Official ProVari Radius Thread - Part 2
- Thread starter Vape360
- Start date
- th_trl_thread_readers 0
- Status
Sounds great. That will help pay for my second V3.
That's actually good advice. On the coils, they can be routinely bought from places like MFS on sale for less than $10/box. Ping, keep that in mind when you price them.
If'n it was P3 threaded, we wouldn't be having this conversation here. But we need to be careful about discussing such things in this thread.
I hate to derail the ProVape society banter, but...
I officially became one of the ProVarinati on Christmas when I got to finally open my black Radius I'd ordered back on Black Friday. With about 6 weeks of use figured I'd give the impressions from the POV of a previous ProVari agnostic.
Overall rating: 4.25/5 stars
Pros:
- smoothness of power delivery
- ergonomics
- button
- aesthetics
- after market support
- customer service
- American sourced and manufactured
Cons:
- battery life & swap mechanics
- size vs battery capacity
- button plate mounting (see below, this niggle probably not widely applicable)
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
******
DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF THE ABOVE
******
- smoothness of power delivery
This above all else makes the Radius my favorite mod. The reputation for a better vape is not hype. I can put the exact same tank on any of my mods and there are going to be significantly fewer sizzles and pops with the Radius. It's reacting faster and with better correction to the power fluctuations that occur during the course of a draw than anything else I've used.
- ergonomics
Pretty much everything about the weight and feel of the Radius in my hand is simply top notch.
- button
The ProVari button looks and feels unique, with a perfect amount of resistance and travel. While a small thing, the fire button is the thing you interact with the most on a mod, and it does stand out nicely compared to the "gets the job done" buttons on my other mods.
- aesthetics
I just love the look and feel of the Radius. It is in no way fancy or showy, but looks and feels like a solid piece of machinery or a well made tool. Others have compared it a fine gun grip, but my impression once I had it in hand was a bit nerdier:
I thought to myself, if a lightsaber were a mod, this is what it would be like
- after market support
In a market where so many mods aren't updatable at all, or where after market updates are touted as a feature but never delivered, it's incredibly nice to see the support the Radius has already received. People wanted a better charging indicator, they got it. People wanted to use the +/- buttons to navigate the menu system, they got it.
- customer service
Given that I seem to have a "skill" for finding weird faults in electronics, the Radius did not, um, "disappoint". My unit would randomly (but thankfully infrequently) give a high battery temperature fault even though the battery temp was room temperature (and being winter in upstate New York, that's just over 60F, not exactly dangerous territory). This would necessitate removing the battery and putting it back in to reset the fault.
Opened a ticket with ProVape. Blake at ProVape got back to me the next day and requested I switch to the included Sony 25R (had been using higher capacity Samsung 30Qs in it) just in case there was a battery compatibility issue. The device faulted again with the 25R and they took great care of me. I now have a (hopefully) flawlessly functioning unit.
- American sourced and manufactured
While I by no means subscribe to the idea that "Made in America" inherently equals better, as an American, I think we've done our country a huge disservice by moving so many manufacturing jobs out of the country purely for short term profits. I admire ProVape for providing an excellent product and keeping everything domestic. If more American companies shared their ethos, this would be a lot better country for the majority of its populace.
----------
- battery life & swap mechanics:
This, more than anything, stops me from giving the Radius a higher rating. While not part of their official marketing, in the well known Plumes of Hazard Radius show, the ProVape rep explained they went with the Radius' unusual battery holder to obtain captive battery performance while maintaining end user battery swapping. The problem is that it doesn't.
I have so-called cheap mods with true captive batteries, where the battery cells are hardwired inline with the circuitry, and I have mods with easily swappable batteries. Battery life in the Radius is indistinguishable from the swappable mods and pales in comparison to the hardwired mods.
So, what I get in the end is the same sort of battery life I get with my iPV D2, with which I can swap batteries in a couple of seconds, but with a needlessly complicated battery swapping system. I have a very fine mod that I wind up using tethered to an USB cable the majority of time when I'm home so I know I'll have a topped off battery for when I'm out of the house since the swapping system is too cumbersome to want to be swapping batteries routinely and I only get 4-6 hours out of a full charge at the wattage (~25W) and frequency I vape.
I get what they were going for, but since it doesn't succeed in that goal, in my opinion this system should have been eliminated and replaced before they brought it to market. It certainly gives the Radius a unique look but adds nothing functional while adding inconvenience to use.
- size vs battery capacity
The Radius is as big as many two cell mods but only holds one battery (physically, it's the largest mod I own). Much of the inside is empty space that is "used" for the button lighting system. It seems the Radius could have been a two cell mod with little change to the physical dimensions or weight.
- button plate mounting
The stainless steel plate the buttons are on with my initial unit was "floating". Unless I really torqued down the bottom plate to hold it firmly in place, mine had a fraction of a millimeter of play that felt janky on a $200 mod and, at times, allowed the plate to move enough that light bled out of a notch in the polycarbonate. Seems to me this plate should have been hard mounted, perhaps with a third screw on the upper plate.
NOTE: There is no play at all in my replacement unit so perhaps the error and the plate issue were related to something not being fastened inside properly.
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
I'm sure there is an ease of manufacturing/servicing reason why we don't have a unibody construction for the polycarbonate portion, but it could have a better fit. The left hand of my panel is raised about 0.5 mm off flush. Doesn't harm the feel of the device in your hand in practice, but a nitpick nonetheless.
----------
VALUE PROPOSITION:
The value proposition, aka, "is that thing really worth $200???" is, of course, subjective, but, for me, the answer is yes.
I liken it to headphones. Even when you avoid overpriced and overhyped audio stuff, there is still a very real conundrum: doubling the price doesn't double the audio quality, it merely improves it *some*, and it comes down to whether that extra 5%-10% of quality is worth 100% more to you. Some people are perfectly happy with free pack-in earbuds, others aren't happy unless they're listening to $500 (or more) full size cans out of a dedicated amplifier. On paper, my $200 Radius is of lesser functionality than my $50 iPV D2, but, in practice, they are only comparable in that both are reliable power supplies for vaping on because the experience is undoubtedly better on the Radius.
Additionally, I have to consider the length (and robustness) of their customer service and warranty, which benefited me directly. It's not free to pay to ship units to and from the mothership, nor is it even necessarily the most fiscally profitable idea to be covering a device that people are carrying and banging around in their pockets for a full year. ProVape is providing the sort of support normally limited to much larger and much more profitable companies.
Besides, in the grand scheme of things, $200 for a tool that you use daily and should last for years is chump change, and that it's clearly more pleasurable to use than alternatives makes the Radius worth it to me.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I doubt I would ever buy a second Radius unless strictly as a replacement, because if I did drop mine off a cliff or something similarly stupid I would, to paraphrase Rip
, definitely go out and buy another one. On the other hand, ProVape has more than won a fan in me, and if they ever do want to make a two celled box mod, even if it was still capped at 40W and had no TC, I'd have that sucker on pre-order as soon as they added it to their website.
I officially became one of the ProVarinati on Christmas when I got to finally open my black Radius I'd ordered back on Black Friday. With about 6 weeks of use figured I'd give the impressions from the POV of a previous ProVari agnostic.
Overall rating: 4.25/5 stars
Pros:
- smoothness of power delivery
- ergonomics
- button
- aesthetics
- after market support
- customer service
- American sourced and manufactured
Cons:
- battery life & swap mechanics
- size vs battery capacity
- button plate mounting (see below, this niggle probably not widely applicable)
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
******
DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF THE ABOVE
******
- smoothness of power delivery
This above all else makes the Radius my favorite mod. The reputation for a better vape is not hype. I can put the exact same tank on any of my mods and there are going to be significantly fewer sizzles and pops with the Radius. It's reacting faster and with better correction to the power fluctuations that occur during the course of a draw than anything else I've used.
- ergonomics
Pretty much everything about the weight and feel of the Radius in my hand is simply top notch.
- button
The ProVari button looks and feels unique, with a perfect amount of resistance and travel. While a small thing, the fire button is the thing you interact with the most on a mod, and it does stand out nicely compared to the "gets the job done" buttons on my other mods.
- aesthetics
I just love the look and feel of the Radius. It is in no way fancy or showy, but looks and feels like a solid piece of machinery or a well made tool. Others have compared it a fine gun grip, but my impression once I had it in hand was a bit nerdier:
I thought to myself, if a lightsaber were a mod, this is what it would be like
- after market support
In a market where so many mods aren't updatable at all, or where after market updates are touted as a feature but never delivered, it's incredibly nice to see the support the Radius has already received. People wanted a better charging indicator, they got it. People wanted to use the +/- buttons to navigate the menu system, they got it.
- customer service
Given that I seem to have a "skill" for finding weird faults in electronics, the Radius did not, um, "disappoint". My unit would randomly (but thankfully infrequently) give a high battery temperature fault even though the battery temp was room temperature (and being winter in upstate New York, that's just over 60F, not exactly dangerous territory
). This would necessitate removing the battery and putting it back in to reset the fault.Opened a ticket with ProVape. Blake at ProVape got back to me the next day and requested I switch to the included Sony 25R (had been using higher capacity Samsung 30Qs in it) just in case there was a battery compatibility issue. The device faulted again with the 25R and they took great care of me. I now have a (hopefully) flawlessly functioning unit.
- American sourced and manufactured
While I by no means subscribe to the idea that "Made in America" inherently equals better, as an American, I think we've done our country a huge disservice by moving so many manufacturing jobs out of the country purely for short term profits. I admire ProVape for providing an excellent product and keeping everything domestic. If more American companies shared their ethos, this would be a lot better country for the majority of its populace.
----------
- battery life & swap mechanics:
This, more than anything, stops me from giving the Radius a higher rating. While not part of their official marketing, in the well known Plumes of Hazard Radius show, the ProVape rep explained they went with the Radius' unusual battery holder to obtain captive battery performance while maintaining end user battery swapping. The problem is that it doesn't.
I have so-called cheap mods with true captive batteries, where the battery cells are hardwired inline with the circuitry, and I have mods with easily swappable batteries. Battery life in the Radius is indistinguishable from the swappable mods and pales in comparison to the hardwired mods.
So, what I get in the end is the same sort of battery life I get with my iPV D2, with which I can swap batteries in a couple of seconds, but with a needlessly complicated battery swapping system. I have a very fine mod that I wind up using tethered to an USB cable the majority of time when I'm home so I know I'll have a topped off battery for when I'm out of the house since the swapping system is too cumbersome to want to be swapping batteries routinely and I only get 4-6 hours out of a full charge at the wattage (~25W) and frequency I vape.
I get what they were going for, but since it doesn't succeed in that goal, in my opinion this system should have been eliminated and replaced before they brought it to market. It certainly gives the Radius a unique look but adds nothing functional while adding inconvenience to use.
- size vs battery capacity
The Radius is as big as many two cell mods but only holds one battery (physically, it's the largest mod I own). Much of the inside is empty space that is "used" for the button lighting system. It seems the Radius could have been a two cell mod with little change to the physical dimensions or weight.
- button plate mounting
The stainless steel plate the buttons are on with my initial unit was "floating". Unless I really torqued down the bottom plate to hold it firmly in place, mine had a fraction of a millimeter of play that felt janky on a $200 mod and, at times, allowed the plate to move enough that light bled out of a notch in the polycarbonate. Seems to me this plate should have been hard mounted, perhaps with a third screw on the upper plate.
NOTE: There is no play at all in my replacement unit so perhaps the error and the plate issue were related to something not being fastened inside properly.
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
I'm sure there is an ease of manufacturing/servicing reason why we don't have a unibody construction for the polycarbonate portion, but it could have a better fit. The left hand of my panel is raised about 0.5 mm off flush. Doesn't harm the feel of the device in your hand in practice, but a nitpick nonetheless.
----------
VALUE PROPOSITION:
The value proposition, aka, "is that thing really worth $200???" is, of course, subjective, but, for me, the answer is yes.
I liken it to headphones. Even when you avoid overpriced and overhyped audio stuff, there is still a very real conundrum: doubling the price doesn't double the audio quality, it merely improves it *some*, and it comes down to whether that extra 5%-10% of quality is worth 100% more to you. Some people are perfectly happy with free pack-in earbuds, others aren't happy unless they're listening to $500 (or more) full size cans out of a dedicated amplifier. On paper, my $200 Radius is of lesser functionality than my $50 iPV D2, but, in practice, they are only comparable in that both are reliable power supplies for vaping on because the experience is undoubtedly better on the Radius.
Additionally, I have to consider the length (and robustness) of their customer service and warranty, which benefited me directly. It's not free to pay to ship units to and from the mothership, nor is it even necessarily the most fiscally profitable idea to be covering a device that people are carrying and banging around in their pockets for a full year. ProVape is providing the sort of support normally limited to much larger and much more profitable companies.
Besides, in the grand scheme of things, $200 for a tool that you use daily and should last for years is chump change, and that it's clearly more pleasurable to use than alternatives makes the Radius worth it to me.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I doubt I would ever buy a second Radius unless strictly as a replacement, because if I did drop mine off a cliff or something similarly stupid I would, to paraphrase Rip
, definitely go out and buy another one. On the other hand, ProVape has more than won a fan in me, and if they ever do want to make a two celled box mod, even if it was still capped at 40W and had no TC, I'd have that sucker on pre-order as soon as they added it to their website.
Last edited:
Nicely done. I have almost identical thoughts on the Radius. I love mine, but it has a few quirks for sure.I hate to derail the ProVape society banter, but...
I officially became one of the ProVarinati on Christmas when I got to finally open my black Radius I'd ordered back on Black Friday. With about 6 weeks of use figured I'd give the impressions from the POV of a previous ProVari agnostic.
Overall rating: 4.25/5 stars
Pros:
- smoothness of power delivery
- ergonomics
- button
- aesthetics
- after market support
- customer service
- American sourced and manufactured
Cons:
- battery life & swap mechanics
- size vs battery capacity
- button plate mounting (see below, this niggle probably not widely applicable)
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
******
DETAILED EXPLANATIONS OF THE ABOVE
******
- smoothness of power delivery
This above all else makes the Radius my favorite mod. The reputation for a better vape is not hype. I can put the exact same tank on any of my mods and there are going to be significantly fewer sizzles and pops with the Radius. It's reacting faster and with better correction to the power fluctuations that occur during the course of a draw than anything else I've used.
- ergonomics
Pretty much everything about the weight and feel of the Radius in my hand is simply top notch.
- button
The ProVari button looks and feels unique, with a perfect amount of resistance and travel. While a small thing, the fire button is the thing you interact with the most on a mod, and it does stand out nicely compared to the "gets the job done" buttons on my other mods.
- aesthetics
I just love the look and feel of the Radius. It is in no way fancy or showy, but looks and feels like a solid piece of machinery or a well made tool. Others have compared it a fine gun grip, but my impression once I had it in hand was a bit nerdier:
I thought to myself, if a lightsaber were a mod, this is what it would be like
- after market support
In a market where so many mods aren't updatable at all, or where after market updates are touted as a feature but never delivered, it's incredibly nice to see the support the Radius has already received. People wanted a better charging indicator, they got it. People wanted to use the +/- buttons to navigate the menu system, they got it.
- customer service
Given that I seem to have a "skill" for finding weird faults in electronics, the Radius did not, um, "disappoint". My unit would randomly (but thankfully infrequently) give a high battery temperature fault even though the battery temp was room temperature (and being winter in upstate New York, that's just over 60F, not exactly dangerous territory
Opened a ticket with ProVape. Blake at ProVape got back to me the next day and requested I switch to the included Sony 25R (had been using higher capacity Samsung 30Qs in it) just in case there was a battery compatibility issue. The device faulted again with the 25R and they took great care of me. I now have a (hopefully) flawlessly functioning unit.
- American sourced and manufactured
While I by no means subscribe to the idea that "Made in America" inherently equals better, as an American, I think we've done our country a huge disservice by moving so many manufacturing jobs out of the country purely for short term profits. I admire ProVape for providing an excellent product and keeping everything domestic. If more American companies shared their ethos, this would be a lot better country for the majority of its populace.
----------
- battery life & swap mechanics:
This, more than anything, stops me from giving the Radius a higher rating. While not part of their official marketing, in the well known Plumes of Hazard Radius show, the ProVape rep explained they went with the Radius' unusual battery holder to obtain captive battery performance while maintaining end user battery swapping. The problem is that it doesn't.
I have so-called cheap mods with true captive batteries, where the battery cells are hardwired inline with the circuitry, and I have mods with easily swappable batteries. Battery life in the Radius is indistinguishable from the swappable mods and pales in comparison to the hardwired mods.
So, what I get in the end is the same sort of battery life I get with my iPV D2, with which I can swap batteries in a couple of seconds, but with a needlessly complicated battery swapping system. I have a very fine mod that I wind up using tethered to an USB cable the majority of time when I'm home so I know I'll have a topped off battery for when I'm out of the house since the swapping system is too cumbersome to want to be swapping batteries routinely and I only get 4-6 hours out of a full charge at the wattage (~25W) and frequencey I vape.
I get what they were going for, but since it doesn't succeed in that goal, in my opinion this system should have been eliminated and replaced before they brought it to market. It certainly gives the Radius a unique look but adds nothing functional while adding inconvenience to use.
- size vs battery capacity
The Radius is as big as many two cell mods but only holds one battery (physically, it's the largest mod I own). Much of the inside is empty space that is "used" for the button lighting system. It seems the Radius could have been a two cell mod with little change to the physical dimensions or weight.
- button plate mounting
The stainless steel plate the buttons are on my initial unit was "floating". Unless I really torqued down the bottom plate to hold it firmly in place, mine had a fraction of a millimeter of play that felt janky on a $200 mod and, at times, allowed the plate to move enough that light bled out of a notch in the polycarbonate. Seems to me this plate should have been hard mounted, perhaps with a third screw on the upper plate.
NOTE: There is no play at all in my replacement unit so perhaps the error and the plate issue were related to something not being fastened inside properly.
- back (side?) polycarbonate plate fitting
I'm sure there is an ease of manufacturing/servicing reason why we don't have a unibody construction for the polycarbonate portion, but it could have a better fit. The left hand of my panel is raised about 0.5 mm off flush. Doesn't harm the feel of the device in your hand in practice, but a nitpick nonetheless.
----------
VALUE PROPOSITION:
The value proposition, aka, "is that thing really worth $200???" is, of course, subjective, but, for me, the answer is yes.
I liken it to headphones. Even when you avoid overpriced and overhyped audio stuff, there is still a very real conundrum: doubling the price doesn't double the audio quality, it merely improves it *some*, and it comes down to whether that extra 5%-10% of quality is worth 100% more to you. Some people are perfectly happy with free pack-in earbuds, others aren't happy unless they're listening to $500 (or more) full size cans out of a dedicated amplifier. On paper, my $200 Radius is of lesser functionality than my $50 iPV D2, but, in practice, they are only comparable in that both are reliable power supplies for vaping on because the experience is undoubtedly better on the Radius.
Additionally, I have to consider the length (and robustness) of their customer service and warranty, which benefited me directly. It's not free to pay to ship units to and from the mothership, nor is it even necessarily the most fiscally profitable idea to be covering a device that people are carrying and banging around in their pockets for a full year. ProVape is providing the sort of support normally limited to much larger and much more profitable companies.
Besides, in the grand scheme of things, $200 for a tool that you use daily and should last for years is chump change, and that it's clearly more pleasurable to use than alternatives makes the Radius worth it to me.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I doubt I would ever buy a second Radius unless strictly as a replacement, because if I did drop mine off a cliff or something similarly stupid I would, to paraphrase Rip
I hate to say "what he said", but I'm gonna.
An 18650 mod is an 18650 mod, as far as battery life goes these days. Most of the better mods are very efficient, therefore 1% better efficiency will not be noticed. There's no magic in making one mod last longer than another - we're consuming watts. Same battery, same runtime.
But, there are losses, which is why ProVape designed the connector the way they did. Better contacts mean less loss, which in a bad case can be a noticeable difference in runtime. It's also a safety issue, as bad contacts mean more resistance and more heat, etc. The battery was meant to be captive 100% of the time, and only user-serviceable when the battery is at the end of its life and needs to be changed out for a new one. Some of the other captive mods are not very user-serviceable (of course some people can do it, but not everyone).
The extra space is not wasted - it's there for comfort. Any smaller, it wouldn't fit in the hand so nicely. Sure, they could make it a little bigger and add a second battery (and I hope they do), and I think it would be just as comfortable, if not more comfortable, than the current Radius is now. Believe it or not, the Radius is the second most comfortable mod I've held - the first is the Wismec Reuleaux. It's a triple 18650, but the unique design shape fits absolutely perfectly in your hand, and your index finger falls right on the fire button every time (no need to flex it). But, it is heavy...
I don't know what their design limitations were, but they couldn't make it sold - you have to be able to get inside and assemble the parts somehow... Mine doesn't have any fitting issues - it's perfectly flush on top/bottom. I assume you're not talking about the left/right gap...
- Status
