Triple (Yes, Triple!) Coil Cartomizer: Impressions

Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 3:32 pm

triple coil cartomizer for electronic cigarettes review

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.

Performance
Pushing 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

5 volts

Bumping the dial up by a half volt really started to pick up the game in this device. Every aspect continued to improve with the required draw to bring out that performance dropping by another second. The somewhat aggressive nature of these cartos starts to show itself when getting into this volt range.

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

6 volts

Things started getting a little stupid at 6v. The carto got very hot to the touch, and my box mod was less than pleased with me. Apparently the protection circuit on either the box or the battery would kick in forcing me to power cycle the on/off switch after every drag. At this point, drawing on it worked best about the same as an analog cigarette with very short, stiff puffs.

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

At 6 volts, I think this is the closest my vaping experience has ever come to smoking a traditional cigarette. The heat was there, the throat irritation was there, and while I still didn’t inhale while puffing, the draw was very much like smoking the old cancer sticks.

I made it a point to note the draw lengths in my performance summaries for a good reason. Being a user of lower voltage devices, I am used to taking draws in the 5 second range or longer. At first, I continued to do that when playing with the triple coil. That was a mistake. While I could get away with it at 5v with only a little bit of coughing and sputtering, at 6v, this carto is an untamed beast.

I took a nice, long pull the first time I went to the 6v level and proceeded to cough like I were a teenager sneaking some unfiltered Lucky Stikes behind the corner store for the first time. My eyes watered and my throat burned. I actually backed down to 4.5v and stayed there for a couple days until I figured out I could alter my draws. Once I started puffing on it like a cigarette at higher voltages, I started to realize how much this experience was like smoking tobacco cigarettes.

Too Long; Didn’t Read

The SmokTech triple coil cartomizers are an interesting advance in the new multiple coil trend. Sure they seem like some kind of marketing gimmick They aren’t for everybody since they won’t perform well, if at all on popular 3.7v class batteries. At higher voltages, these cartomizers bring a whole new level of vaping. But be careful, if you don’t adjust the way you vape them, they will make you miserable. The potential of some coughing while relearning proper draw technique and the reduced battery life are a small price to pay for such an intense esmoking experience.

Pros: