Defective? I'm not really sure. Some stuff just sucks even when working as designed.
I'll give some perspective, though: My alter-ego on other forums and elsewhere used to do reviews. I have owned or at least used something a little north of 100 mods. At the end of 2011, I had sampled every carto available at the time with the exception of Ikens (nothing negative - he was just out of stock when I decided to do my experiment). By the end of 2012, I had tried every commercially available 510 and 306. I had at one time or another every CE2 tank and most of the DCT tanks that have been for sale in the US and a few that European friends obtained for me. In 2011, I had thoroughly sampled most items I could find that were ego-releated (ego-t ego mega - ego cartos ego batts and all of the popular clones... you name it). ... Anyway, it's a long list.
Out of 100 + mods, I kept 6. I have 2 REOs, 2 rough stacks (I'm emotionally attached to the rough stacks... long story), a plastic VV box, and a kalamazoo tripple-v. Of those 6, I use the REOs and now and again the tripple-v. So basically, I kept and use ~2.5% of the mods I ever had.
Out of all of those cartos, CE2s (and CE2-like items, tanks, etc), DCTs, and you-name-it I still have a mixed stock of different ohm pre-boge-gate boge cartos and a handful of smoketech shorty's. I almost never use any of them but I know they work and are consistent so I keep them 'just in case' (not really sure 'just in case' what, but I keep them). I think the comparison chart I did at the end of my experiment had around 55 "different" cartos (some were not really all that different from one another, but this will get too long if I explain that). I kept 4 different Boge and two different smoke tech. So ~12% were keepers.
Out of all those attys... Well, there were quite a few good ones and even a few excellent ones. I ended up narrowing my parameters to a mix of cost, flavor, performance, and consistency/reliability. I use i06, cisco 306, and cisco aero (until last night when I finally decided to start making the change to rebuildable). So, out of 50+ attys, I settled n to 3 that did what I wanted them to do and didn't cost an arm and a leg... So 6% keepers.
Ego stuff - all gone. I have no use for it. Tanks - all gone. I have no use for them. All of the other stuff in-between - all gone. I have no use for any of it. 0% keepers.
Some stuff was OK - some stuff was terrible - occasionally something was defective... But mostly, I found that between price, availability, consistency, durability, and performance, a whole bunch of stuff out there just doesn't measure up to my expectations.
