After reading the 193 pages of opinions and feelings of this thread about the yihi mini (over more than three days), I bite the bullet and ordered it; it should be here early next week. I am in the U.K. and the price is somewhat higher than U.S., I paid 152 British pounds (plus shipping) at the trusty Cloud9. It is somewhat cheaper on the big twos, but I do not want to have more incognitas in case of problems with such expensive piece of equipment. I may be a bit on the picky side, but as I had a feeling (with the iTaste VV3 and the eLeaf) that there are different grades of the same items ending up with different retailers with different prices; being this a one-time exception buy, I went the safest (but more expensive) route.
What convinced me is: the quality of electronics (I am a former system designer) and the replaceable battery. Not the variety of menus, the accelerometer; not even the fit and finish and the floating pin. I use some intrinsically delicate fruit e-liquids, I vape under 10 Watts anyway in any case, don't need the 60 Watts. What I need is the controllability and the purity of the power feeding the atomiser. I virtually tried most of the APVs on the market and, to date, I have find suitable only the MVP2 (the 10W version)and the Provari. Provari is no use or me as I only use box mods, no tube mods, mainly because of the way I grip on the vaporiser. I use the eLeaf (bought four, at time I thought to have find the vaping Holy Grail for cheap, before realising they were PWM and had alinear -one word, not a typo- voltage/power control) with MiniNautilus and BDC Vivi Nova, as they do not resent much of PWM, but the majority of my fruity liquids is with the MVP2 10W(I have three) as it is the only boxmod that is not "infected" by cheesy design in power delivery. Now, from what I read, the Yihi follows canonical design (boost-buck with syncronous rectification) instead of widespread gas-lantern design (free-running, unregulated step-up with PWM partialisation), coupled with a well tought uP structure. I havent' it in my hands yet, but it looks like they have a dedicated micrologic here, just like the DNA is. It looks like (but can't confirm yet) the uP uses a dual bootloader, very similar to the chinese stick MP3 players of few years ago, where the second portion of the firmware can be updated. It is obvious that some level of good work went into the Sx mini firmware, a fact which is highly unusual for their industry, where firmware is seen as a virtual part with no value nor procurement costs (an approach which directly translates into the fortune of Apple). The Sx Mini is not simply a new high quality APV, it is an industry-wide statement, of the sort "if you want to make money after this, sit at the drawing table and work" because if you look at the various hundredwatt boxes on the market they are put together from people who cannot tell a transistor from a capacitor and yet, they make some serious money. I can't tell, at this stage, if the Sx mini is a venture which will continue by attracting further investments, as it is unusual for their way of trade, where innovation sticks only if centrally directed. I strongly hope so. In any case, just because it is a piece of equipment bordering what I think to be the ideal APV, I had to have one.
There are things I don't like: lack of visual battery level (the Innokin illuminated fire button), the use of an accelerometer (it seems a big trend in FarEast with youngs shaking all sort of gadgets, a sort of unspoken communication, but here? it is an APV, not a beverage shaker).
I remain firmly convinced that e-cig industry is putting lot of effort where little is required, while neglecting what really requires innovation (I mean, we have wicks and coils to produce vapor, where atomiser chamber pre-heating, pressure liquid injection, vapor exaust pressure control, dynamic air intake -and so on- would really revolutionise vaping, not the use of an a expensive computer to feed some DC to the coil). But I like this APV, mainly for its power envelope capability, hope to have it soon...
