Okay so I posted my review of the eVic on the reviews thread, but I hope you guys won't mind if I post it here, too, cause that is exactly what I am doing. So here it is, a Lion looks at the eVic....
I have decided to undertake a review of the eVic. I have used mine for four+ days now and here are my observations.
First off, I have heard the complaint that it feels ‘cheap’. I recently hefted the eVic with my right hand while holding a Provari in my left. The Provari does feel more substantial and has a reassuring look and feel to it. I am not sure that the eVic is cheap because it is lighter, but it does not match the look or feel of the Provari. It does have a nice rough stainless finish that does not accept fingerprints. It is attractive in its own right. I like the look of it with the BCC Mega topping it, which appears to be made to be coupled with this VV device, the finishes on both are a similar texture. I also tried it with a T2 and a CE4 clearo. Looks fine and works well with both. I sadly did not have a Vivi Nova to pair it with, I would have liked to have seen if it had the same issue as the estimable Icepoet found during his review of the Provari. I also paired it with a J-Tank. No issues with any of the devices.
I need to start from the beginning, however. Hey, I am ADHD, so you know this review is gonna bounce around a bit! So when I got it, it came with the original 1.0 firmware. I deliberately messed with it before I upgraded. The menu was clunky and awkward. There is a twist button (left or right) and the fire button to be reckoned with, and sometimes the right twist action just does unexpected things. It was difficult to do the most basic things like set the clock, set temperature for alarms, etc. There were obnoxious ‘chinglish’ phrases like “no atomizer find” when you removed the atomizer and manually restarted it. Why do I have to manually restart it to get it to work in automatic mode? To use the VV auto feature where you set wattage, you had to restart it to recognize the new atomizer. Getting through the menu was counterintuitive and many settings I wanted were not possible. An example of this was the auto-sleep timer. You had the option of setting this to 10 minutes through an hour of non-use before it went to sleep. Ugh !. Why do I want it to sleep? Is it tired? If it is, I will just get another battery….jeez. Lots of obnoxious things like this where it limited my options of my device. I can see why the initial reviews of it were pretty rough.
So then I sit down, plug it in using the micro-USB cable and log on to the Joyetech website. It was simple to find the support page and download the My Vape thing I needed. In a minute or two, I was up and running. I downloaded the 1.2 firmware upgrade and took it for a spin. What a difference it made. The menu operation was completely different. The twist button (left or right) and the fire button now seemed to work together in a very smooth fashion. There was a cool “quick menu” feature that was added where you twist and hold the twist button to change the display, or the mode. Both are handy and make it possible for you to rarely need to enter the main menu. The main menus were also improved making it much easier to navigate. Little things like making the default set point for the cursor after you change a device setting the “exit” option so that when you finish you could just hit the fire button twice and you were out of the menu altogether. I appreciate things like that. The sleep timer (and the other one) can now be set to "never". Thank goodness for that.
It also now will automatically notice when you change atomizers what the ohm resistance is in the new head. That is a really nice improvement. When you have it on VV mode, it will suggest the new voltage to keep the wattage the same between heads, which generally gets you close to the new setting you want. The ohm detector is within a tenth of an ohm of my NIS-traced True RMS Fluke 333 Multimeter. This is pretty darn good from what I have seen. I checked it against 1.8 ohm, 2.2 ohm, and 2.5 ohm devices from a CE4, a T2, and a BCC Mega clearo.
Now let’s move on to the vapor quality that this device produces. I really like the vapor. Once I got it dialed in, it was very consistent and compares favorably to other VV devices I have used. I have used eGo twist, the Lavatube and the Vamo with enough regularity to determine this devices output vapor-wise is superior due to its consistency. I am not sure any of these would be classified as ‘class competitors’ of this mod due to pricing, but hey, I am comparing it to a Provari on feel and look so I guess all is fair in reviews and war. The device seems to have a limit of 11 watts of power. I never approached this limit while vaping. My sweet spot of power seems to be around 6.5-7 watts, depending on the juice. I ended up setting it for VV mode with a target wattage of 7 and that usually got me very close to my ultimate setting when I switched out the atomizer and juice. This worked really well for me and I like it. Once I found the right settings, puff were the same and I vaped right on. There are also MVR and MWR (I am guessing these stand for Memory Voltage Regulated and Memory Wattage Regulated) settings you can preset for it certain juices in certain atomizers and use that. I am not sure if I need that feature, but it is there. The basic VV mode seemed to suit me best. Other features (new to me) were that it records the length of each puff on the display and lets you know how long you puffed. Kind of cool, I guess. It also has a “puff counter” which I am not really interested in, but it is there.
Construction of the device is overall pretty solid. I like the twist left/right and fire configuration. The fire button has a nice positive click to it and seems like it will hold up pretty well. When the device is shaken, the twist button moves and makes a slight but perceptible rattle, which I definitely do not like. The dust cover for the micro USB plug is one of those obnoxious rubbery deals that you know is gonna let you down, and that is not optimal. The threading connections for atomizers are standard eGo and 510 and they look good and feel solid. They have the ‘breather’ set up with four slotted holes on both connections, which I like. It accepted all of the devices I tried with it without incident. The battery threads have a slight grainy feel to them which I suspect is due to the rough texture of the metal used for the body design to prevent finger printing. When the unit is placed on a flat surface it is reasonably stable when stood on its end.
The software that comes from the manufacturer is kind of nice. The device remembers everything it ever records so you can download it at regular intervals and see about your vaping habit. I am not sure how much I will use it in the long term, but it is kind of nice to see. The graphs are straightforward and provide a good method of communicating the data imported as an Excel spreadsheet. Not a big plus here for this stuff but maybe some users will really find it useful.
Most interesting to me is the fact that you can get upgrades to the firmware. That is really nice in my opinion and I can see where this could become sort of a new standard feature of all premium devices in the future. Honestly, it is the way a mod that you pay 100 bucks or more ought to be. The improvements from 1.0 to 1.2 are substantial and make the experience with the device much more enjoyable. My guess is most of the major improvements are in version 1.2 and it will be baby steps from here on out.
The complaints of this being a relatively fragile device, and I have to assume they are legitimate. I have dropped mine once on the carpet and once on my downstairs floor which is concrete where I dropped it. No incidents, no trouble. Both were drops of about 3-4 feet. This certainly does not mean it will not have issues down the road. I would not have gotten one if it were my only VV device. It is not, I have several twists and a Lavatube so I have other options. I have to say I like it a lot more than I thought I would. If you think you might like a VV/VW device and you want to drop about 100 bucks, and you have a solid back-up, this could be a good fit for you. Also, if you know your vaping style requires greater than 11 watts, it is out of the question, it just won’t work for you. I think I am happy enough with it to stop buying hardware until my Provari purchase in a few months. It will be interesting to compare them when I do.
For now, I am very happy with my purchase.
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