Astral
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- Aug 4, 2020
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Innokin Ares 2 LE [D22].
If the ethos of a company can be determined by the way it treats people, then Innokin stands head and shoulders above the rest.
From the moment Lexi at Innokin first spoke to me about testing their new Ares 2 Limited Edition D22 tank they were nothing but exemplary with me. Every communication was kind and courteous, and in fact, their manners were impeccable.
It's for that very reason I chose to open on this subject. I felt that if the excellence with which they treated me extends to the way they treat their customers, or perhaps the quality of their products then this company might be one worthy of more praise.
It's with this in mind that I faced a bit of a quandary.
What if the product they sent me wasn't very good? What if in fact it was actually rubbish and not in the same league as their manners? Would I have to bag on the very people who had just been so nice to me?
After-all, a duff product is not something I could hide. People would know regardless of my writings, and I'd lose all respect for myself and that of my readers - and anybody who's ever read any of my other musings will know how much I value my self-respect and integrity. It's something I put above all else. Honour and integrity, both on my part and those I do business with. It would go against every fibre of my being not to say something.
So what would it be then? Would I be able to continue with my praise for Innokin, or would I have to bag on those people who hadn't done anything to deserve it?
Thankfully, I'm pleased to say it's mostly the former, and the product they sent me was mostly excellent. It almost matched their standards of service too - but we'll come to quite why it didn't in due course.
But before we go into all that, I have a little confession to make. Actually I have two - and I'd like to tell you why they're particularly relevant to the product Innokin has sent me.
The first of these confessions is that I've never actually written a review before. The second is that I've never even used this kind of tank before, so both of these experiences are new to me and make me an ideal candidate for this product's target audience as a beginners one.
What they've sent me is a tank they've called the Ares 2 D22 Limited Edition, and it's a 22mm Rebuildable Tank Atomiser (RTA) that you coil and wick yourself with the provided tooling, and aimed directly at first timers like me. So my inexperience here makes me an ideal person to try it out on, and hopefully find out its and my limitations.
The tank itself is a striped down version of the standard Ares 2, with all the knurling, decoration and many of the decals removed, giving it a cleaner, sleeker look and a nice smooth, tactile feel.
It comes tightly packaged in a compact little box with everything you need to build your own unique set-up, including the cotton, two pre-made coils, some wire, a spare glass, an o-ring kit, it's tooling and a set of instructions - and here lies the only real gripe I have with this product - namely with the packaging and the peripherals.
My feeling here is that the packaging of this tank is inadequate and that everything is squashed too tightly into the box. It's easy to imagine this level of under packaging could easily lead to breakages in transit and also makes for problems when trying to repack it later when putting some of the parts away.
All of my other experiences with this tank were generally positive, with the possible exception of the instruction sheet being a little insufficient and only two short pages long.
This comes in a poster style and probably doesn't offer enough detail for a beginner like me and seems generally a little bit inadequate.
There are many videos online showing you how to build the tank, including ones from Phil Busardo and Dimitrtris Agrafiotis, the tank's own designers, but I really think people shouldn't have to resort to external sources and should be able to do it entirely on the information provided, and for the purpose of this review I wanted to do it just like that so I would have the truest possible experience.
Other than that, my experience with this tank was all excellent, and everything went swimmingly and much smoother than expected.
Once I plucked up the courage to attempt my first build I was surprised at how easy it all was.
Everything came apart as shown in the exploded diagrams and I managed to wick and coil the tank's build deck as described.
I started with one of the pre-made coils which came in at 1.03 Ohms once tested and didn't attempt to make any of my own coils with the provided wire and the vainly named 'Phil's and Dimi's' tools.
Oddly, nowhere in the instructions does it actually tell you what these tools are, but after looking it up I can tell you 'Phil's build tool' is a 2.5 and 3mm inner diameter contact coil winding tool and 'Dimi's build tool' is a spaced coil build jig of an unspecified diameter, offering coiling in both left and right handed directions which could be useful later on.
Most of the other tools are pretty straight forward, with the possible exception of the Torx T2 star headed screwdriver that's used for removing the lid. This is a throwback to Innokin's own excellent Zlide tank, where they also used it, but perhaps not wanting people to disassemble it, didn't include it in the kit. Goodness knows why they choose to use it here though. If you lose the screwdriver you're going to be stuck, or at least have to buy another one. It's not something you're likely to have lying around.
Even more strangely, my pre-made coils were wound in the opposite direction to those shown in the diagrams, so I had to put them in legs down rather than up as shown. I don't know if this made a difference to anything but it's something I needed to note.
Other than that everything went together pretty much as shown in the pictures and all the tools did the job they were supposed to.
Once together, all I needed to do was saturate the wick with my favourite liquid and reinsert the wicked deck into the bell housing, all of which went in with no trouble at all.
A few moments later, once reassembled I removed the child proof drip tip, slid back the lid to reveal the membrane covered fill port, and simply inserted my e-liquid bottle into the letterbox style fill flap and squeezed away. The fill was a clean process and didn't take long. The tank was soon full and I encountered no leaking or oozing from anywhere. I'm also pleased to say it remained bone dry afterwards too.
All that was needed now was a mod to put it on, and for the purposes of this review, and for continuity's sake I chose my trusty Gen Nano, as I already knew this mod inside out and exactly how it performs.
So I screwed on the 510, set the load as 'new', and tentatively pressed the fire button.
It was good! The vapour was all present and correct.
I took my first drag and my lungs were caressed with a warm, smooth vapour that brought great satisfaction. The flavour was full and rounded and to be honest rejuvenated a flavour profile in my favourite juice that I had long since forgotten about. It was almost like a new flavour in itself as well as an old friend. I was well happy.
The draw was smooth, quiet and with no discernible bubbling, gurgling, or noise. In fact the only noise I got was the reassuring sound of the coil crackling like a warm winter log fire.
It wasn't all perfect though. I encountered a few dry hits in the first few days and almost choked myself at times. This was more likely down to my own poor wicking technique and inexperience rather than anything the tank had done though, but I will disassemble it again later to have a look on once the juice has depleted again just to make sure.
So as for the time being the Ares 2 will be staying atop my Gen Nano, and it's going to be there for the discernible future. I see no reason to take it off as it's easily now the best tank I own.
I rank it even slightly higher than Innokin's own imperious Stock Zlide tank - my previous favourite, and that's something I never thought I'd say lightly, but right now it really is the only other tank I'd use. It's certainly going to take something pretty special to beat them.
So all I can really say here is "well done Innokin".
They've achieved their objective in building an excellently performing tank even a novice like me can construct.
The only problem I have now is that it’s induced a desire in me to buy more mods to put it on - the so-called "Shiny-Itus" infliction. I guess I’ll just have to show restraint for a while and hold myself back. Thanks Innokin!
All in all I'd like to conclude this review by thanking Innokin for providing this Ares 2 tank for review - and by ranking it very highly.
Veterans will tell you it's all a bit basic - and they're probably right - but I'm not a veteran, I'm a novice, and for that purpose the tank performed impeccably and did exactly what it was supposed to do.
It's also opened up a whole new world of rebuildable tank atomisers to me that I'll be forever grateful for and I'm going to enjoy enormously.
I can wholly recommend this tank and it's building experience to anybody who wants to get into this world, and can genuinely say the only real drawbacks I encountered were the under-boxing and limited instruction sheet, but if you can get past those and are open to little light work for your vaping experience, this is an excellent place to start, and you can't really go wrong.
Conclusion.
Pros: ease of use, ease of assembly, airflow and general performance, quietness in use, range and smoothness of draw, inclusion of spares including complete tool kit, 2 coils, wire, cotton and a spare glass.
Cons: Insufficient instructions for beginners, under-boxed and under-packed leaving potential for unnecessary breakages in transit. Induces 'Shiny-itus' and the desire to buy more mods.
Disclosure.
Innokin provided me with this free test kit for the purposes of review and made no payments, inducements or demands on it's content
The review is completely unrelated to the 'Planet Of the Vapes Form' and entirely my own opinions.
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