I have been using a joyetech eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid (the original version, released as a 150W mod but firmware updatable to 200W) for quite some time. Both were running the ArcticFox firmware, with the eVic Primo 2.0 being my primary, and the Cuboid as a backup / "beater" mod. The "minus / down" button on the Cuboid failed, so it was time for me to pick up a new primary mod, delegating my eVic Primo 2.0 to backup status.
I am a huge fan of the ArcticFox firmware, so I of course first looked for a newer mod that is compatible. But I did not find anything that really interested me (not many mods released after the eVic Primo 2.0 are ArcticFox-compatible). Expanding my search, the high water and dust resistance, and overall ruggedness of the Geekvape Aegis X, definitely caught my eye. I pulled the trigger on one in Classic Silver. I use rda's almost exclusively, occasionally using an RTA when it is not convenient to drip, so I skipped the kit with the sub-ohm tank and just got the mod itself.
The Aegis X is a very attractive mod. Most of it is black, except for an angular silver accent on the back which flows around to the side opposite the fire switch and buttons. This accent is attached using a few large-head black Torx screws, and outlines an area of soft material, which on the Classic Silver version is tan with a tweed-like pattern. All of the edges and corners are beveled, with most having a rubberized coating. The top plate, button side plate, and bottom battery door place are metal with a subtle brushed black finish. The slider to open the battery door appears to be made from black plastic, but the actual latching mechanism is metal.
The overall design is clean and fairly simple, with a few accents to provide contrast. Basically, it has enough going on to not be a boring or plain box, but with none of the more extreme design elements that so many other mods seem to include these days.
It feels nice and sturdy in the hand, with great build quality, and what appears to be high-quality materials. I of course do not plan on dropping it, but when I do, I expect it will bounce back just fine. Thanks to the rubberized coating on the edges and corners, it might even bounce a bit for real.
The Aegis X is slightly on the large side for a dual 18650 mod – the IP67 water and dust resistance definitely comes with a tradeoff in size, making it much less compact than my other dual-battery mods. Weight-wise, it slots in almost exactly halfway between my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid (the Cuboid is a pretty compact dual 18650 mod, but is surprisingly heavy thanks to a rather beefy heatsink).
Joyetech and Wismec mods from the same "era" as my Cuboid and eVic Primo 2.0 have notoriously bad 510 connectors. I have been lucky, having almost zero issues with either of mine. The positive pin on the Cuboid got pushed in too far a couple of times, but I was able to fix it each time by either prying it back up, or disassembling the mod and forcing it back into place from underneath.
The Aegis X has a far superior 510 connector. Its unibody design looks much more robust, and the spring-loaded positive pin has a large amount of travel, around 2.5 mm. I have RDA's and RTA's with a wide range of 510 thread depths and amounts of positive pin protrusion, and every single one mounted flush with ease. I definitely do not foresee any problems down the line with this 510 connector.
The 510 connector is center-mounted, unlike my other mods which are offset to one side. The largest atomizer I currently own is a 26 mm Geekvape Zeus Dual RTA, and when mounted, it reaches out to about 1 mm away from each of the two nearest edges. This means that up to a 28 mm atomizer should mount with zero overhang. Note that this is less than the published 31.5 mm width of the Aegis X, because of the beveled edges.
The USB input for charging and firmware updates is on the top of the mod, underneath a captive rubber plug to maintain the mod's water and dust resistance. It is a standard Micro USB socket, which is a bit disappointing. A mod released in 2019 really should have a USB Type-C connector, with a USB-C to USB-A adaptor for those without any USB-C ports on their computers.
One of the most-hyped features on the Aegis X is the large screen which fills up a good portion of one side of the mod. Indeed, the screen is massive, bright, and colorful. But it is, in my opinion, completely gimmicky and unnecessary. It is not any more readable than my other mods, and it does not show any extra information. In fact, it even shows less information than my ArcticFox-equipped mods. While I do wish it showed the actual battery voltage (both at idle and when under load) like with ArcticFox, it still has all of the important stuff.
The screen is fairly bright, even when set to 0%. It would have been nice to have a larger range of brightness available, because in a dark room, its dimmest setting may still be too bright for you.
Yes, the screen is the only major difference between the Aegis Legend and the Aegis X. So if that screen is just a gimmick to me, then why did I not just go with the Legend instead? Well, there are a few minor cosmetic differences that I prefer on the Aegis X, mainly the screen placement on the side face rather than the edge face, individual and vertically-oriented "+/-" buttons instead of a horizontal rocker switch, and the color and style of the soft material on the silver-accented version of the mod.
The buttons are nice and clicky. All three are large and nicely shaped, making them easy to find "blind". The fire button is especially nice, with an angled face that just feels great. It is definitely a step up from my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid in this regard. There is also no button rattle of any kind when the mod is shaken. It is comfortable to fire both left- and right-handed, with either the thumb or index finger. Due to the screen placement, firing right-handed with the index finger, or left-handed with the thumb, blocks the screen during use.
There are not many settings or options, so navigating the menu is simple. Most are self-explanatory – "theme" changes the screen layout, "version" shows the current firmware version, and so forth. But there are two that I have not been able to figure out, "Auto" and "ABB". Both can be set to either "on" or "off". The manual is of absolutely no help here, as it just lists the settings without explaining what they do.
I have tried setting these two options on and off, but did not notice anything that actually changed. When the "Auto" option is set on, an "AUTO" indicator is present on the main screen below the set wattage. The "ABB" option does not seem to change anything on the main screen, but since this option has a battery icon next to it in the menu, it obviously has something to do with the batteries. The only thing I can think of is "auto battery balance", but I have no idea whether that is to turn on balanced charging, or to balance the battery voltages when used (as in, if one battery drops to a lower voltage than the other, the mod will pull more power from that battery when vaping, until the battery voltages match again). I never charge batteries in my mods, and always use married pairs, so if one battery is discharging faster than the other, then something is wrong, and I do not want my mod attempting to "fix" anything. Unless the "ABB" option is something different than those two guesses, it is going to stay switched off. Geekvape really should have written a functional manual.
The puff counter has a threshold of 1 second. Any firing less than one second long will not register, so if you tend to take very short drags, the counter may not be accurate.
When in wattage mode, there is an option for "Standard", "Soft", or "Powerful" which slightly alters power output. "Powerful" mode fires at 9 watts higher than set for half a second before settling down to the selected wattage. Conversely, "Soft" mode fires 9 watts lower than set for a half second. This is not a very useful setting due to the short period it is active for, which cannot be adjusted. It is also always +/- 9 watts, regardless of the selected power output, which means its effectiveness varies greatly depending on the set wattage. At 20 watts, it will fire at 29 watts in "Powerful" mode, nearly a 50% increase, but at 100 watts, you only get a 9% increase (109 watts).
The "VPC" mode (what I am guessing is "variable power curve", but cannot confirm due to the previously-mentioned sparse manual) is much more helpful. Here, you can set six different wattage values, as well as a "time" setting (0.5 - 1.2 seconds). The mod will step through each power setting in turn, with the "time" setting determining how long each step is held for. If you are like me, and tend to take long drags on coil builds that have enough mass to need some time to get up to temperature, you can set a high initial wattage for a short period to reduce the ramp-up, level off for a couple seconds, then drop off a bit to help keep temperatures under control.
One feature I will miss from my other mods is "percentage-base" preheat and power curves. Instead of specific watt values for preheat and power curves, ArcticFox lets you enter in a percentage of the selected wattage. So if you put in a preheat or power curve "step" value of 120%, with the power set at 50 watts this would be 60 watts, and at 100 watts it would be 120 watts. This means that if you switch to a different coil requiring a different wattage, or even just change the wattage on the same coil, the preheat or power curve values automatically adjust themselves to match. With the Aegis X (and pretty much every other mod for that matter), you need to re-enter in new wattage values each time. While there are four profiles that you can set up and quickly switch between for various power levels, percentages make things much more convenient and effortless.
Next up is "Bypass" mode, which seems to be misnamed, since it does not fire at the actual battery voltage. Like most dual-battery regulated mods, the Aegis X has its two cells wired in series. This means that in bypass mode, you should get ~8.3 volts on a fresh set of batteries, slowly dropping as the batteries discharge, down to the mod's cutoff voltage. But the so-called bypass mode on the Aegis X, it simply fires at a steady 4.14 volts, +/- a hundredth or two, regardless of the actual battery voltage.
There are preset temperature-control modes for stainless steel, nickel, and titanium wire, as well as a custom TCR mode. I do not bother with temperature control, but a quick SS316L coil build seemed to work just fine. There is also a "VTC" option, allowing you to set a temperature curve as you can with the "VPC" option in wattage mode.
The maximum voltage that the Aegis X can output is 12 volts, and the minimum coil resistance is 0.05 ohms. The amperage limit is not published, but I am going to assume it is 60 amps, as a 0.064 ohm test build was able to fire at 200 watts, which works out to 56 amps. The maximum 12 volt output is a definite leader in this class, allowing coils with a (comparatively) high resistance to fire at high wattages. This mod can fire a 0.72 ohm coil at 200 watts, a 1 ohm coil at 144 watts, and a 1.44 ohm coil at 100 watts. With a 60 amp limit, it would be able fire builds all the way down to 0.056 ohms at the full 200 watts.
Battery life seems to be roughly equivalent to my other mods. I was concerned that the large screen would drain the batteries quickly, but this does not seem to be the case. The screen does have a fairly short cut-off time, dimming to its minimum setting after 8 seconds and shutting off after 15 seconds. Either the screen does not draw much power for its size, the fast cut-off minimizes battery drain, or the chipset is more efficient than my older mods. It is probably some combination of all three.
Overall I am happy with my purchase. The main thing I was looking for is durability, and it seems like the Aegis X is a very durable mod. The water/liquid resistance is of the most interest to me. Sometimes I overdrip, and juice ends up pouring down the side of my mods. I regularly disassemble my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid to clean things out, since small amounts of juice invariably find their way inside. It is also really quite nice to be able to rinse off and clean the coils after dry burning, without needing to unscrew a hot atomizer base first.
But it is not all good news. The limitations of the firmware, and the poorly-written manual are two examples. The unnecessarily large screen is another. To me, it seems like Geekvape took an already good product – the Aegis Legend – and just wanted a quick and easy way to "jazz it up", so to say, in order to have a flashy new flagship mod to put on the market. I would have been much more impressed, had they spent the time and money on actually improving the product.
Build quality and durability: 9/10 (tentative, will update after it has some more miles on the odometer)
Design and aesthetics: 8.5/10 (a clean and simple design, with enough accents and contrasting colors to make it stand out, without being obnoxious)
Features: 6.5/10 (has everything needed for a good vape, but is missing some key options that would make it exceptional)
Buttons and button placement: 9.5/10 (damn near perfect)
User interface and usability: 6/10 (would have been 7/10, but lost a point due to the poor manual)
Performance: 8/10
Final verdict: 7/10
I am a huge fan of the ArcticFox firmware, so I of course first looked for a newer mod that is compatible. But I did not find anything that really interested me (not many mods released after the eVic Primo 2.0 are ArcticFox-compatible). Expanding my search, the high water and dust resistance, and overall ruggedness of the Geekvape Aegis X, definitely caught my eye. I pulled the trigger on one in Classic Silver. I use rda's almost exclusively, occasionally using an RTA when it is not convenient to drip, so I skipped the kit with the sub-ohm tank and just got the mod itself.
The Aegis X is a very attractive mod. Most of it is black, except for an angular silver accent on the back which flows around to the side opposite the fire switch and buttons. This accent is attached using a few large-head black Torx screws, and outlines an area of soft material, which on the Classic Silver version is tan with a tweed-like pattern. All of the edges and corners are beveled, with most having a rubberized coating. The top plate, button side plate, and bottom battery door place are metal with a subtle brushed black finish. The slider to open the battery door appears to be made from black plastic, but the actual latching mechanism is metal.
The overall design is clean and fairly simple, with a few accents to provide contrast. Basically, it has enough going on to not be a boring or plain box, but with none of the more extreme design elements that so many other mods seem to include these days.
It feels nice and sturdy in the hand, with great build quality, and what appears to be high-quality materials. I of course do not plan on dropping it, but when I do, I expect it will bounce back just fine. Thanks to the rubberized coating on the edges and corners, it might even bounce a bit for real.
The Aegis X is slightly on the large side for a dual 18650 mod – the IP67 water and dust resistance definitely comes with a tradeoff in size, making it much less compact than my other dual-battery mods. Weight-wise, it slots in almost exactly halfway between my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid (the Cuboid is a pretty compact dual 18650 mod, but is surprisingly heavy thanks to a rather beefy heatsink).
Joyetech and Wismec mods from the same "era" as my Cuboid and eVic Primo 2.0 have notoriously bad 510 connectors. I have been lucky, having almost zero issues with either of mine. The positive pin on the Cuboid got pushed in too far a couple of times, but I was able to fix it each time by either prying it back up, or disassembling the mod and forcing it back into place from underneath.
The Aegis X has a far superior 510 connector. Its unibody design looks much more robust, and the spring-loaded positive pin has a large amount of travel, around 2.5 mm. I have RDA's and RTA's with a wide range of 510 thread depths and amounts of positive pin protrusion, and every single one mounted flush with ease. I definitely do not foresee any problems down the line with this 510 connector.
The 510 connector is center-mounted, unlike my other mods which are offset to one side. The largest atomizer I currently own is a 26 mm Geekvape Zeus Dual RTA, and when mounted, it reaches out to about 1 mm away from each of the two nearest edges. This means that up to a 28 mm atomizer should mount with zero overhang. Note that this is less than the published 31.5 mm width of the Aegis X, because of the beveled edges.
The USB input for charging and firmware updates is on the top of the mod, underneath a captive rubber plug to maintain the mod's water and dust resistance. It is a standard Micro USB socket, which is a bit disappointing. A mod released in 2019 really should have a USB Type-C connector, with a USB-C to USB-A adaptor for those without any USB-C ports on their computers.
One of the most-hyped features on the Aegis X is the large screen which fills up a good portion of one side of the mod. Indeed, the screen is massive, bright, and colorful. But it is, in my opinion, completely gimmicky and unnecessary. It is not any more readable than my other mods, and it does not show any extra information. In fact, it even shows less information than my ArcticFox-equipped mods. While I do wish it showed the actual battery voltage (both at idle and when under load) like with ArcticFox, it still has all of the important stuff.
The screen is fairly bright, even when set to 0%. It would have been nice to have a larger range of brightness available, because in a dark room, its dimmest setting may still be too bright for you.
Yes, the screen is the only major difference between the Aegis Legend and the Aegis X. So if that screen is just a gimmick to me, then why did I not just go with the Legend instead? Well, there are a few minor cosmetic differences that I prefer on the Aegis X, mainly the screen placement on the side face rather than the edge face, individual and vertically-oriented "+/-" buttons instead of a horizontal rocker switch, and the color and style of the soft material on the silver-accented version of the mod.
The buttons are nice and clicky. All three are large and nicely shaped, making them easy to find "blind". The fire button is especially nice, with an angled face that just feels great. It is definitely a step up from my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid in this regard. There is also no button rattle of any kind when the mod is shaken. It is comfortable to fire both left- and right-handed, with either the thumb or index finger. Due to the screen placement, firing right-handed with the index finger, or left-handed with the thumb, blocks the screen during use.
There are not many settings or options, so navigating the menu is simple. Most are self-explanatory – "theme" changes the screen layout, "version" shows the current firmware version, and so forth. But there are two that I have not been able to figure out, "Auto" and "ABB". Both can be set to either "on" or "off". The manual is of absolutely no help here, as it just lists the settings without explaining what they do.
I have tried setting these two options on and off, but did not notice anything that actually changed. When the "Auto" option is set on, an "AUTO" indicator is present on the main screen below the set wattage. The "ABB" option does not seem to change anything on the main screen, but since this option has a battery icon next to it in the menu, it obviously has something to do with the batteries. The only thing I can think of is "auto battery balance", but I have no idea whether that is to turn on balanced charging, or to balance the battery voltages when used (as in, if one battery drops to a lower voltage than the other, the mod will pull more power from that battery when vaping, until the battery voltages match again). I never charge batteries in my mods, and always use married pairs, so if one battery is discharging faster than the other, then something is wrong, and I do not want my mod attempting to "fix" anything. Unless the "ABB" option is something different than those two guesses, it is going to stay switched off. Geekvape really should have written a functional manual.
The puff counter has a threshold of 1 second. Any firing less than one second long will not register, so if you tend to take very short drags, the counter may not be accurate.
When in wattage mode, there is an option for "Standard", "Soft", or "Powerful" which slightly alters power output. "Powerful" mode fires at 9 watts higher than set for half a second before settling down to the selected wattage. Conversely, "Soft" mode fires 9 watts lower than set for a half second. This is not a very useful setting due to the short period it is active for, which cannot be adjusted. It is also always +/- 9 watts, regardless of the selected power output, which means its effectiveness varies greatly depending on the set wattage. At 20 watts, it will fire at 29 watts in "Powerful" mode, nearly a 50% increase, but at 100 watts, you only get a 9% increase (109 watts).
The "VPC" mode (what I am guessing is "variable power curve", but cannot confirm due to the previously-mentioned sparse manual) is much more helpful. Here, you can set six different wattage values, as well as a "time" setting (0.5 - 1.2 seconds). The mod will step through each power setting in turn, with the "time" setting determining how long each step is held for. If you are like me, and tend to take long drags on coil builds that have enough mass to need some time to get up to temperature, you can set a high initial wattage for a short period to reduce the ramp-up, level off for a couple seconds, then drop off a bit to help keep temperatures under control.
One feature I will miss from my other mods is "percentage-base" preheat and power curves. Instead of specific watt values for preheat and power curves, ArcticFox lets you enter in a percentage of the selected wattage. So if you put in a preheat or power curve "step" value of 120%, with the power set at 50 watts this would be 60 watts, and at 100 watts it would be 120 watts. This means that if you switch to a different coil requiring a different wattage, or even just change the wattage on the same coil, the preheat or power curve values automatically adjust themselves to match. With the Aegis X (and pretty much every other mod for that matter), you need to re-enter in new wattage values each time. While there are four profiles that you can set up and quickly switch between for various power levels, percentages make things much more convenient and effortless.
Next up is "Bypass" mode, which seems to be misnamed, since it does not fire at the actual battery voltage. Like most dual-battery regulated mods, the Aegis X has its two cells wired in series. This means that in bypass mode, you should get ~8.3 volts on a fresh set of batteries, slowly dropping as the batteries discharge, down to the mod's cutoff voltage. But the so-called bypass mode on the Aegis X, it simply fires at a steady 4.14 volts, +/- a hundredth or two, regardless of the actual battery voltage.
There are preset temperature-control modes for stainless steel, nickel, and titanium wire, as well as a custom TCR mode. I do not bother with temperature control, but a quick SS316L coil build seemed to work just fine. There is also a "VTC" option, allowing you to set a temperature curve as you can with the "VPC" option in wattage mode.
The maximum voltage that the Aegis X can output is 12 volts, and the minimum coil resistance is 0.05 ohms. The amperage limit is not published, but I am going to assume it is 60 amps, as a 0.064 ohm test build was able to fire at 200 watts, which works out to 56 amps. The maximum 12 volt output is a definite leader in this class, allowing coils with a (comparatively) high resistance to fire at high wattages. This mod can fire a 0.72 ohm coil at 200 watts, a 1 ohm coil at 144 watts, and a 1.44 ohm coil at 100 watts. With a 60 amp limit, it would be able fire builds all the way down to 0.056 ohms at the full 200 watts.
Battery life seems to be roughly equivalent to my other mods. I was concerned that the large screen would drain the batteries quickly, but this does not seem to be the case. The screen does have a fairly short cut-off time, dimming to its minimum setting after 8 seconds and shutting off after 15 seconds. Either the screen does not draw much power for its size, the fast cut-off minimizes battery drain, or the chipset is more efficient than my older mods. It is probably some combination of all three.
Overall I am happy with my purchase. The main thing I was looking for is durability, and it seems like the Aegis X is a very durable mod. The water/liquid resistance is of the most interest to me. Sometimes I overdrip, and juice ends up pouring down the side of my mods. I regularly disassemble my eVic Primo 2.0 and Cuboid to clean things out, since small amounts of juice invariably find their way inside. It is also really quite nice to be able to rinse off and clean the coils after dry burning, without needing to unscrew a hot atomizer base first.
But it is not all good news. The limitations of the firmware, and the poorly-written manual are two examples. The unnecessarily large screen is another. To me, it seems like Geekvape took an already good product – the Aegis Legend – and just wanted a quick and easy way to "jazz it up", so to say, in order to have a flashy new flagship mod to put on the market. I would have been much more impressed, had they spent the time and money on actually improving the product.
Build quality and durability: 9/10 (tentative, will update after it has some more miles on the odometer)
Design and aesthetics: 8.5/10 (a clean and simple design, with enough accents and contrasting colors to make it stand out, without being obnoxious)
Features: 6.5/10 (has everything needed for a good vape, but is missing some key options that would make it exceptional)
Buttons and button placement: 9.5/10 (damn near perfect)
User interface and usability: 6/10 (would have been 7/10, but lost a point due to the poor manual)
Performance: 8/10
Final verdict: 7/10
