Dual coil cartomizers seemed to be a gimmick when they first hit the market just a few months ago. It appears now with an increasing number of dual coil cartomizers (and even a dual coil atomizer) on the market, the design is here to stay. The dual coil design has even made it into starter kits like the Smokezilla e-cigarette kit from Sterling Vapor, albeit in a highly specialized form. We’ll check out the goods in this Smokezilla e-cigarette review.
What’s in the box
The Smokezilla kit comes packaged in a roomy, soft-sided leatherette carrying case. The case is quite large and provides more than enough storage for the e-cigarette and plenty of accessories. In fact the case is large enough to accomodate larger mods like the ProVari and then some.
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| A lot more can fit in here |
The kit officially contains:
- The nifty carry-all bag
- 2 650mAh KR808D-1 threaded eGo style batteries
- 3 5ML dual coil cartomizers (custom threaded)
- USB charger
- AC adapter
- Printed manual
Design
There are two unique things about the Smokezilla setup, the batteries and the cartomizers. The batteries wouldn’t really be that unusual save for the fact that they are essentially eGo batteries with KR808-D1 threading.
Batteries
Other than the 808 threading, which is handy if you are already using a traditional style 808 e-cigarette like the V2, Revolution Vapor or Volt kits, the batteries are essentially standard eGo batteries. The manual included with the kit even was written for a 510 style eGo system.
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| Pretty standard fare |
The batteries are of the smaller eGo battery holding 650mAh of power. The 808 batteries are the traditional type, charging via a screw-in charger, rather than a USB pass-through. There is a 15 second cutoff on the switch to accomodate just about any power vaper.
Despite this being a fairly average eGo with unusual threading, it doesn’t seem to be a cheap knockoff. The button assemblies appear to be solid, using clear hard plastic buttons, rather than flimsy rubber buttons found in some eGo clones. The button illuminates blue.
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| That’s different |
One interesting thing I found on these batteries that doesn’t exist on my other eGos is a draw adjustment. There is a slot in the top of the battery connector which can be adjusted to increase or decrease airflow through the holes in the connector.
Adjusting that post with a screwdriver doesn’t seem to adjust the height of the battery post, however. I found that some standard KR808D-1 cartomizers didn’t make a sufficient enough connection to fire, which I’ve seen before in 808 batteries. I was able to slightly raise the center post in the battery with a paperclip allowing proper function with my collection of 808 cartomizers.
Cartomizers
The second part of the Smokezill which makes it unique is the outsized Somktech dual coil cartomizer. The cartomizer isn’t actually 808 threaded. Rather the threads are on the skirt of the cartomizer and match up to the eGo cone threads on the battery.
Essentially, these cartomizers were made for the Smokezilla battery.
The design of these cartomizers is very similar to the Smoketech eGo dual coil cartomizers. In a word, these cartos are huge! The cartos are longer than the battery, which makes the batteries appear positively diminutive in comparison.
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| Here it is! |
Interestingly, peering inside the cartomizer, the filler material only goes about 2/3 of the way to the top of the cartomizer’s barrel. The remaining space is taken up by the rather large, rubber drip tips. That extra length guarantees the drip tip isn’t going anywhere. You can pretty much swing the assembled Smokezilla around by the tip and the thing will stay put.
Filling the cartos is fairly simple using a syringe, or dripping if you’re really patient. Unfortunately, for some reason the filler doesn’t seem to absorb e-liquid as quickly as I would like. I found that when initially filling, if I wasn’t quite patient, liquid would begin dripping out of the battery connector.
Strangely, I didn’t run into this issue with the nearly identical eGo 510 version of these cartos. I found the filling aspect quite frustrating. I even burned one of the cartomizers because I thought it was initially filled sufficiently, but the juice hadn’t yet reached the coils. Topping off via dripping often led to liquid running down the battery.
Filling these cartos requires a fair amount of patience.
Performance
For the patient who can adequately saturate the Smokezilla’s filler are in for a pretty nice vaping experience. I’m not sure why, exactly, but I did find the overall performance of the ‘Zilla to outperform it’s 510-based brethern.
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| Coils of fury! |
In part, this may be due to the ability to adjust the draw on the battery. Stiffening the draw seemed to help out performance quite a bit. While it still isn’t as intense as a standard dual coil at high voltage, performance was better than average.
Vapor production was especially good with this device. I’m not sure I can think of many other bits of eGo-compatible hardware that can put out big plumes of vapor. Temperature was a little on the cool side, likely because there’s quite a bit of distance between the coils and the user.
Flavor was good, although I couldn’t help but pick up a bit of a rubbery taste from the big drip tips. Throat hit was better than an average eGo type experience, but not what I would classify as groundbreaking or intense.
Too Long; Didn’t Read
If you are a fan of the KR808-D1 standard but are looking for something with a little more battery life and liquid, the Smokezilla might be of interest. The cartomizers offer a pretty hefty amount of juice storage, though can be frustrating to fill or top off. Dual coils provide a boost to vapor production (at the cost of some battery life).
The matched cartomizers give the Smokezilla a solid appearance, as if someone put some thought into how it looks. The roomy carry case will tote around your Smokezilla along with plenty of extra cartomizers and e-liquid. You can grab a Smokezilla kit at Sterling Vapor.
Performance:
Vapor production: Very good
Vapor temperature: Moderate to slightly cool
Flavor reproduction: Moderate (some rubber taste from the tips)
Throat hit: Moderate
Draw: Adjustable!
Pros:
- High juice capacity
- Excellent travel case
- Good performance from an eGo style e-cigarette
- KR808D-1 compatible
- 15 second shutoff
- Looks like a single unit when assembled
Cons:
- May need adjustment to accomodate other 808 cartomizers
- Cartomizers leak if filled too quickly
- no USB pass-through
- Batteries only 650mAh
- No 5-click off/on
- Rubber taste from drip tips
Details:
Product: SmokTech Smokezilla
Buy it at: Sterling Vapor
Threading: KR808D-1 (battery, cartomizer proprietary)
Battery mAh: 650
Battery voltage: 3.5
Cartomizer resistance: 1.5Ω
Disclosure: Sterling Vapor is a sponsor of this site and sent me this kit at no charge.
Comments
4 responses to “SmokTech Smokezilla 5ml Dual Coil Starter Kit – Impressions”
Hi Steve,
Found this link http://www.totallywicked-eliquid.com/forum/modifi… to what is probably the first Dual Coil Atomizer. Would have posted to your review of Dual Coil Atty but I doubt many go back through to find new posts and that's a shame because there is some interesting new posts on the "e-Cigarette News Update 10/28/11"
Errol
Wow, that is interesting the concept of dual coils goes back that far. And you're right, the reviews, people find through Google and whatnot, but the news updates have a really short lifespan. One day I'll figure out a way to better curate those so interesting information might be more evergreen. It worked better when I did individual posts for each story, but there's way too much information to manage that way. Tomorrow's update will have 8 stories in it I believe.
May be another of my Brain Cramp ideas but it would be handy if there were a way to add a column to your index that showed the number of posts to each review'updats and possible the date of the last entry. Just a thought that would give you something to do in your spare time. :)
Errol
That will probably be more of a technical limitation to the blogging platform the site runs on. I had to resort to a great deal of hackery for it to work as well as it does now :) At some point I might have to migrate to something with more options.