Review Smok Caterpillar RDA - review (pic heavy)

[pauly meatballs]

Hi Everyone,
A few pics and words on the Smok Caterpillar Rebuildable Dripping Atomiser.
I bought this device from Smokecloud for £12.99. It arrived the next day in perfect condition, in a little box and with a little sweetie.

This device is a 22mm tri-post RDA with adjustable airflow. It came with a drip tip and fitted with a dual coil. I'm a little light on the details for this review as smok haven't told us much. The vendor has contacted them re: materials and has been informed that there's no lead in any of the components of the device. He is awaiting further details.

Lets have a look at the device broken down:

The drip tip is quite smart, appears to be stainless steel:

Lets have a look at the topcap: It appears to be made of stainless steel with a gold coloured band around the middle. This band turns to expose or conceal the airholes, here it is fully open: A lung inhale is possible at this setting for anyone seeking to chase clouds.

Here it is in its tightest setting, with only a single airhole exposed:

Was kinda expecting 2 sets of these holes as the dripper is advertised as dual coil but we only get the 1 set. I guess dual coils are still do-able but for me that mean single coils only with this device.


The topcap is pretty big and solid, tried several drip tips with this RDA and they all fit fine:

And now the deck:

Nice big drip well, the base of the deck appears to be steel. Not sure about the posts and the screws are painted gold.

I gave the topcap a wee polish and inadvertantly removed most of the gold paint from the airflow control band:

Whipped up a quick and easy coil. 4 wraps of 0.30 kanthal round 3 pieces of 3mm silica.

Checked my resistance on a variable voltage device (don't skip this part if you're new to this - safety first!) Came to 0.8 ohms. This build is well within the safety range of the batteries I'm using, (make sure you research sub-ohm vaping safely before you attempt a build like this).


Checked my coils were glowing evenly:

Nice! I wet those wicks with a little boba's bounty and fired 'er up:

That seems to be working fine.
Here's the dripper on a few different mods:

And here it is next to a trident clone for a size comparison:

Performance:


Not bad. Decent flavour. Wasn't expecting this device to give amazing flavour due to that huge topcap and it doesn't but it's perfectly acceptable. Producing plenty of vapour. The airflow control works well.


Verdict:


A low priced, original design 22mm RDA with a well functioning airflow control.


Thanks for reading, have a great day,
Paul

 

[vaporsizer]

Thanks for the info Pauly. Another odd one in the budget range then, wonder why they made it with the air flow like that. Am i missing a trick ?

 

[RicModMaker]

Thanks Paul. I can't imagine what they were thinking with one set of airholes. Defo no no for me. I appreciate the info. Great review. ;-)

 

[jeffhds]

I picked one of these up from the local B&M shop, and it has duel air holes other than that looks the same, guess theres both out there

 

[pauly meatballs]

I picked one of these up from the local B&M shop, and it has duel air holes other than that looks the same, guess theres both out there

Hmm. Wonder if SmokeCloud can illuminate us on this? I would have thought the dual air hole option would be more popular. Not too bothered personally, got plenty enough dual coil thingies gathering dust!

 

[steve_jrb]

Thanks Paul great review...I thinking I'm adding this to the to-buy-list because it seems decent and is a good price

 

[vaporsizer]

I picked one of these up from the local B&M shop, and it has duel air holes other than that looks the same, guess theres both out there

Well hello ! What going on there then ? Which shop was that ?

 

[jeffhds]

He's just down the road in sheffield. Vapevendor.co.uk he hasn't put them on the site yet though. Got my 1st ever e-cig from him about 3 years ago.

 

[pauly meatballs]

Was given the idea to try 2 coils side by side to take advantage of that long line of airholes. If you position them quite close together you can get good airflow over both coils.
Whipped up a couple of microcoils, 10 wraps of 0.30 kanthal round a 2mm screwdriver. Juiced up with some Raspberry Dodgers by Vapingking.

That's made a definite improvement on flavour.

 

[SmokeCloud]

Hmm. Wonder if @SmokeCloud can illuminate us on this? I would have thought the dual air hole option would be more popular. Not too bothered personally, got plenty enough dual coil thingies gathering dust!

We certainly don't know of a dual air hole version of the Caterpillar and it was not available when we got these ones, that's not to say it isn't now of course....

I'll make enquiries with them as if there is a dual air hole version we would definitely look at them for the next batch.