I have had the Zenesis for a week now and am due for a review of my experiences with it. As I write this, I am blowing out obnoxious amounts of clouds with my Zenesis, and the flavor is just plain awesome! But it wasn't all so good to begin with. I haven't posted anything yet as I seem to have had EVERY problem that anyone has reported here with my Zenesis! And since I didn't want to sound unsophisticated (VW pun
), I kept at it and with the help of all the tips here, have gotten my mini to work in full swing. I am putting down my experience here and some tips of my own I figured along the way so it could help newcomers.
I have been really excited about the Zenesis project from the beginning. Though when I received it, quite frankly, I wasn't as dazzled and satisfied as most of you have been. My Mini has a lot of large machining marks and blemishes on the body and some on the cap, and quite some turning marks on the center post of the tank. I am a sucker for perfection in finish. When Zen said he wants to make the rolex of PVs, I knew I have come to the right place. Fortunately, I had read Zen's warning that some PVs have gotten shipped with issues with the finish and he plans to replace / repair them. So that was consolation, but I will have to spend a bomb sending the PV back to the US from India. I also noticed a lot of machine oil in the battery compartment and the wick smelled of it too, so I decided to wash it up, and did my first mistake, decided to pull out the stock coil and wick and make a new one even before trying out the Zenesis first. I was convinced I didn't want to mess my first experience up with machine oil flavor. I quickly realized that it was a mistake to not try and rinse out the machine oil from the installed wick as none of the supplied wicks fit into the hole. I guess the wicks swell or open up while shipping. So I tightened them by rolling them between my fingers just as Zen demonstrated in his first video. This thinned down the wick but removed a lot (most?) of the oxidization from the wick, and the wick then felt soft and sloppy. I figured I need to reoxidize the wick and did my second mistake. I used my cheapo Chinese windproof lighters to oxidize the wick. Melted 3 lighters in the process, but what the heck, I wasn't using them anyways
. Then I setup the wick and coil and dry burnt. The coil was nearly uniformly glowing, so I thought it was good to go. Filled the mini up with some of my overstocked health cabin RY4 (70%PG 30% VG) and hit it. There was vapor, but nowhere close to what I saw in most videos, so I thought it must need breaking in. The flavor was extremely harsh and metallic and tasted like robot burp! Since I had read up that you need to go through at least one tank full of juice to break it in, I decided to go forth and do so. I 'mouth vaped' without inhaling like a cigar on an off through the day and finished off the tank, by now my entire mouth felt like it was made of metal and I could taste little else. The atomizer cap was getting flooded just like of of the users here demonstrated with pictures, actually much more than his! Everytime I removed the cap, substantial amount of juice would spill out. I also used the tilt and burn technique with the cap off when I just couldn't stand the taste. I repeated this for the next three days and finished 3 tanks of juice without actually inhaling any of it, the situation was exactly the same as my start point. When I was nearing the point of giving up as I just could not stand the metallic taste, I figured it had to be the wick. After calling up tool sellers all over my city, I found a seller for these
http://www.masterappliance.com/heat-tool-products/butane-powered/microtorches/microtorch-mt-70 and got one of em (A very cool torch I must say!). Got rid of my previous wick, picked a new one from the stash Zen provided, tightened it, and started working on deoxidizing it with my new torch. I used the quench and heat technique that Scott shows in his Genesis video for about 5 times for both sides, and then used the technique shown by Zen in his video, using PG liquid and heating, again for 5 times. I dunno if I was overdoing the oxidization thing, but I had to be sure it would work this time. I put in the wick, and this time I had to do the coil thrice to get it to glow evenly. The first couple of times, the coil happened to be a little loose around the wick. On filling her up and hitting, the very first hit had ABSOLUTELY NO METALLIC TASTE! Awesome! The vapor amounts were not high, and the TH was on the harsher side, but It was good enough for me to vape it. By the time I got done with the first tank, the vapor quantity was up to levels comparable with my Reo grand with a 1.5ohm Avid Vaper 306 atty, and that is my monster vapor machine! The flavor however was on a different scale! Nothing I have tried in my obsessive ecig collection journey comes close to the flavor I am getting with the Zenesis now. Not even my GG + UFS + HH357 setup (which I used to consider the pinnacle of flavor production) can match the pure dense flavor that the Zenesis produces! And its not just me, anyone walking into my room at office and home exclaimed "Whats that awesome fragrance here?!" So now I am on my second tank fill with this new wick and things are going great! Now vaping some Highbrow RY4 with it. Ah the flavor! Totally fraking awesome!! As a side effect of me rebuilding the coil, the flooding in the cap stopped too. Its still wet due to condensation in the atty chamber, but is not flooding at all. I have a strong feeling that the performance is also steadily improving. I am going to try and re-do the coil again as I have some slack between the +ve pole and the wick. So if anyone is trying to solve the metallic taste and the other tips aren't helping, try reoxidising the wick.
I ordered a whole lot of Driptips from quite a few shops including COV, Avid Vaper, Good sense vapor and SuperT. Unfortunately, most of the SS tips didn't fit. Out of the 2 SuperT tips i got, only 1 fits the Zenesis. Love the finish and feel of the superT contoured tip. My next stop is to get some of Kcos's new drip tips. I didn't order one earlier, as I am not a big fan of the ming shaped ones. The Ridgemont is something that I just saw and I think will look real cool on the Zenesis, and the Bazooka is awesome for my Reo
. I really wish I could get the AFC drip tip on the Zenesis, but that won't fit either. I would really prefer a stiffer draw. I don't intend to mod the top cap as Zen is going to release caps with a reduced hole. Whats gotten me really excited is the news about an adjustable draw! Thats one of my favorite features on the GG and would absolutely LOVE it on the Zenesis! Especially as I am not totally sure if I would like to permanently reduce the draw, as Zen mentioned in this article
http://guidetovaping.com/2011/11/diy-rebuildable-atomizer-the-genesis/ that reduced airflow reduces vapor production on Genesis systems. An adjustable draw would let everyone find their sweet spots.
What I Like about the Zenesis:
1. The FLAVOR!
2. The FLAVOR!
3. The FLAVOR! - Flavor is very important to me. Its the reason I could never tolerate cartos and have never tried carto tanks. The Zenesis tops the flavor department with flying colors.
4. The vapor density is amazing. Puts some of the low resistance attys of the best quality to shame and that too at 4 coils! I wonder what it could do on 3!
4. Awesome build quality. Its built like a tank.
5. The best battery fit ever! The tolerance is just perfect, which makes it a thinner PV. Its metal is thicker than the GG but due to the awesome snug fit, the Zenesis is visibly thinner than my GG that takes the same batteries. Not even my best flashlights have such perfect tolerance. The ones that are snug, have the batteries stuck in and over time they land up peeling out the battery. Not the case with the Zenesis, its just the right snug with all 6 of my AW IMR 16350s. Zen needs to give lessons to some of the drip tip makers about tolerance!
6. Awesome threading! I love the oversized threads on the switch / battery compartment. Unlike most PVs, the Zenesis has large threads which prevents cross threading and from the looks of it will not have any burring in a lifetime!
7. Cool quartz! I really like the sparkling quartz tank. Stays clean and feels tough even though its very light. I have had the mini knocked over at least 6 times on a hard table and no cracks. I'll still be buying spares though as I am sure to drop it and break it eventually. I too think that polished edges would strengthen the tank even more.
8. Ease of cleaning and changing flavors. Due to the simplicity of the design, opening up the tank, rinsing off remaining liquid and reassembling is bloody simple. I could disassemble and reassemble my Zenesis over 30 times in the time it takes me to do it once to my GG+UFS!
9. Rebuildability - Completely zombie apocalypse ready! Love the fact that I only need to worry about importing juice and not spare parts (and more Zenesises of course!)
10. Month long worry free running. Though I have yet to validate this, its easy to imagine that once you have the wick and coil going right, there is no more tinkering for a long time. And even when the atty pops, all you really do is change the coil. The wick would need replacing only when really gunked up I guess. And it looks like that will happen after a long time, especially because a little gunked up is actually good for the wick.
11. Awesome steel! I love the fact than Zen has used nothing but the best available materials to make the Zenesis. It's heavier than other mods it's size, but that's something I like and am looking forward to the Ti to make a lighter PV.
What I don't like about the Zenesis:
1. The button - I dislike the button due to many aspects - It doesn't fire easily (at least 30% of the times I have no connection), have tried nolox, still the same, It causes a wobbly stand up and it accidentally fires in my pocket, rendering the otherwise pocketable mini, completely pocket unfriendly. Zen is going to fix this, and I am anxiously looking forward to the new button. So my dislike #1 should go away
2. The airflow - I feel my vaping experience strongly depends upon the airflow. I hate it when it is too hard and don't quite like it when it is too airy. The adjustable airflow cap that Zen's promised is going to be a game changer for me.
3. It leaks when laid down (and it doesn't stand well) - While watching a movie I laid it down on my bed as it won't stand on the bed, and forgot about it for half an hour. Unfortunately the hole was facing down and when I looked, it had emptied half the tank on the bed, rendering a huge blotch and a very unhappy wife. I honestly don't know what Zen can do to fix this. Other genesis devices block the filling hole, that might help, but adversely affect wicking. Zen needs to gather his genius and think of a solution to this.
4. The top cap pops off easily with little angular / perpendicular pressure applied to the drip tip. The top cap of my mini is quite snug and I can comfortably lift the Zenesis holding just the driptip, but a little push in the right angle, pops the cap. Another thing that happens quite often in my pocket! I know threading the cap would do away with the adjustable TH feature, but having a pocketable vape is important to me.
5. I don't quite dig the visible o-rings above and below the tank. Love the way how the UFS tucks away the o-rings to provide a smooth steel - window - steel transition. Maybe someday Zen or someone else could make a steel tank cover with windows like someone made for the Orion. This could protect the quartz, probably provide some groove to preven rolling, keep the PV at a slight angle when laid down to prevent leaking and hide the orings while at it
Overall I am very happy with my Zenesis and intend to follow Zen on his continuing endeavour to better the PV. Am glad I got onto the Ti list. I hope Zen takes his time with the Ti and incorporates all the learnings from this round of the Zenesis into the Ti.
To those who are still awake after reading my mile long post, thanks for reading
Mike, thanks for making such an awesome vape. Now I need you to make it awesomer!
. That was really hard for me to read, but I am watching American Idol also!!! I have to agree with most of your assessments. I am glad you got it working for you, and believe when I tell you, once you "get it" with this type of atomizer, you will be able to set one up very quickly to get it to work, but then you will find yourself doing little things to tweak it just to get it even better. I think you went a little overboard with Zen's wicks TBH though. I did the same thing, and I usually build my own. They are very usable though and do not require much effort at all and are oxidized very well. Today, I got a new Line. I used Zen's 325 wick to set it up because I was going 100%VG and didn't want to fire up a torch. I spent less then 5 minutes setting it up. Rolled just the part going into the tank to tighten it up between my thumb and index. Slid it in, wrapped my coils, trimmed it, test fired it and dropped a few drops, filled the tank and vaped. 1ml into the tank, and it is kicking great flavor.
Good info, though!
