V4L Dial-A-Volt Review – Vari Volt on Autopilot

Vapor4Life has stepped up its large and specialty e-cigarette game lately. I’ve reviewed a few devices from V4L in the past. Most of the devices are their take on stuff that’s already been on the market. They are very selective about what they release, but the Dial-a-Volt is part of that general mode of operation. Read the Dial-A-Volt review and find out if it’s a good one to put their stamp on.

[stextbox id=”info” caption=”Product Details”]

	Product name	Dial-a-Volt battery
	Available from	Vapor4Life
	Price	33.95-47.95

[/stextbox]

V4L Dial-A-Volt Design

Vapor4Life’s lineup of Dial-A-Volt (or DAV, it’s easier to type) includes several models and colors. The manual battery versions come in several different mAh capacities.

The manual batteries are fairly standard devices, essentially they are 808 threaded Spinners.

However, the more interesting member of the DAV family is the new automatic battery. Definitely a product where the company put its own signature spin on things since I’m not really aware of many automatic battery variable voltage e-cigarettes. This is the model I’ll be focusing on for this review.

There are a few interesting design differences with the auto version other than the obvious lack of a button. Not only is the button lacking, but so is the collar piece. The top of the auto DAV is totally flat, save for the raised KR808D-1 battery connector.

While this battery is compatible with all V4L’s cartomizer offerings, standard cartomizers look kind of goofy on this big hoss of a battery.

The V4L dual coil carto tanks fit pretty well, though there is a slight gap between battery and tank bottom. Once they hit the market, the Vapor Zeus cartomizers are a perfect fit and work very well with this battery.

For the purposes of the review, I stuck with the dual coil tank since it’s actually available as I write this article. There will be more on this later.

Going back to the battery design, like the rest of V4L’s lineup, the Dial-A-Volt has a nice solid feel to it, complete with a rubberized coating and small V4L logos on the battery.

There is an LED light on the battery in lieu of the one normally found on the button. However, it is a tiny pin hole of a light. You can’t really see it while you’re using the device.

Otherwise, the functionality is the same. Voltage can be adjusted from between 3.0 and 4.8v using the dial at the end of the battery that is located where an end cap normally can be found. There are clearly marked voltage points at various interval.

A red line on the dial itself shows the position of the voltage setting which can be turned anywhere along the voltage range.

Charging is via the same USB and AC adapters that charge other batteries in the V4L lineup.

Using the V4L Dial-A-Volt

Astute readers might have seen a flaw with the statement at the end of the last section. I didn’t mistype, there is no specialized charger for the big batteries. While standard e-cigarette chargers will work with larger batteries, it’s not exactly optimal.

The Vapor King charger outputs about 120mA, as opposed to the 400+ of eGo chargers. Therefore, charging time takes just short of an ice age.

Ok, maybe not that long, but according to the manual that came with the battery, expect a charge time between 10 and 12 hours from a full drain.

The good news is that at 1100mAh, the battery will last a pretty long time. Heavy vapers can get quite a few hours out of the device while light users can easily go a day or more on a single charge.

Of course, the star attraction of the DAV is the automatic battery. V4L in general does a great job with automatic batteries. I found more of the same in this enormous battery.

The switch has a very smooth action and will activate with a very light draw. The battery doesn’t add a lot of resistance and generally has a great action.

I had no problem getting the switch to activate even with the gap between the dual coil tank and the battery and a knucklehead drip tip attached to the cartomizer.

I like to use the knucklehead to angle the battery down since it’s so big. It just feels huge when its sticking straight out in front.

Speaking of the dual coil cartomizer, it’s not my first choice on a device like this. I prefer to run dual coils at as high a voltage as possible. Generally, there’s a fairly low amp limit that makes the device drop down to around 3.7v with a dual coil cartomizer loaded.

Even so, I found the cartomizer setup to work fairly well. There was a decent amount of vapor, so it didn’t feel under powered at all, it just lacked that punch I’m used to. I will say the Zeus cartomizer works very well on these batteries. If you pick up one of these batteries, you might want to get that cartomizer when it becomes available.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

The Vapor4Life Dial-A-Volt automatic model is a well-built and quite large variable volt auto battery based on the Vision Spinner. There are a few differences between the auto and manual that show V4L put some work into putting their own touch on the device including a very excellent automatic switch. I’ve talked to a few people who want an automatic variable voltage e-cigarette battery. Now they have the chance. If you want one too, you can pick one up from V4L.