Hippovape VSS RBA for Artery Pal (+others)
Today we looking at the Hippovape VSS RBA, which is a rebuildable coil head that is compatible with the Artery Pal pod kits, and any other pod or tank which uses aspire BVC style coil heads for that matter
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by Antony Lord
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Hippovape VSS RBA for Artery Pal (+others)
Today I’m looking at something I stumbled across almost by accident, the Hippovape VSS RBA which is a rebuildable coil head that is compatible with the Artery Pal pod kits, and any other pod or tank which uses aspire BVC style coil heads for that matter. Looking online showed very little information about it, hippovapes own webpage simply shows a picture of the box for example, but fortunately it’s already in stock at ecigone here in the U.K. for £7.99 so in the basket it went and it arrived two days later, excellent service from ecigone as always.
It comes packaged in a small cardboard box showing the RBA on the front and a list of contents on the back.
Inside there are two sealed plastic bags which contain the RBA, a spare o-ring and screws, and a handy little 510 adapter plus the infamous blue screwdriver.
As you would expect, the RBA is the same size as the artery pal coils (well, duh!)... it’s tiny, and unscrewing the top reveals an even smaller build deck. I’m suddenly filled with dread, have I bitten off more than I can chew here?
The Build
The initial build didn’t go too well, I tried a 2.5mm inner diameter (i.d.) coil only to realize that it wouldn’t work as it was sat above the screws and would make contact with the top of the chamber. Having realized my goof and that the coil would need to fit with a “legs up/coil down” orientation in between the posts, I got out my coilmaster jig and determined that the only size coil I was going to fit in here would be a 1.5mm i.d. If you’re thinking of micro Clapton’s I’m afraid that you’re probably out of luck!
With the appropriate coil size determined, I screwed the coil base into the supplied 510 adapter. This is a massive boon as it means you can later pinch and strum the coil on a mod to work out any hotspots later on. Fitting the coil, even in this configuration, was shall we say challenging! There are handy ledges on the posts to help capture the wire but at this scale it’s definitely on the fiddly side of things so if you have poor eyesight, shaky hands or a general lack of patience, you may want to stick to stock coils. I eyeballed the wick length and then screwed the top cap back in place. Unfortunately at this point my ohms changed, bugger I must have something touching the barrel… you need to clip those wires ultra close and in the end I even took a screwdriver to the coil legs and pushed them up slightly to make sure there would be no shorts… success finally, a 0.5 Ohm ss316L micro coil installed and working.
The next step was to put a few drops of eliquid on the coil and wick, unscrew everything from the 510 adapter and install it my artery pal 2 pro which I reviewed recently.
Performance
So the next question is how does she vape? Well about the same as a stock coil. I’m using the above build at 14 watts and it’s wicking well with plenty of bubbles being produced from the wicking ports and decent flavour, pushing it to 17 watts, it starts to dry hit after a few pulls though. I also tried it in my older first generation artery pal 2 as well with good results.
Conclusion
So now to the million dollar question, would I recommend this RBA? Yes, but with a few reservations. Be prepared for a challenging build with a round wire coil and don’t be expecting to win any cloud comps. I would definitely say this leans more towards the mouth to lung crowd although you can just about get a restricted lung vape from it! This is definitely a good purchase if you have any of the many pod systems that use this style of coil but hate shelling out for stock coils and it is a happy addition to my arsenal.
Antony Lord
Reviewer at POTVI was a twenty a day smoker for 25 years and like most smokers I was always going to quit "next week". Having hit my mid forties and having the usual smokers cough and difficulty with anything more than moderate exercise it was obviously time to give up the cancer sticks. I bought my first e-cigarette in 2013 when they were expensive, difficult to find and quite frankly... crap. I used it for about a week then went back to the roll ups, mark up another failed quit attempt. The fact that I had just changed jobs and was under quite a lot of stress probably didn't help. Move on to 2016 and whilst I was browsing eBay I noticed that one of the suggested items that would occasionally pop up was for a cheap e-cigarette. It looked similar to the one I'd bought 3 years earlier but it was only £5 (about 8 times cheaper than before) so I decided to give it another go on a whim. Once the kit arrived I managed to gradually replace the cigarettes with my new kit over a two month period and got into watching YouTube reviews for newer kit. My cheap and cheerful kit was replaced by a more upmarket affair, and being a noob I made a mistake once it arrived... I put in the supplied direct lung coil, this was of course a complete revelation and I haven't touched a cigarette since. Oh and I no longer spend the first five minutes of every day having a coughing fit either.
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