Pioneer4You IPV4 : Unboxing, detailed look and thoughts, and first problems found

[Maverik_X]

Rather than trying to remove the mirrored finish, get a piece of aluminum cut to match the mirrored plastic piece, cut out a window for the display, paint the aluminum piece a gloss black, and glue a piece of clear plastic into the bottom of that window.

Thats actually not a bad idea. I'm betting that P4U will be doing a rolling change to the ipv4 to fix the mirror issue or atleast some other comapny will offer a sound solution I cant Imagine why a CNC shop or something couldn't make new metal inserts for fairly cheap then turn around and sell them for a small profit.I wouldn't mind having a carbon fiber one with a carbon fiber taco batt cover to boot maybe even a clear silicone sleeve for clumsy ones like me lol.

 

[TheBloke]

Guys, has anyone noticed a strange bug whereby your memory settings get overwritten with the value from other memories?

Or more precisely, say you're currently showing M1 and that's 20W, where M2, M3 etc are other values.

But sometime later you find that M2 and M3 are also 20W

I've noticed it several times, even within the first few hours - towards the end of my video I wondered why I had two memories at 60W when I clearly hadn't set them.

Just now I had the most severe case, when I found all five Power memories read 20W - the value from M1!

I still haven't pinned down the exact cause, but it seems very likely to be something to do with pressing the up button and/or the fire button. At the time I was fitting on a new coil, which meant I was regularly:

• waking up the display with +
• tapping fire briefly to update the resistance display
• holding fire to pulse it for a bit

Some combination of these is causing it to take a value from an earlier memory and write it to a later memory - without me ever pressing - for adjust (I think! not deliberately anyway.)

Anyone else seen anything like this?

 

[jstrong]

Sadly I think we might be a year or three away from being able to hold our mods up against cell phones in quality / quality control comparisons

But yeah I personally will at least try the charger though, even if it's 1A/battery, I imagine I'll mostly use the external. I bought four extra batteries at the same time as my IPV4, so I now have eight 18650s in total - six at 2500mah, two at 2200mah - between two dual battery mods. More than enough at the moment to ensure whenever I run out of battery on either mod, I have another fully charged set already on the charger.

The only time the 9V brick would be of particular use to me is if I'm going away from home and I don't want to take my proper EFest charger.

But I will test it, a) For Science! and b) just so I have the option in case it ever comes up. I may well get a third 18650 mod soon and I might reach the point where it's useful to have in-mod charging so I don't have to keep buying more batteries.

Besides, there's always the slight chance that my external charger could die, in which case having at least one mod that can charge two batteries at a decent pace would be a good back up.

But all that depends on whether it is indeed 1A per battery. If it's 450 or 500 mA, I won't ever bother using it again I expect.

I'll report back over the weekend when I find a charger - and if I can't find one, I'll get a reasonably priced, regulated 9V/2A device from eBay or a component supplier. (It probably doesn't need or benefit from regulated but can't hurt to be safe.)

Have you tested the IPV4 charging yet? I did but no light came on. It made a buzzing/hissing noise. I unplugged it.

 

[lownote2]

First of all, to the OP, thank you for the video.

Picked mine up Friday, used it the rest of the day and hard and heavy yesterday throwing every rda and tank I have with different builds, etc at it. It handled them all perfectly. Still haven't taken it to 100 watts lol. (who vapes at that anyway?)

Things I like: 1. Dual 18650 batteries. Coming from a single 18650 50W mod I can already tell battery life is so much better. That was one of the main reasons I wanted this. 2. It seems to work so far so good very well. Love the spring loaded 510, my other device had to be adjusted and between my Lemo and old device I had a lot of connection issues. Zero issues so far on this or any other devices so far. 3. Kinda silly, but I do like the ohms reading reading to the 100ths. 4. Price. Really, for the money this is a really great device. 5. Easy changing of batteries with no screws.

Things I don't like: 1. That dang mirrored finish screen. That's my biggest gripe. It's nearly if not completely impossible to read outside, in the car, etc. 2. Although the memory settings are nice, they can be a pita trying to make a simple adjustment. Minor issue to me, I'll get used to it. 3. I did a lot of reading, and have metered my batteries throughout usage and if you do let it drain all the way down before swapping batteries it'll go down to 3.2 volts. ( I changed mine way earlier) I don't think that's good for the batteries and like to charge mine at about the 3.5 to 3.6 range. Seems to be about the halfway point on the battery graph.

Another thing maybe worth mentioning, but more an issue of my own stupidity; the fire button is very easy to push and up towards the top. I like to build my coils on a device so they don't move around. Always, always, always (did I mention always?) shut the device off first! I make a point of doing that when building coils, but missed that step last night. While I was adjusting one of the coils with the screwdriver still inside the coil I easily hit the fire button. No damage, and it was a quick accidental hit, but boy you should have seen me jump when things started glowing and a small spark or two. I'm pretty sure (not willing to test this) that it does have short protection, and I didn't have a short somehow when I pressed the fire button. Of course I removed the batteries and finished my build. While finishing my build I found myself hitting the fire button a couple more times accidentally. It's just in a really easy spot to hit when doing something like this. Perhaps just me, but always worth mentioning common safety issues.

All in all, I really am happy with it very much so. Vapes like a champ. I'm probably going to deal with the screen until the warranty is up, then I'll figure out something for a fix. The other gripes I have are easily dealt with, that one is huge though. I'd read plenty of reviews and already knew of the issue going in. If you're still on the fence and can live with the screen issue it's a great device, just know it's really hard to see in bright light, or outside on a cloudy or sunny day.

 

[lownote2]

by the way, as another side thought. Why gamble on the onboard charger when the batteries are so easy to change? Just my opinion, but I don't trust onboard chargers on anything I can change the batteries out on. May not be an issue, but why gamble?

 

[Parky50]

I believe there's a video up on YouTube showing how to remove the mirror finish. I think I'm going to attempt it when I get my IPV4 in.

I too could not stand that mirror finish...
Here's my solution... MUCH BETTER !!!

 

[TheBloke]

I too could not stand that mirror finish...
Here's my solution... MUCH BETTER !!!

Looks very nice! What was your method?

 

[Parky50]

I used a dremmel tool with a buffing wheel and some car polish to remove the mirror finish without scratching it first.
Then I placed and trimmed a small piece of tape on the back side of the plastic exactly over the screen and then painted the back side gloss black.
When it was dry simply removed the tape to expose the clear area and reinstalled it. Wow, what a difference... loving this mod now !!!

 

[AntC]

I was having trouble trying to set the memory settings, as the manual is zero help, as usual.
If you're programming M1, go to M1 and then push the -button first, then either + or - to adjust to desired wattage. Then hit the fire button and cycle through the menu options, and then exit the menu. When you exit the menu, you will be on the wattage you left it at, and also on M1, so then press and hold the +button, then the fire button to lock it in. Boom-cheezit! Then on to M2...repeat.
Sorry if this isn't understandable, I've tried people's directions off this forum, some were right on, some very confusing lol. I had been annoyed by the memory function on my mod, now that I've programmed in wattages that I'll actually use, I really like it, and even like this mod even more. I'll have to wait and see if the wattage settings stay the same or they change on their own, as some people have said has happened to them.

 

[TheBloke]

I was having trouble trying to set the memory settings, as the manual is zero help, as usual.
If you're programming M1, go to M1 and then push the -button first, then either + or - to adjust to desired wattage. Then hit the fire button and cycle through the menu options, and then exit the menu. When you exit the menu, you will be on the wattage you left it at, and also on M1, so then press and hold the +button, then the fire button to lock it in. Boom-cheezit! Then on to M2...repeat.
Sorry if this isn't understandable, I've tried people's directions off this forum, some were right on, some very confusing lol. I had been annoyed by the memory function on my mod, now that I've programmed in wattages that I'll actually use, I really like it, and even like this mod even more. I'll have to wait and see if the wattage settings stay the same or they change on their own, as some people have said has happened to them.

Are you talking about in normal Power mode, or in Joules mode? In Joules mode, memory saving doesn't seem to work at all - so are you saying the above is a fix for that?

If not, and you're talking about normal Power mode, then I don't have to do all that menu stuff- I just do this:

• Get to the memory you want by pressing +
• Press - to go into adjustment mode
• Use +/- to adjust as you wish
• Press fire to lock it in - you can tell it saved because the ADJ that appears bottom right will have changed back to the name of the memory, eg M2

I never have to access the menu to save it. Have you tried the above? If so, what happens / doesn't work for you?

But as I say, this only works in Power mode - changes to Joules memories are never saved, which appears to be (yet another) bug (unless, again, you're saying that your menu method will cause them to save in Joules mode too?)

Also I have a very annoying bug that I still can't pin down - frequently I find that all my Power memories have changed to the same value. So if I start out with 20, 40, 60, 80, 100 (M1 - M5) then after some time I will find that all the memories contain 20W. Recently I've been in TC/Joules mode a lot, and have found that this bug is happening a lot - ie that when I go back to Power mode from Joules mode, I find that all my Power memories are the same.

Haven't heard anyone else reporting this so it remains a mystery.

 

[AntC]

Thanks. I was having trouble but I think I was starting from the wrong point, and it wouldn't let me do it for some reason, but when I did as you said, it worked fine. Went back to do it again, no go. It's user error I'm sure. And even if it's a bug I'm not too worried as everything else is great. Thanks for the reply, this little memory deal was driving me crazy. You guys that help us out are amazing and it's very nice to have you all there for the community.

 

[TheBloke]

A pleasure, glad it's working for you now!

 

[AntC]

Figured out the bug , it's in my brain lol. Just wasn't pushing the fire button long enough when locking in the wattage setting. Was tapping, like to tap 5 times for menu. That doesn't work lol. Thanks again Bloke!

 

[TheBloke]

Figured out the bug , it's in my brain lol. Just wasn't pushing the fire button long enough when locking in the wattage setting. Was tapping, like to tap 5 times for menu. That doesn't work lol. Thanks again Bloke!

Ahh yes - that's another annoying issue. I don't know why you have to press fire to lock it in, and not just tap it. Maybe it's because they didn't want it to interfere with accessing the menu from adjustment mode - but frankly I would much prefer that tapping fire from adjustment saved it, and thus you couldn't access the menu while adjusting - versus having to press harder, which to me always makes me worried it's going to fire the coil. Probably it never fires from adjustment, but I don't like the method. To me, press fire (rather than tap) = firing the coil, so it shouldn't be used for other things.

I'll say it for the hundredth time - this is why we need more damn buttons on mods! So we don't have to wonder over the difference between a press, a tap, a hold, or a hop, skip and a jump on one, two or three buttons in parallel. Stupid mod makers and their buttonphobia.

 

[TheBloke]

I should have guessed: there actually is a button phobia. It's called Koumpounophobia (obviously; what else could it be called?)

I would email that to Yihi but I fear it might lose a little in translation.

 

[AntC]

Ahh yes - that's another annoying issue. I don't know why you have to press fire to lock it in, and not just tap it. Maybe it's because they didn't want it to interfere with accessing the menu from adjustment mode - but frankly I would much prefer that tapping fire from adjustment saved it, and thus you couldn't access the menu while adjusting - versus having to press harder, which to me always makes me worried it's going to fire the coil. Probably it never fires from adjustment, but I don't like the method. To me, press fire (rather than tap) = firing the coil, so it shouldn't be used for other things.

I'll say it for the hundredth time - this is why we need more damn buttons on mods! So we don't have to wonder over the difference between a press, a tap, a hold, or a hop, skip and a jump on one, two or three buttons in parallel. Stupid mod makers and their buttonphobia.

Thank you! Yes, more buttons! Shoot, ONE more button would suffice... but I'm betting we'll be seeing that in the future. The competition is getting fierce with these vape companies. Everybody has to step it up. Hoping it won't be too long till its a normal thing to have separate buttons for separate functions.

 

[stormjib]

NO more buttons, please! Three is enough! Add a little wheel or something if needed but no more damned buttons! whew i feel better now.

 

[TheBloke]

NO more buttons, please! Three is enough! Add a little wheel or something if needed but no more damned buttons! whew i feel better now.

It's OK. Remember, you're not alone. We're all here to help you. We just want you to get help you need. The first step is admitting you have a problem.

Koumpounophobia - Understanding the Fear of Buttons

 

[slappy3139]

Enjoyed your video.... Noticed this device uses 2 batteries in series. Is there battery protection in case you put one of the batteries in backwards? THX

Yes it does, because I have installed batteries backwards already with no ill effects.

 

[TheBloke]

Thanks for the practical test, @slappy3139 ! Glad it went as expected