Smok XPro M80 Plus - new version, v6 firmware: temperature control testing results

[rowsley]

Well I'm messing with temp control this morning, just using regular kanthal and it "seems" to be regulating it. I started at 420 and worked myself up to 500. You can definitely tell the difference and it really does seem to work as far as leveling it out at the temp set. "Which now seems to be just preset wattages"

I have my mutation x v3 on it and had the cotton nice and wet with liquid and set wattage 66. For the longest time it just showed 66w and I kept checking the wick and when it started to get dry the wattage started showing 32w. For me usually if I kept running it at 66w I would usually only get about 5-6 good vapes before you could tell there's gonna be a dry hit and I need to drip more. Whatever it did allowed me to get nearly 20 hits off my rda until it was nearly bone dry and tasted dry at the end.
Its hard to explain but at some point it adjusted as my wick got dryer, but towards the end I def got dry hits." It actually didn't adjust at all, was just set at a lower wattage allowing me to get more vape time"

So it doesn't cut out when temp is reached but it definitely does work in its own way, and its working like this with kanthal too. "Ehh I guess"

I'm not a pro at temp control or anything but I can tell it really helped using up all the liquid in my rda by lowering itself. If that makes any sense. "Its true I'm not a pro and I shouldn't be trying this stuff as soon as I wake up with no coffee. It only seemed to be working because I was able to vape on it longer, but of course at lower wattage it will not burn the e liquid as fast"

 

[rowsley]

Ok forget the 66 watts.

Set on 500 its just goes to 40w. I could have swore it didn't change from 66w but now that I'm looking each temp I set it on has different watts it goes too. I think the temps are just for looks and its actually preset wattages. But it did help using up all the eliquid in my RDA until it got to the very end and cotton was bone dry.

You can accomplish the same thing in regular watttage mode by just lowering the wattage. Oh well. It can be beneficial in a way, but dont think this is true temp control by any means. Just preset wattages hidden behind a temperature number.

 

[rowsley]

500 degrees is 40w
420 degrees is 32w
I'm not gonna go through all the degrees and check wattages but yeah.
Could be different with ni200 but dont have any yet.

 

[rowsley]

That was a big waste typing all that. I thought it was doing something more than it actually did. Just a lazy person function. But I still love this thing in regular wattage mode.

 

[TheBloke]

See, it deceives! It's very good at pretending it's doing something cleverer than it actually is.

Remember how I said it had a pre-programmed table of wattages:

So for example if you set it to 550F, with a resistance of about 0.7, it first fires at 26.9W ,then it goes to about 45, and hovers around mid 40s before backing off to high 30s.

Change the temp and you'll get different watts, but with the same pattern: very low, high, high, lower, lower, etc.

I believe the watts are relative to the resistance as well, so 1 ohm will give different watts to 0.5. But I haven't checked that carefully yet.

The wattage setting you put in makes no difference so long as it's higher than the pre-programmed range. So set it at 80W and it will always use the pre-programmed range.

But if you set a wattage setting that's lower than the wattages it wants to use, then it adjusts them accordingly. I am not yet sure on the exact calculation it does, but I guess that if you set it to 40 max and it wants to go 45, 42, 40, 38, 36, it will instead go 40, 37, 35, 33, 31. Something like that. It won't exceed the watt setting you ut in.

So if you want to use the exact wattages it has programmed, set it to 80W always - you won't ever actually fire at 80W, unless you choose a temp of 900 or similar. Or if you want to try temp control but never have it fire higher than X, set the watts to X.

I did all my initial testing with Ni200 coil heads, but now am using only Kanthal. I haven't checked very closely, but I am almost certain that the coil material makes no difference - it's just based on resistance. I've definitely seen similar wattage patterns using Kanthal as I did with Ni200, although I've not used the TC mode much on Kanthal yet.

I'm still planning to do a video analysing all this, just been tied up with other things. Hopefully in a day or two.

 

[rowsley]

Lol it definitely messed up my train of thought. I just went through and tried editing some stuff.

 

[rowsley]

Oh well. I think you got got this figured out pretty well as far as how its actually working or should I say not working lol. Its to bad. I hope it wasn't done intentionally this way to deceive people, which I wouldn't think. Just hard to grasp the reason they did it like this. Its no more than wattage mode hidden behind supposed temp numbers it seems to me.

OK my brain hurts now. Back to wattage mode now. At least I know that works good.

 

[TheotherSteveS]

so basically, it really doesn't matter what you use on the deck. Any coil with resistance x ohms will give the same behaviour whether you fire just the coil, coli + dry wick or coil+ juiced wick. Its all hard-wired so to speak...Am I right??

 

[rowsley]

Yeah if the wick is dry or wet its gonna fire at whatever its preset too. He said resistance might play a role. I really don't know. Each temperature I adjusted to gave me different preset wattages that it would fire at regardless if the wick is wet or not.

 

[rowsley]

I can go to regular wattage mode at 40w and get the same effect its doing in temp mode at 500 degrees.

 

[TheotherSteveS]

I fear it is a 'smoke-and-mirrors' device. of should that be SMOK....

 

[rowsley]

Lol seems so, or if they know something, they surely are not telling us.

 

[TheotherSteveS]

To be honest i really don't understand their thinking on this one. They can't surely have thought this wouldn't have been noticed? In actuality, it is potentially quite dangerous.

 

[rowsley]

It is what it is at this point. I'm happy with it over all. I just wanted the extra wattage, and the battery life has been great. I've gotten roughly 2 1/2 days vaping at 70-75 watts probably could have gotten more out of it. When I plugged it in, it still said 30%.

 

[TheBloke]

so basically, it really doesn't matter what you use on the deck. Any coil with resistance x ohms will give the same behaviour whether you fire just the coil, coli + dry wick or coil+ juiced wick. Its all hard-wired so to speak...Am I right??

Yes that is how it seems to be working.

Yeah if the wick is dry or wet its gonna fire at whatever its preset too. He said resistance might play a role. I really don't know. Each temperature I adjusted to gave me different preset wattages that it would fire at regardless if the wick is wet or not.

I think, though am not sure, resistance affects what wattages it uses. So if you use a 1ohm coil at temperature X it might fire 20W then 45 then 45 then 44; a 0.5ohm coil at the same temp might fire 25W then 50 then 50 then 49. Possibly, I haven't verified that yet.

To be honest i really don't understand their thinking on this one. They can't surely have thought this wouldn't have been noticed? In actuality, it is potentially quite dangerous.

Many have noticed, but also many haven't. Because the wattages vary it does give a good impression of it. A couple of major reviewers have said it's working (most recently, Martyn Parker.)

The thing is, it does control temperature. By gradually reducing the wattage, it's affecting the temperature that goes into it. It's not what anyone understood by "Temperature Control", and not what anyone wanted from TC. But they can claim it does what it says it does, because they've not said it does anything besides calling it Temperature Control.

What it will do for their brand image, I don't know. I quite like many Smok products. But as you say, I can't understand this one - I don't know if they were genuinely clueless "We can't do proper TC but we think this will be useful to people for now" or if they were underhanded, deliberately mislabelling something that they knew was not what people wanted.

 

[TheBloke]

rowsley, or anyone else, have you charged yours yet?

Something weird I've noticed - when I charge it, the charge % jumps around strangely, seemingly showing two different incrementing figures.

For example this morning I was using it until it was completely out and stopped firing. I put it on to charge, and the display showed the following:

Charged 11%
Charged 11%
Charged 17%
Charged 13%
Charged 18%
Charged 13%
Charged 18%
Charged 14%

Have you seen that? I've seen it twice on two different charges, at two different charge levels (last time was in the 60s.) Both times it seems to be showing two sets of figures, with one figure 2-5% higher than the other.

I was wondering if it's because it has dual batteries, and it's alternating the charge of both of them - and mine are not equally charged as they should be. If so, I hope that's not a problem, because I've heard people say multiple times that when you have dual battery mods, you must always use identical batteries with identical charge levels!

 

[TheBloke]

Actually right now mine seems to be showing three different figures! It's in the 60s/70s % charge at the moment. I'm going to take a video, one sec..

 

[TheBloke]

Check this out..



So that's:

• Alternating 65% / 74% for a while (with one 66%)
• 70%
• 74%
• 65%
• 71%
• 74%
• 65%
• 73%
• 65%
• 74%
• 67%
• 74%
• 65%
• 73%
• 74%
• 66%
• 74%

I guess it must be that it just doesn't read the % that accurately, so where it said 71% that was another reading of the 73/74% battery

 

[rowsley]

I plugged mine in before I went to sleep. I didn't notice it. I just know when I plugged it in it showed % then the screen goes blank. Woke up and it was charged. That sounds weird though. I'll have to watch it and see.

 

[rowsley]

I plugged mine in and it definitely doesn't do all that. Just the percentage and goes up by a % at a time