's fully randomized with the full spectrum of RGB values. If that is the case, 256 color combinations of Red, Green, and Blue pops out a whopping 16,777,216 possible color combinations. That would be nuts!
- LED ON/OFF: Allows you to fully shut off any mood lighting effects while leaving the UI unchanged.
- LED CONTROL: Separate section for this below.
- PUFF RESET: Allows you to reset the puff counter.
- TIME RESET: Allows you to reset the timer. (I ran into a few issues with the timer when it hit 999 puffs, it went all the way up to the max of 99999 seconds - hopefully FreeMaX addresses this)
- RESET: Factory reset to default settings.
- EXIT: Allows you to teleport out of the room. (Just checking to see if you're still reading)
Okay, I'm going to be honest and level with you here. I've never been a fan of LED lights on any mod or tank. Never. However, the aesthetic of this mod gives off a Tron feel that I absolutely love. And the fact that you can customize the color to whatever you want? WHAT!? Yes please.
To access the mood light RGB customization screen, you're going to go back into the sub menu (fire button 3x and scroll down to SETTINGS or hold [-] and fire button for a few seconds), then select the LED CONTROL option. This will bring you to a screen that will first ask if you'd prefer the mood light to be ALWAYS ON, BREATH, or FLASHING. After you select one of those options, the menu will ask if you'd like to use one of 9 different DEFAULT COLORS or below that you can choose DIY LED COLORS. Select DIY LED COLORS and you will see the RGB panel shown above. Here you can change the amount of output between Red, Green, and Blue. The phone camera doesn't pick up the lighting difference all that well, but look at the reflection of the color on my hand in each pic. Color customization has never been this cool or fun to play around with.
- Mod Performance -
(Nerd Alert
)
I've taken a special liking to mods that use 21700 batteries. Because of that, I started to spreadsheet the performance of all of the 21700 mods I have. This mod obviously falls into 21700 category and so it nestles in nicely amongst the rest. Here are the results I ended up with: (click on the picture for easier viewing)
A quick explanation of what each column represents:
- Ohm Readout: What coil resistance the mod reads
- Wattage Used: Wattage setting on the mod
- Voltage Readout: What the Voltage on the mod reads
- Calculated Amp Draw: Voltage divided by Ohms (Ohm's Law)
- Calculated Wattage Output: Voltage multiplied by Calculated Amps (Ohm's Law)
From this, you can see with a 0.14 Ohm Mesh Pro coil, the Amp draw is capped at 26A shown using 100W with that coil. This is on the lower end for max Amps in a single battery mod, but it's actually safer for you and your batteries. 95W with a low resistance coil is nothing to scoff at for a 0.14 Ohm coil.
The Maxus Solo had no problems with the 0.28 Ohm Uwell coil which is about the resistance where most mods tend to peak out at for total Wattage output. It pops out a little on the strong side even topping out at almost 106W, which is great.
As we move toward a higher Ohm coil, the 0.78 Ohm Innokin Z-coil has a high enough resistance to test the Voltage limit. From the results, the mod was able to reach 76W with a max Voltage output of 7.73V which is higher than the advertised 7.5V max output. However, I do not ever recommend vaping a 0.8 Ohm coil at 76W unless you like the taste of burnt socks. This is a great workhorse of a mod.
You might be asking how much does the light effect the battery performance? I ran 3 tests, all with a fully charged Molicel P42A @ 55W. These are the results:
- No Light: 211 Puffs, 633 seconds of fire time. An average of exactly 3 seconds per puff (no I did not fudge those numbers, lol).
- Light On Test 1: 187 Puffs, 576 seconds of fire time. An average of 3.08 seconds per puff.
- Light On Test 2: 185 Puffs, seconds of fire time errored out and went to 99999s for whatever reason. It's probably a safe bet that the average puff time was around 3 seconds.
My conclusion is, you're looking at losing about 10-15 puffs per recharge with the mood light on. Hopefully they address the light timer to accurately depict the amount of run time on the light. If that is the case, the loss in puffs per recharge will be miniscule.
If you're familiar with the Fireluke M, Fireluke 2 (Twister,) or Fireluke 3 (Maxluke), there really hasn't been a ton of change with the Fireluke Solo other than the plug n pull coils.
The top cap does have a childproof safety feature on it which in my opinion is much more appealing with the fact that the slide top doesn't slide open by accident. Once you pull-n-slide the top cap back, you'll notice a kidney shaped refill hole, as well as the subtle little hole where the drip tip is now located. I'm not sure if people have noticed this in the past, but I love this feature on the Fireluke 3 and M Pro. This little hole may seem insignificant, but it's the air release for your tank when you're refilling to help prevent the refill hole from plugging up and spilling juice everywhere.
in the bottom right picture you'll notice the double O-ringed 810 drip tip. The drip tip is further sealed by a 3rd O-ring lining the inside of the top cap opening.
I would like to mention that the kidney-shaped refill hole is just as small as it has been in the past - you can't quite get a Gorilla bottle nozzle into the hole even if you remove the drip tip (pictured left) - but they did address the top cap being able to slide all the way to the side now revealing the entire kidney-shaped hole.
With the technique used above in the picture to the right, you shouldn't have any issues refilling the tank with a large bottle nozzle. Slide the nozzle all the way to one side of the refill hole, and squeeze the bottle so that it's draining more so than pumping juice into the tank. This may take a few more seconds to refill the tank, but you'll see why patience is a virtue. Go ahead and squeeze the bottle hard - don't say you weren't warned.
After sliding the top cap open to refill, I always give the drip tip a nice swift blow to clear out any e-juice that may be blocking the air release hole before starting to refill the tank.
The airflow ring has a stopper at both full open and full closed. Turning it is kind of stiff, but not so stiff that you shouldn't be able to properly adjust it. I've been noticing lately with other tanks that the airflow is very easy to move when twisting atomizers off the mod - you shouldn't have that problem with the Fireluke Solo as long as your fingers are pressing on both the glass tank and airflow ring as you twist the atomizer off.
This tank does offer a true MTL (mouth-to-lung) airflow when the ring is fully closed which is kind of comical to me, lol. I wouldn't recommend vaping DL coils/atomizers with no airflow, as this will suffocate the coil and likely lead to the coil going bad prematurely.
With the airflow fully open, you're going to get a hint of an RDL (restricted direct lung) vape, but mostly a full DL vape which works very well with both the FL1-D and FL2 coils. I did not receive the FL3 coil for review, so if you try them, let me know what you think in the comments below.
I think FreeMaX personally makes some of, if not, the best flavored coils on the market. In that regard, there's no need for them to reinvent the wheel. I would say that the 904L "X" coils released with the Fireluke 3 were a huge game changer and are my personal favorites for DL vaping, but with a caveat - it provides a very moist vape. 904L "M" coils exclusive to the M Pro and M Pro 2 tanks are a dry vape. While they still put out a decent amount of flavor, I always tend to find myself coming back to the 904L "X" coils used in the Fireluke series. I don't see many reviewers talk about this and I think it's extremely important if you're in a dire search for your ideal vape.
The new FL series coils hit both a dry and wet vape depending on the coil you're using. The FL1-D "Double D" mesh shown above in the top 2 photos (I'm guessing they chose the nickname "Double D" depicted by the drawing I added in the top right photo) provides a dryer vape with the airflow half closed or more - something you'd expect from the M Pro or M Pro 2 tanks. You can make it slightly more of a moist vape by opening the airflow all the way - something I haven't quite figured out as to why this happens. The settings I found to have the best flavor catered to what I like, were 55W with the airflow fully open using the FL1-D "Double D" coil. As advertised, this coil does heat up very quickly, but I can't say for certain how much faster it heats up than the FL2 coil - they both heat up very quickly.
When I switched to the FL2 coil after 1000 puffs (FL1-D coil was still vaping very well although the cotton was quite dark but not black), I was immediately greeted with a familiar vape experience. The FL2 coil vapes almost exactly the same as the 904L X2 coil which is my favorite coil for the Fireluke 3 (Maxluke) tank. I will however mention that the moistness in the vape isn't quite as wet, but the flavor output is nearly identical. If you think the 904L X coils are too moist of a vape, then the new FL2 coil might be right up your alley. Or finding a happy medium with the FL1-D coil with the airflow all the way open. I've been vaping the FL2 coil at 45W with the airflow fully open for best flavor. I've never run into a tank where I've gotten better flavor with more airflow which is odd to me. This is the biggest reason why I tend to vape in RDL.
The wicking in both of these coils is extremely good. If you'll notice in both right-side photos, the wick was fully saturated by simply dropping e-juice into the side juice port holes. I never really drip any down into the coil because I've noticed a tendency for the atomizer to want to gurgle once I start vaping.
The cloud chucking ability for both coils is pretty hefty if you're into that. This is definitely not a stealth vape.
The left picture shows what the airflow compartment and underside of the coil looked like after 1000 puffs using the FL1-D coil. It was never disassembled or cleaned up to this point. Absolutely no hint of moisture there, not even condensation which I was surprised by. Notice how nicely the bottom of the coil is sealed? This is what a good quality coil should look like if you're expecting no coil leakage. I'm not going to name any brands, but take a peak at the bottom of the coil. If you'd be suspicious seeing this seal in your car, why should you trust it?
And on the right, you'll want the juice level in your tank to be less than half full when switching the coil out. If the level of your e-juice is higher than the juice ports that feed the coil (noted by the purple lines) when it's tipped upside down, you'll lose juice if you pull the coil out.
- Conclusion -
There really isn't much to nag on about this kit. Even though it's not considered a final product yet, the performance has been exceptional. If you own the Fireluke 3, should you purchase the tank? I'd consider it if you feel like the vape is too moist. The Fireluke Solo offers both a dry and wet vape depending on the coils and airflow setting you use. If you're into lights or think you'd like a mod with a Tron aesthetic, you will surely find it with this kit. I've had a lot of fun playing around with the RGB mood lighting.
There are a few bugs that I hope will be ironed out. The puff timer when it hits 999s maxes out to 99999s. There was a single instance where the mod kept saying "Low Battery" when the battery in it was near fully charged, but it was a very cold morning and so I'm wondering if this had anything to do with it. I simply popped the battery out and reinserted it, and the warning went away. It hasn't happened more than that one time. The 1.06 inch screen sits ever so slightly cockeyed. I'm sure this could be easily fixed by taking it apart, but it really doesn't bother me all that much. Lastly, the 5s to 15s range in the TIMEOUT sub menu doesn't appear to change anything. Regardless of it being set to 5s or 15s, the light and UI stay lit for 30 seconds. Again, hopefully these things will be addressed before the final release of this kit.
Overall, I've had an absolute blast testing out this FreeMaX Maxus Solo kit. It really brings me back to one of my all-time favorite tanks - the Fireluke 3 - and carries on the tradition of an exceptionally stellar vape. Whether you like a dry vape or a moist vape, there's a coil in this kit for you.
- Pros/Cons -
== Pros ==
- Everything needed in a starter kit
- Top notch vape experience
- Comfortable in-hand
- 5 mL tank capacity
- UI is fairly easy to navigate
- Tons of customizations
- TC/TCR allows Wattage adjustments and coil resistance lock
- Drop-in/Plug-n-Pull coils
- Not a hint of leaking after nearly 1500 puffs
- Awesome design aesthetics/lights
- Slide Switch
- 510 plate is screwed into metal
- Battery door secures tightly
- Spare bubble glass & coil
- Performance specs are accurately depicted (huge props)
- Near 2A charging (please, only when needed) and 3.0 QC cable compatible
- Kidney-shaped refill hole is now fully accessible
- Mood lighting can be shut off when needed (driving at night)
== Cons ==
- There are a few bugs that will hopefully be addressed
- Makes it hard to want to vape other kits?
== Preference Considerations ==
- Kidney-shaped refill hole doesn't fit a Gorilla bottle nozzle into it
- Some airflow settings can get a little loud
- Overall Rating -
Compared to pretty much any currently available kit: 10
The Tank: 9.5-10
The Mod: 9-9.5
FreeMaX does not ship directly to the US from their site. The first vendor I've seen offering this kit is
Sourcemore as a Pre-sale for $44.99 as a Bronze level member. Remember to log in to see the actual price; prices may vary. Follow FreeMaX on IG for other exclusive chances to win giveaways.
Hopefully you made it this far and that I've answered any questions you may have regarding the Maxus Solo Kit. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Happy vape hoarding!
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