Electronic Cigarette innovation has been going into high gear as of late. The most recent trend in e-cigarettes is dual coil cartomizers. Dual coils have only been on the market a very short time, yet there are now countless flavors of the things available for purchase.
You can get dual coil cartomizers for your e-cigarette in standard, clear, large, really really large and even a super-duper large 5ml version custom designed for Joye eGo electronic cigarettes. Now that the size thing has been tackled, the factories are moving on to the next frontier in multiple coils.
As the old adage goes, if one is good, two must be better. SmokTech decided why not just go whole hog and bump the stakes up to three! This is starting to remind me a little bit of disposable razor blades. What are we up to there, like 6 blades now? I’m patiently waiting for the dodeca-coil (it will require a car battery to run I’m sure).
The triple coil cartomizers certainly require a great deal of power to get them off the ground. I’ll just start off by pointing this out. They flat-out won’t work on a standard eGo battery. Well, I guess they could work, I was able to get an ego to light up the coils on the thing after about 7 seconds. For those types of batteries you’re better off sticking with regular duals or the SmokTech 1.7 ohm single coil.
Design
If you are equipped with a personal vaporizer capable of outputting more than say 4 volts, these unassuming looking cartomizers may be worth a look. The trips basically look like a standard stainless xl cartomizer. This may be because the heat this thing generates would not be too kind to plastic, so clear versions are unlikely, and the heat would probably undo the glue on the big sticker the factories use to turn steel cartos into black (or any other color).
Because the cartos are steel, there are no worries about cracking or dropping them, they’re quite tough. Filling them is pretty much the same as any other XL carto (these hold around 1.5ml) bring a syringe or bring a lunch because it will take forever to drip or condom fill these things.
Under normal (for me) vaping conditions, the exterior of the trip gets hot, especially at voltages above 5 volts. Not warm, but hot to the touch. I had to switch from a chrome drip tip to a plastic (derlin) version because I was actually burning my lips on the drip tip! The thing does have three heating elements in the same amount of space as a normal xl carto, all that heat is going to end up somewhere.
The interesting thing is that I haven’t experienced any cooked juices in my use of this device, even at the higher voltages. I attribute this to the inefficiency of the design of multiple coil cartos. Because you have three coils that individually run at higher resistances, but still one battery, any one coil isn’t going to get as much power to it as it would in a single coil configuration.
I’ve actually vaped on these cartomizers until I experienced dry hits, and yet when I disassembled one, I didn’t detect the normal evidence of burning that is fairly common in other cartomizers. I’m unsure of why that is, weather its a change in the material used in the outer filler or inner coil blankets, or heat distribution or what.
PerformancePushing three coils is certainly going to take its toll on battery life. My box mod running two 900 mAh batteries gets about three to four hours worth of vaping in until the batteries refuse to soldier on any longer. As mentioned previously, the trips love high voltages. Some users have reported good results well north of 6v of power coursing through the coils of their cartos.
I used mine basically at three different spots on the voltage spectrum. Each voltage stop yielded somewhat different results, though the key performance elements basically increased in intensity at each point. Draw of course remained the same for each. I found the draw to be slightly on the airy side, though not overly so, but more airy than the 1.7 ohm SmokTechs.
As I do with all of my reviews, I dipped into my econo-sized bottle of cherry tobacco eliquid
4.5 volts
While I played with lower voltages, 4.5 was about where the triple coil started to get its groove on providing a nice warm vapor with a somewhat creamy texture. At this level, I got results at draws of around 4-5 seconds each.
- Vapor temperature: warm to very warm
- Vapor production: excellent, with a full-bodied feel
- Flavor: very pronounced
- Throat hit: outstanding
- Vapor temperature: very warm to slightly hot
- Vapor production: excellent, and still full bodied, leaving a slight tingling sensation on the tongue
- Flavor: the warmth seemed to bring out more of the subtle undertones of the juice
- Throat hit: intense
- Vaper temperature: hot!
- Vapor production: Still great even with very short draws, very close to an analog experience
- Flavor: The draws were short so I didn’t observe as much change with the flavor.
- Throat hit: very intense
- Fantastic performance
- Different performance characteristics at different voltage levels
- Very close to an analog feel at very high voltages
- eGo users need not apply
- Exterior of device gets unusually hot
- Juice hog
- Long pulls at higher voltages likely to knock you down
8 Comments
Anonymous
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)>one coil isn't going to get as much power to it as it would in a single coil configuration.<With each coil wired independently to the battery shouldn't they all heat equally?Errol
Steve K
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)In theory, yes they should light up at the same time. But since the power is equally divided between three coils, any one coil will get less power than it would in a single coil setup. Also, when dry burning for the title picture, I found that the coils didn't all light up at the same time, so power isn't exactly evenly distributed in practice.
Anonymous
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)Thanks Steve, have no doubt you are right as you have the hands on experience where as I'm just looking at pictures.Errol
Steve K
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)I have to admit, I'm not terribly good with math, or Ohm's Law. There's a ton of debate on the forums about the amperage draw and loss of efficiency and all sorts of other things that makes my head sort of spin. I'm thinking at some point of doing an article in the eCig101 series that goes into the whole wattage/resistance thing, but that's going to take a lot of research before I can be able to talk intelligently about the subject :)
Anonymous
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)I probably know less about the Ohm's Law than you do but it occurred to me that the chances of all three coils being exactly the same Ohm rating is not likely. There could be a variation of a few to several tenths between them causing some to light up quicker than others. Just a thought?Errol
Steve K
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)Very true
Anonymous
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)Hello again Steve,This time I have a question about the "triple coil cartomizer" Did you vape enough juice through the triple coil cartomizer to the point where it starts getting weak?I get about the same life out of a regular 510 dual coil on a PT as I do a single coil LR on a bat and that’s about three, maybe 4ml tops before they are too weak to be satisfying.Just wondering if the triple coil cartomizers have a longer life?Errol
Steve K
(11/29/99 - 2:00 pm)Truth be told, I haven't gone back to the triple in a while, so I don't know if there's a difference in usable life. Other than the extra coils, it's pretty much the same design as any other vertical coil filler-ed carto. My guess is your experience is going to be the same, which sounds like the coils and/or tubes are getting gummed up with caked on liquid. Is your juice thick (like 100%vg) or dark or anything unusual? You could try some of the cleaning methods out there for these types of cartos, or just pitch them. I can usually go through quite a bit more than 4ml before I kill my cartos.
Comments are closed.