I'll do an edit, after a few days version for the main review section, but here's a quick copy-pastey of my first impressions. Okay, there's nothing quick about my reviews because I am picky as hell about details, sorry to say. Wall of Text Warning.
Well, I got my “oh god I dare not order fewer than a bajillion of these” vapornine softcap Turbos in today. As you already know from the
Clash of the Cartomizers review, I adopted the hardcap Turbos as my main carto after side by side comparisons with standard cartomizers and Vapor4Life premium cartomizers (the softcap version). I was thrilled but hesitant when Ben of vapornine announced that the Turbos would now come in a softcap version. Thrilled because the hardcaps have the caps glued on, not pleasant, and hesitant because I’ve seen suppliers try to ‘tweak’ one thing… and when you don’t own the factory, you can quickly become a testing ground for the manufacturer.
So I was mildly nervous that the new softcap Turbos wouldn’t match the performance of the hardcaps. So far, that nervousness has proven to be completely unfounded.
I ran to my mailbox (I did no such thing. It’s a pretty steep grade up to the top of the ridge to hit the house mailbox. I trudged. Daintily, enthusiastically, but nonethess, I trudged), and was overjoyed to see the Priority Mail envelope a’waitin. I threw the rest of the mail in the back of the pick up on the way back to the house, because who cares about boring old bills and crap when you’ve got a bulging package of brand spankin’ new cartos?
Then, because I’m actually obsessive and tedious, not spontaneous and bouncy, I took the time to empty all 50 cartos out of the boxes and take off all the little plastic wrappers, instead of filling one up and immediately vaping. Sigh. Then I opened up ten of them at random to have a look at what I could see on the inside. The top of the white airflow tube inside is flush with the batting–a slight difference from most of the hardcap Turbos, but the atty wire curves up farther above the batting than in standard cartomizers, much like the hardcap Turbos. From this I deducted… nothing. Just an observation.
They’re taller than standard cartos, apparently about the size of the Turbo hardcaps. The airflow notches on the threaded end are approximately the same size as the notches on standard cartos, and larger (wider) than on hardcap Turbos. The hole in the center of the bottom (battery end) of the carto, however, seems to be slightly smaller than that of hardcap Turbos, which themselves are smaller than those on standard cartos.
The soft rubber cap is one of those little details that amounts to a Puff’s-approval-winning-coup. The ridge at the top of the cap is much thicker than that on V4L’s soft-cap Premiums’ caps, so I don’t see this cap getting accidentally pushed inside the carto. It’s also easily removable even if you don’t grow out your fingernails, lol. Halfway down, it has another ridge, and the cap is a good snug fit.
The label adhesive, sadly for Puff, is back to the ‘leaves half of it on the carto and will rip your skin off if not promptly removed with a solvent’ grade. Bad news for Puff, but I reckon it probably means that they are using the ‘good stuff’ on these cartos. No biggy. I’m starting to like the black, anyways. The label also now displays “vapornine” in silvery-grey along the bottom edge of the cartomizer, which I honestly have no opinion on one way or the other.
Now, to the more important stuff…
Yes, these hold well over 1 ml of liquid. Not going to say more than that until I’ve filled more than two of them.
So far, with a very small sample, the consistency is everything it is with the hardcaps, if not better. Against my cautious nature I vaped one until I actually got ucky taste, and that took about 6 1/2 hours. (Not constant vaping, I was doing yardwork. But comparable to what I’d get from a hardcap in the same sitch.) With very heavy vaping I successfully heated up the external shell a little faster than I could with a hardcap, but these remain much cooler than standards or V4L premiums on the outside, and with normal, frequent vaping they don’t get more than ’slightly warm.’
I think the vapor I’m getting is comparable to the hardcap Turbo/V4L premium volume, but it’s hard to tell for sure because I’ve had battery issues today (not related to the cartos–charger problems), so it’s been hard to test that aspect side by side. I’ll have a better idea over the next coupla days.
Taste is excellent, definitely at least as good as the hardcap Turbos. I tested TV Peppermint, TV Peppermint/Pineapple mix, and TV Almond Horn, partly because that’s what I’ve been vaping, so I wanted to test flavors I was used to at the moment. But mainly because those flavors represent the two types of flavors I vape most–one, very aromatic, over the top (Peppermint), and the other a complex mix of various flavors (Almond Horn). I know from experience that I do not dare do the TV Peppermint straight up in a V4L Premium carto, because it’s way too much, and that the Premiums kind of cook the complexity right out of Almond Horn. Both are at their Puff’s-preferred-best in the soft-cap Turbos. I tried out the Peppermint/Pineapple taste to see if the Pineapple would come through, and it did most excellently.
So–I am very happy. I’ll reserve final judgment (which reminds me… I have the 510’s final review to come, ahaha) until I’ve had a few days to see how more of these perform, and I’ll do another vid review. But I can definitely say that I am happy I ordered plenty of these right off the cuff, and I’ll be sticking with V9 Turbos until something better comes out.
Oh, one more thing… not really relevant, but Ben tagged my order form with a “Thanks, Belle!” Nice touch. He’d done it before, but I’d used a coupon code that identified myself. My legal name isn’t the usual name I go by, not even related; I know he was slammed for orders with these cartos out, and it was just plain nice that he recognized my account/info as being, well, me.
NEWSLETTER NEWSLETTER! 
