Now before I get started, let me be VERY clear about one thing. Not only is this ONLY my opinion, but it is also based on a board that at least in one small way is experiencing issues. I'll explain about that in a moment. With that said, it appears the issue is mostly just affecting the screen output, not the function itself, but I still wanted to be clear that the other things I've seen could just be a result of a malfunctioning chip in which case all the other observations are moot.
A while back Dr. G and I got into a conversation about the new DNA40 device. In that conversation I stated that I wasn't absolutely convinced it was the end all / be all for vaping. As I researched more and listened to his argument I began to sway. His points were valid and I started to rethink things a bit. So much so that I decided I absolutely needed to get one of these to give it a try for myself. I did so. At the end of the day, I'm still going to have to stick with some of my initial assumptions. It IS a step in the right direction, there's no argument there. Is it the end all/be all miraculous vaping nirvana? Not in my opinion. It has a ways to go if you ask me.
One last note. This is NOT in any way intended to persuade you not to buy one of these devices. Rather just to make sure you're aware of it's limitations and don't go into it with the "miracle" concept. In fact, odd as it may sound I recommend it. It truly is a fascinating device and I don't regret for a moment my purchase and I don't think you will either. I just feel like there's still a lot of progress to be made.
Now, first I'll explain the "issue" I've been having.
When I first finished my mod, I built up a coil (well, LOTS of coils, but I'll talk more about that later) and fired it up... For the first 10 minutes or so it functioned perfectly fine. Just as advertised. Then the screen went all garbled on me and stopped responding. I popped the battery out and reset it. Screen came back and worked fine. Until I fired it again, at which point it did the exact same thing. It continues to do so now. Usually within the first 2 fires or so, though sometimes it's went longer.
Now my first thought was the errata mentioned in the manual... Though I had closely examined with a spot glass the area under the board. There was already some sort of insulating "goop" under there and no exposed vias so this didn't appear to be a first run board. Still I did due diligence and pulled the board and added an additional layer of insulation under the ribbon cable just to make sure that wasn't causing my problem. It had no effect.
I tried all sorts of builds ranging from .11 ohm to .4 ohm and they all had the same problem. Occasionally it would function for a while perfectly fine, but the majority of the time the screen would just glitch out and lock up. When this happens MOST of the time the unit seems to continue to function perfectly normal, though there have been a few times when it's dropped out of temperature protection mode when this happens (never happens any other time that I've witnessed).
I emailed evolv about the issue and have not gotten any response from them, which surprises me considering everything I've heard about how awesome their support is.
In the mean time I did some research and found some other uses complaining about the exact same problem. A couple of them mentioned that it only happened with nickel builds. That intrigued me, so I slapped a kanthal build on there and ran it. Sure enough, not problem at all with it. It functioned perfectly normal for the entire night! Never once did the screen glitch or have any issues at all. As soon as I popped a nickel build back on it, it glitched out immediately. However, even as typing this I switched a kanthal build on it and it glitched... So apparently that was just by chance, or perhaps it's just much less likely to happen with kanthal... I dunno...
So whatever is happening is related to nickel builds. My best assumption is that it could have something to do with the rapid screen updates it does in temperature protection mode. I'm not sure frankly.
So anyway.... Aside from this issue with the screen glitching, it does function normally otherwise... So here's my general thoughts on it and why I feel the way I do.
I like it... A lot... I really and truly do... I don't for a moment hesitate to say that if you're considering getting one, go ahead... Now with that said, maybe it's just me, but if I had paid $250 for it I honestly don't think I'd be that happy with it. I paid a grand total of $70 (if you count the $5 for the FDV 510, though I already had that laying around).
It DOES for the most part do exactly what it's intended to do. It prevents dry hits and prevents you from burning your wick material MOST OF THE TIME. To be able to fire the device with a slightly wet wick and watch it fire and fire until completely dry without even so much as browning the wick is pretty amazing... And it does taste very clean because at no point on a draw will the wick ever get even the slightest bit dry. I was quite satisfied and happy with my vaping setups, and still am. I don't get dry hits and I feel like I'm a pretty good builder when it comes to setups. They work good... Plain and simple... They wick fast and stay wet... However I have realized after using this device that there IS a small amount of flavor change probably due to very fractional periods of time where the wick can't quite keep up, or a small portion of the wick isn't as efficient, etc... It does change the flavor profile... Kinda hard to explain, but just think "clean".
I do feel like for a newer vaper this would be a wonderful thing... With prebuilt nickel coils it could make things quite nice...
However.... I do see some issues with it as well that I feel need to be worked on.
First is the promise of "no dry hits". That's what I've seen over and over when this has been talked about... "Never have another dry hit again"... Well, unless it's just me... That's BULL... I've had more than my fair share of dry hits with this thing since I've got it up and running a couple days ago.
YES, WHEN everything is absolutely 100% perfect... it won't give you a dry hit... However, things aren't always perfect....
I've seen several posts mentioning that for some reason their build will drop out of temperature protection mode. Rather it be because of a loose connection or whatever. But when it drops out of TP mode what do you think is going to happen? The user is expecting NOT to get dry hits... So what I've found is some of the dry hits are the worst most terrible dry hits EVER... Because you expect it not to happen... When mine glitches and just happens to decide to drop out of TP mode I've had some TERRIBLE dry hits.. Because in my mind, when functioning I don't have to worry about it. So if I'm running a dripper for example, normally I stay on top of it constantly and keep it wet... With this however I don't... I just wait till the vapor isn't producing as much as I want... But it can still get pretty dry... MUCH dryer then I'd ever let it get in a normal mod... So if it drops out of TP mode it's BAD... Now again, this SHOULDN'T normally happen... But I see it happening not just with me and my glitches, but with others for whatever random reasons... Often times they change the temp setting up or down then back again and it goes back into TP mode. I've had that happen myself and it wasn't a loose connection. The resistance was still reading accurately. So the irony is here is a device that promises me no more dry hits, and I've gotten more and worse from it than I have from any other device.
Further Nickel is a pain in the ....... I'll talk more about that later, but because of it, it's very hard to get a nice evenly firing coil. Before I had this device I pointed out one potential issue I saw. That this is "averaging" the temperature across the entire coil... Now if it's firing perfectly even then YES it works as expected... But if you get a coil that fires unevenly, a very small dry spot or whatever, then the averaging doesn't "catch" it. I was assured in several of my "skeptical" posts that this never happens. Well I'm here to tell you it does. Think about this for a second... Let's say I wrap a standard kanthal micro coil... What generally happens the very first time you fire it? It's uneven as all heck... I've seen single coils glow red while the rest of the coil was dark... sometimes two coils light up but nothing else. Until you compress the coil and get the resistance even across the entire thing it just happens.... Now imagine this for a moment... If I have 20 wraps in a single coil... The device uses the average resistance to measure the average temperature... If I have my temperature set at 450 degrees... Well suppose my coil is firing unevenly... and 18 of those 20 wraps is only heating up to 250 degrees... but 2 of those coils is heating up to 900 degrees... Guess what? The DNA40 is going to think the coil is only running at 315 degrees... Don't say it can't or doesn't happen that way... Not only does it make sense logically, but I've personally witnessed this playing around... where two small sections of a coil burned and charred the wick all to heck while the rest remained perfectly fine. So that means getting the coil very evenly firing is absolutely a must... The problem is, it's nickel... So getting it even in the first place is a pain in the ..... Plus it's so soft that it's very easy to have it get jarred or whatever and get off again. I've had this happen on several occasions at first, where I was getting a nasty vape... burnt wick vape... After pulling the wick and turning off temp protection and firing the coil I found small places that were firing with almost all the heat while the other sections were cool...
Once I realized what was happening I started "slightly" glowing my coils... You have to turn TP off, and turn the wattage way down because you don't want to get the coil really hot... If you do it can degrade it and cause more problems... but unless you get a little glow you can't tell when you've got things nudge just right to fire evenly... Once the coil is really nice and even it works great... And TP works great as well... Except after use I've sometimes found that it starts to get off again... Probably due to the softness of the nickel.
Next up is dual coils... Again the same principle applies... Let's say I'm running dual 15 wrap coils... Even if I've got my coils nice and even guess what? I'm STILL getting an average across the two coils... If one coil is nice and saturated and the other is bone dry guess what? It can burn the dry wick... Because again it's just averaging... Let's say my rayon burns at 500 degrees... and I've got my TP set for 450 degrees... If one coil is nice and wet and only hits 375 degrees, but the other coil is bone dry it can hit 525 degrees... Because again we're talking about averaging here. So guess what happens to the dry wick? Burnt nasty taste... Since I like dual coils this is one of the biggest things I've found. I HAVE to build to try to make sure the wicks stay in contact with each other and can "feed" each other. If not then one can dry out before the other and I still get a nasty dry hit.
Second, NI200 is an absolute BEAR to work with. No really, I'd rather wrap a kanthal coil while a grizzly was attacking me... Ok, it's not that bad, but it IS pretty miserable. It's very very soft. You can't use normal posts because if you tighten enough to keep it from being a loose connection then it'll just cut the legs right off... On the other hand if you don't cut the legs off, it's too loose and won't have a good connection... which again can lead to NASTY bad dry hits... The "solution" evolv has given is to wrap around the screws. Try doing that on an orchid and see how many words that would come out as "......" on ECF come out of your mouth. Further more, have I mentioned it's soft? Tighten those screws and you're yanking and pulling your coil apart... Even with the mandrel still in it's a fight to the finish. And dual builds like that? Yikes... Look, I've been building a long time... and I'm pretty darn good at it if I do say so myself... But this stuff has pushed my patience on several occasions.
Last but not least... I absolutely can't believe the plethora of misinformation and misunderstanding regarding this technology. I've read so many posts that frankly just had me baffled. I've seen people talking about using both the wattage and temperature protection together. They can't believe they're running 40 watts on their kayfun they could only run at 12 watts without burning before... No, you're running 12 watts on your kayfun... because your wicking sucks... Just because you set it for 40 watts doesn't mean you're running 40 watts.... I've seen people talking about never allowing the nickel coils to touch each other or else the temperature protection won't work.... I've seen people saying you can't dry burn the coils.... I've seen confusion and misunderstanding on a large scale... And honestly Evolv has been mostly silent. No "best practices" or any of the sort from them.
The bottom line... Also TL;DR: The DNA40 is a very good step in the right direction... But it needs work... Does that mean you shouldn't get it? No... It's great even though it does have a VERY steep learning curve and a lot of caveats you have to watch out for. Does it mean you'll never have another dry hit? Absolutely not... I'm choking and coughing right now to prove it. Yes it can be wonderful... It can be clean... It can be awesome... But I do feel like there needs to be improvements made... To atty's, to the board, and certainly to the understanding....
A while back Dr. G and I got into a conversation about the new DNA40 device. In that conversation I stated that I wasn't absolutely convinced it was the end all / be all for vaping. As I researched more and listened to his argument I began to sway. His points were valid and I started to rethink things a bit. So much so that I decided I absolutely needed to get one of these to give it a try for myself. I did so. At the end of the day, I'm still going to have to stick with some of my initial assumptions. It IS a step in the right direction, there's no argument there. Is it the end all/be all miraculous vaping nirvana? Not in my opinion. It has a ways to go if you ask me.
One last note. This is NOT in any way intended to persuade you not to buy one of these devices. Rather just to make sure you're aware of it's limitations and don't go into it with the "miracle" concept. In fact, odd as it may sound I recommend it. It truly is a fascinating device and I don't regret for a moment my purchase and I don't think you will either. I just feel like there's still a lot of progress to be made.
Now, first I'll explain the "issue" I've been having.
When I first finished my mod, I built up a coil (well, LOTS of coils, but I'll talk more about that later) and fired it up... For the first 10 minutes or so it functioned perfectly fine. Just as advertised. Then the screen went all garbled on me and stopped responding. I popped the battery out and reset it. Screen came back and worked fine. Until I fired it again, at which point it did the exact same thing. It continues to do so now. Usually within the first 2 fires or so, though sometimes it's went longer.
Now my first thought was the errata mentioned in the manual... Though I had closely examined with a spot glass the area under the board. There was already some sort of insulating "goop" under there and no exposed vias so this didn't appear to be a first run board. Still I did due diligence and pulled the board and added an additional layer of insulation under the ribbon cable just to make sure that wasn't causing my problem. It had no effect.
I tried all sorts of builds ranging from .11 ohm to .4 ohm and they all had the same problem. Occasionally it would function for a while perfectly fine, but the majority of the time the screen would just glitch out and lock up. When this happens MOST of the time the unit seems to continue to function perfectly normal, though there have been a few times when it's dropped out of temperature protection mode when this happens (never happens any other time that I've witnessed).
I emailed evolv about the issue and have not gotten any response from them, which surprises me considering everything I've heard about how awesome their support is.
In the mean time I did some research and found some other uses complaining about the exact same problem. A couple of them mentioned that it only happened with nickel builds. That intrigued me, so I slapped a kanthal build on there and ran it. Sure enough, not problem at all with it. It functioned perfectly normal for the entire night! Never once did the screen glitch or have any issues at all. As soon as I popped a nickel build back on it, it glitched out immediately. However, even as typing this I switched a kanthal build on it and it glitched... So apparently that was just by chance, or perhaps it's just much less likely to happen with kanthal... I dunno...
So whatever is happening is related to nickel builds. My best assumption is that it could have something to do with the rapid screen updates it does in temperature protection mode. I'm not sure frankly.
So anyway.... Aside from this issue with the screen glitching, it does function normally otherwise... So here's my general thoughts on it and why I feel the way I do.
I like it... A lot... I really and truly do... I don't for a moment hesitate to say that if you're considering getting one, go ahead... Now with that said, maybe it's just me, but if I had paid $250 for it I honestly don't think I'd be that happy with it. I paid a grand total of $70 (if you count the $5 for the FDV 510, though I already had that laying around).
It DOES for the most part do exactly what it's intended to do. It prevents dry hits and prevents you from burning your wick material MOST OF THE TIME. To be able to fire the device with a slightly wet wick and watch it fire and fire until completely dry without even so much as browning the wick is pretty amazing... And it does taste very clean because at no point on a draw will the wick ever get even the slightest bit dry. I was quite satisfied and happy with my vaping setups, and still am. I don't get dry hits and I feel like I'm a pretty good builder when it comes to setups. They work good... Plain and simple... They wick fast and stay wet... However I have realized after using this device that there IS a small amount of flavor change probably due to very fractional periods of time where the wick can't quite keep up, or a small portion of the wick isn't as efficient, etc... It does change the flavor profile... Kinda hard to explain, but just think "clean".
I do feel like for a newer vaper this would be a wonderful thing... With prebuilt nickel coils it could make things quite nice...
However.... I do see some issues with it as well that I feel need to be worked on.
First is the promise of "no dry hits". That's what I've seen over and over when this has been talked about... "Never have another dry hit again"... Well, unless it's just me... That's BULL... I've had more than my fair share of dry hits with this thing since I've got it up and running a couple days ago.
YES, WHEN everything is absolutely 100% perfect... it won't give you a dry hit... However, things aren't always perfect....
I've seen several posts mentioning that for some reason their build will drop out of temperature protection mode. Rather it be because of a loose connection or whatever. But when it drops out of TP mode what do you think is going to happen? The user is expecting NOT to get dry hits... So what I've found is some of the dry hits are the worst most terrible dry hits EVER... Because you expect it not to happen... When mine glitches and just happens to decide to drop out of TP mode I've had some TERRIBLE dry hits.. Because in my mind, when functioning I don't have to worry about it. So if I'm running a dripper for example, normally I stay on top of it constantly and keep it wet... With this however I don't... I just wait till the vapor isn't producing as much as I want... But it can still get pretty dry... MUCH dryer then I'd ever let it get in a normal mod... So if it drops out of TP mode it's BAD... Now again, this SHOULDN'T normally happen... But I see it happening not just with me and my glitches, but with others for whatever random reasons... Often times they change the temp setting up or down then back again and it goes back into TP mode. I've had that happen myself and it wasn't a loose connection. The resistance was still reading accurately. So the irony is here is a device that promises me no more dry hits, and I've gotten more and worse from it than I have from any other device.
Further Nickel is a pain in the ....... I'll talk more about that later, but because of it, it's very hard to get a nice evenly firing coil. Before I had this device I pointed out one potential issue I saw. That this is "averaging" the temperature across the entire coil... Now if it's firing perfectly even then YES it works as expected... But if you get a coil that fires unevenly, a very small dry spot or whatever, then the averaging doesn't "catch" it. I was assured in several of my "skeptical" posts that this never happens. Well I'm here to tell you it does. Think about this for a second... Let's say I wrap a standard kanthal micro coil... What generally happens the very first time you fire it? It's uneven as all heck... I've seen single coils glow red while the rest of the coil was dark... sometimes two coils light up but nothing else. Until you compress the coil and get the resistance even across the entire thing it just happens.... Now imagine this for a moment... If I have 20 wraps in a single coil... The device uses the average resistance to measure the average temperature... If I have my temperature set at 450 degrees... Well suppose my coil is firing unevenly... and 18 of those 20 wraps is only heating up to 250 degrees... but 2 of those coils is heating up to 900 degrees... Guess what? The DNA40 is going to think the coil is only running at 315 degrees... Don't say it can't or doesn't happen that way... Not only does it make sense logically, but I've personally witnessed this playing around... where two small sections of a coil burned and charred the wick all to heck while the rest remained perfectly fine. So that means getting the coil very evenly firing is absolutely a must... The problem is, it's nickel... So getting it even in the first place is a pain in the ..... Plus it's so soft that it's very easy to have it get jarred or whatever and get off again. I've had this happen on several occasions at first, where I was getting a nasty vape... burnt wick vape... After pulling the wick and turning off temp protection and firing the coil I found small places that were firing with almost all the heat while the other sections were cool...
Once I realized what was happening I started "slightly" glowing my coils... You have to turn TP off, and turn the wattage way down because you don't want to get the coil really hot... If you do it can degrade it and cause more problems... but unless you get a little glow you can't tell when you've got things nudge just right to fire evenly... Once the coil is really nice and even it works great... And TP works great as well... Except after use I've sometimes found that it starts to get off again... Probably due to the softness of the nickel.
Next up is dual coils... Again the same principle applies... Let's say I'm running dual 15 wrap coils... Even if I've got my coils nice and even guess what? I'm STILL getting an average across the two coils... If one coil is nice and saturated and the other is bone dry guess what? It can burn the dry wick... Because again it's just averaging... Let's say my rayon burns at 500 degrees... and I've got my TP set for 450 degrees... If one coil is nice and wet and only hits 375 degrees, but the other coil is bone dry it can hit 525 degrees... Because again we're talking about averaging here. So guess what happens to the dry wick? Burnt nasty taste... Since I like dual coils this is one of the biggest things I've found. I HAVE to build to try to make sure the wicks stay in contact with each other and can "feed" each other. If not then one can dry out before the other and I still get a nasty dry hit.
Second, NI200 is an absolute BEAR to work with. No really, I'd rather wrap a kanthal coil while a grizzly was attacking me... Ok, it's not that bad, but it IS pretty miserable. It's very very soft. You can't use normal posts because if you tighten enough to keep it from being a loose connection then it'll just cut the legs right off... On the other hand if you don't cut the legs off, it's too loose and won't have a good connection... which again can lead to NASTY bad dry hits... The "solution" evolv has given is to wrap around the screws. Try doing that on an orchid and see how many words that would come out as "......" on ECF come out of your mouth. Further more, have I mentioned it's soft? Tighten those screws and you're yanking and pulling your coil apart... Even with the mandrel still in it's a fight to the finish. And dual builds like that? Yikes... Look, I've been building a long time... and I'm pretty darn good at it if I do say so myself... But this stuff has pushed my patience on several occasions.
Last but not least... I absolutely can't believe the plethora of misinformation and misunderstanding regarding this technology. I've read so many posts that frankly just had me baffled. I've seen people talking about using both the wattage and temperature protection together. They can't believe they're running 40 watts on their kayfun they could only run at 12 watts without burning before... No, you're running 12 watts on your kayfun... because your wicking sucks... Just because you set it for 40 watts doesn't mean you're running 40 watts.... I've seen people talking about never allowing the nickel coils to touch each other or else the temperature protection won't work.... I've seen people saying you can't dry burn the coils.... I've seen confusion and misunderstanding on a large scale... And honestly Evolv has been mostly silent. No "best practices" or any of the sort from them.
The bottom line... Also TL;DR: The DNA40 is a very good step in the right direction... But it needs work... Does that mean you shouldn't get it? No... It's great even though it does have a VERY steep learning curve and a lot of caveats you have to watch out for. Does it mean you'll never have another dry hit? Absolutely not... I'm choking and coughing right now to prove it. Yes it can be wonderful... It can be clean... It can be awesome... But I do feel like there needs to be improvements made... To atty's, to the board, and certainly to the understanding....
. I've been debating whether vaping off of it would be ok or not. And whether I could wrap a coil wearing vinyl gloves 
