I debated writing this review for a couple of weeks now, and as this is my first post on this forum (multiple years of lurking, though), you can get a sense of how frustrated I've become. Why? The mini VPX cartomator tanks that I burned $55 on after reading glowing reviews and endorsements from long-time members, in whom I've come to trust almost implicitly.
I'll apologize for the inevitably long-winded nature of this review. The purpose of this is to generate empathy among those you who have shared these issues and to perhaps generate some advice for the predicament. Hopefully someone has something to say to me. Otherwise, I may have to see what refund options (if any) are available to me.
Firstly, a bit of history and a qualification of my frustration is in order. I've been doing the e-cig thing for approximately three years now. I have owned an M401, followed by the Prodigy V2, and finally earlier this year I sprung for the Darwin by Evolv. I am not a stranger to the many teething problems this burgeoning industry has had over the last couple of years. I have had many gripes, some shared by others and some unique to me. This review must clearly illustrate the latter, because everyone else seems positively enamored with their tanks, to the point that many of them have multiples.
Let's go over my experience with the cartomator tank thus far. The tank shipped on October 10th, and I received it a few days later along with a new shipment of cartomizers. Many were ordinary CE2s. Others were the original cartomizers with the spongy filler (which I've never had any semblence of success with, but that's an altogether different matter). Also included in my order were pre-dotted variants of the above two. With more than just passing excitement, I readied my new investment with one of the pre-dotted CE2s (jumbo sized) by placing the tank on the cartomizer and filling it up to near the bottom margin of where the top cap comes to rest. Immediately, I notice what I believe will be a serious problem; only one of the holes fits inside of the tank at any time (either the top dot or bottom dot, not both). It doesn't take a free body diagram to alert me to the fact that, unless I'm turning my unit upside down frequently, the decreasing fluid level is going to draw a vacuum with no way to equalize. Consequently, the liquid in the tank is going to very quickly stop filling the cartomizer. This is validated only minutes later when I begin to notice dry hits and, upon removing the top cap of the tank, notice the fluid level rapidly decreasing without the vacuum to hold it back. The cartomizer quickly floods.
"Okay," I say to myself, "This must have been dotted for one of the bigger cartomator tanks that have been out for much longer and whoever packaged it up didn't know this was for the new SS mini." There's no indication anywhere on Nhaler's website for compatibility of dotted cartomizer nor the ability to request cartomizers dotted for a mini or large tank. The only solution at hand requires clairvoyance on either my or the packager's part. Fine. Teething problems. I can deal, so far.
After a day or so of seeing if I can make the current CE2 work, I drain the tank and resolve to just try another cartomizer. Same procedure: pop it in, fill the tank, close the tank. Again, though, I notice something curious about the cartomizer I've selected. It's one of the originals (CE1s, I guess?) with the filler material, which have consistently sucked for me since I first started buying them. I thought the tank might resolve my issues with them. But before I can test that hypothesis, I'm puzzled by the placement of two dots on the bottom of the unit, contralaterally from one another. Without going through another anecdote, this presents the exact same problem as with the first cartomizer. Now I'm beginning to anger. This isn't a compatibility issue anymore; someone isn't thinking.
I try it for a day or two but eventually just take it out for its lack of functionality. I look through my stash of dotted cartomizers and notice that several share this same dotting pattern. Oh my God.
I find one of the short CE2s with properly drilled holes (one at the top and one at the bottom, opposite sides, and both fit within the confines of my tank). Sadly, I only ordered a couple of these, and if they prove to work, I would run out in fairly short order. I put it in and fire it up. I notice immediately that performance is orders of magnitude above the previous units, but something still isn't right. It takes a longer time, but I eventually get to dry hits and the realization that my fluid level isn't decreasing as quickly as it should be. I was a chain smoker of cigarettes. I'm likewise a chain smoker of my vaporizer. I burn a lot of juice.
But I don't care about this. I'm happy that not all is lost, so for a week or so I struggle with the currently described setup. The tank is a pain to fill, and taking the cap off still results in an equalization with atmosphere that can only mean air is not getting to the tank. juice floods the cartomizer whenever I fill it, and my hands constantly smell of concentrated apple cider. Eventually, the juice overflows have their way with my Darwin and it dies. I lose it for about two weeks to the repair site in Ohio.
I get it back and start using it again, but soon resolve to fix the equalization issues on my own. I look at the forums and decide I have two options: drill bigger holes or remove the black cap inside the cartomizer. I'm a graduate student, and am both poor and in debt. Switching to e-cigs has already failed to save me the kind of money I fantasized it would, and I have neither the time, interest, nor money to purchase a Dremel to fix my already expensive investment. Furthermore, I already bought pre-dotted cartomizers that I expected to work (surely someone does field testing, right?). I decide to lose that flexible black cap in the cartomizer, despite concerns about how quickly the unit floods when I remove the SS tank cap. I carefully extract it and reassemble my setup on the Darwin. Immediately it floods and I am left with coated hands, a soaked Darwin (which was just repaired), and the kind of rage only wrought by the realization of how much money one can spend on failure.
A point of interest: when I removed that black cap I had trouble as it caught on one of the edges of the top hole (dot). When I do finally get it out, I notice that whoever did the machining managed to drill the top hole straight into the black cap, so that the cap seals the hole and entirely negates its purpose. It's at this point that I've lost complete faith in Nhaler's machinist(s). I don't want to place undue blame, but if it came from the same people who generated the inscription below on the back of my Darwin, I can't say I'm surprised.
I'm in the biomedical industry. I've used a hand mill and CNC mill perhaps twenty times in my life. It would be insulting to machinists to call me an expert. But I know how to avoid what happened above. I spent ~$250 on my Darwin, and I would have spent $20 more just to have them leave that out. It could have looked cool, but at the price point I quoted, I'm insulted. I'm more insulted that whoever does quality control at Nhaler let that through.
Just like a child screaming itself to sleep, I'm losing steam on this scathing review. I'll summarize the last couple of points. I tried switching juice, thinking maybe my VG/PG solution was too syrup-y and was causing my problems. Turns out it didn't matter; all-PG juice worked just as poorly. And I don't want to switch juices. I love my current selection.
In short, I have a tank that doesn't work. It doesn't work with a properly assembled cartomizer, a cartomizer that has been partly disassembled, and with a bunch of cartomizers that have functionless dottings. I honestly can't decide what's responsible: the tank, the cartos, or both. As it currently stands, though, I am filled with regret over my purchase.
I'll apologize for the inevitably long-winded nature of this review. The purpose of this is to generate empathy among those you who have shared these issues and to perhaps generate some advice for the predicament. Hopefully someone has something to say to me. Otherwise, I may have to see what refund options (if any) are available to me.
Firstly, a bit of history and a qualification of my frustration is in order. I've been doing the e-cig thing for approximately three years now. I have owned an M401, followed by the Prodigy V2, and finally earlier this year I sprung for the Darwin by Evolv. I am not a stranger to the many teething problems this burgeoning industry has had over the last couple of years. I have had many gripes, some shared by others and some unique to me. This review must clearly illustrate the latter, because everyone else seems positively enamored with their tanks, to the point that many of them have multiples.
Let's go over my experience with the cartomator tank thus far. The tank shipped on October 10th, and I received it a few days later along with a new shipment of cartomizers. Many were ordinary CE2s. Others were the original cartomizers with the spongy filler (which I've never had any semblence of success with, but that's an altogether different matter). Also included in my order were pre-dotted variants of the above two. With more than just passing excitement, I readied my new investment with one of the pre-dotted CE2s (jumbo sized) by placing the tank on the cartomizer and filling it up to near the bottom margin of where the top cap comes to rest. Immediately, I notice what I believe will be a serious problem; only one of the holes fits inside of the tank at any time (either the top dot or bottom dot, not both). It doesn't take a free body diagram to alert me to the fact that, unless I'm turning my unit upside down frequently, the decreasing fluid level is going to draw a vacuum with no way to equalize. Consequently, the liquid in the tank is going to very quickly stop filling the cartomizer. This is validated only minutes later when I begin to notice dry hits and, upon removing the top cap of the tank, notice the fluid level rapidly decreasing without the vacuum to hold it back. The cartomizer quickly floods.
"Okay," I say to myself, "This must have been dotted for one of the bigger cartomator tanks that have been out for much longer and whoever packaged it up didn't know this was for the new SS mini." There's no indication anywhere on Nhaler's website for compatibility of dotted cartomizer nor the ability to request cartomizers dotted for a mini or large tank. The only solution at hand requires clairvoyance on either my or the packager's part. Fine. Teething problems. I can deal, so far.
After a day or so of seeing if I can make the current CE2 work, I drain the tank and resolve to just try another cartomizer. Same procedure: pop it in, fill the tank, close the tank. Again, though, I notice something curious about the cartomizer I've selected. It's one of the originals (CE1s, I guess?) with the filler material, which have consistently sucked for me since I first started buying them. I thought the tank might resolve my issues with them. But before I can test that hypothesis, I'm puzzled by the placement of two dots on the bottom of the unit, contralaterally from one another. Without going through another anecdote, this presents the exact same problem as with the first cartomizer. Now I'm beginning to anger. This isn't a compatibility issue anymore; someone isn't thinking.
I try it for a day or two but eventually just take it out for its lack of functionality. I look through my stash of dotted cartomizers and notice that several share this same dotting pattern. Oh my God.
I find one of the short CE2s with properly drilled holes (one at the top and one at the bottom, opposite sides, and both fit within the confines of my tank). Sadly, I only ordered a couple of these, and if they prove to work, I would run out in fairly short order. I put it in and fire it up. I notice immediately that performance is orders of magnitude above the previous units, but something still isn't right. It takes a longer time, but I eventually get to dry hits and the realization that my fluid level isn't decreasing as quickly as it should be. I was a chain smoker of cigarettes. I'm likewise a chain smoker of my vaporizer. I burn a lot of juice.
But I don't care about this. I'm happy that not all is lost, so for a week or so I struggle with the currently described setup. The tank is a pain to fill, and taking the cap off still results in an equalization with atmosphere that can only mean air is not getting to the tank. juice floods the cartomizer whenever I fill it, and my hands constantly smell of concentrated apple cider. Eventually, the juice overflows have their way with my Darwin and it dies. I lose it for about two weeks to the repair site in Ohio.
I get it back and start using it again, but soon resolve to fix the equalization issues on my own. I look at the forums and decide I have two options: drill bigger holes or remove the black cap inside the cartomizer. I'm a graduate student, and am both poor and in debt. Switching to e-cigs has already failed to save me the kind of money I fantasized it would, and I have neither the time, interest, nor money to purchase a Dremel to fix my already expensive investment. Furthermore, I already bought pre-dotted cartomizers that I expected to work (surely someone does field testing, right?). I decide to lose that flexible black cap in the cartomizer, despite concerns about how quickly the unit floods when I remove the SS tank cap. I carefully extract it and reassemble my setup on the Darwin. Immediately it floods and I am left with coated hands, a soaked Darwin (which was just repaired), and the kind of rage only wrought by the realization of how much money one can spend on failure.
A point of interest: when I removed that black cap I had trouble as it caught on one of the edges of the top hole (dot). When I do finally get it out, I notice that whoever did the machining managed to drill the top hole straight into the black cap, so that the cap seals the hole and entirely negates its purpose. It's at this point that I've lost complete faith in Nhaler's machinist(s). I don't want to place undue blame, but if it came from the same people who generated the inscription below on the back of my Darwin, I can't say I'm surprised.
I'm in the biomedical industry. I've used a hand mill and CNC mill perhaps twenty times in my life. It would be insulting to machinists to call me an expert. But I know how to avoid what happened above. I spent ~$250 on my Darwin, and I would have spent $20 more just to have them leave that out. It could have looked cool, but at the price point I quoted, I'm insulted. I'm more insulted that whoever does quality control at Nhaler let that through.
Just like a child screaming itself to sleep, I'm losing steam on this scathing review. I'll summarize the last couple of points. I tried switching juice, thinking maybe my VG/PG solution was too syrup-y and was causing my problems. Turns out it didn't matter; all-PG juice worked just as poorly. And I don't want to switch juices. I love my current selection.
In short, I have a tank that doesn't work. It doesn't work with a properly assembled cartomizer, a cartomizer that has been partly disassembled, and with a bunch of cartomizers that have functionless dottings. I honestly can't decide what's responsible: the tank, the cartos, or both. As it currently stands, though, I am filled with regret over my purchase.
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