Reewape RUOK Rba
In for review today is the RUOK rba which is an interesting Nord compatible RBA head from Reewape!
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by Antony Lord
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Reewape RUOK Rba for Nord
Recently I stumbled across an interesting looking rba head for Nord compatible Pod/aio systems and after getting in contact with Reewape, they kindly agreed to send out a unit for me to test.
The RUOK rba comes in a small cardboard box with a prominent photo of the rba system on the front, a brief description and scratch ‘n’ sniff authentication code on the back, and social media links on the side. Inside the box are two plastic baggies, one containing the rba head itself and the second with a 510 adapter, blue screwdriver and spare o-rings and screws.
The rba head is fairly small, as you would expect, with a large RUOK logo on one side, two wicking ports and a small black dot on the reverse and a positive pin held in place with a screw on the underside. The black dot on the top section is there to help you line everything up once you’ve assembled your build, it indicates the position of a small lug inside the bell cap that twists into place in a small groove on the deck section. Removing the top section reveals a small two post deck with a single airflow hole. The base of the build deck has two airflow slots and two slightly flattened edges just like a nord coil, but it is also threaded which allows you to screw it into the 510 adapter from the second bag.
For my first build I thought I’d keep things fairly simple so I thought I’d install a 2mm inner diameter round wire build. Lifting the screws in the posts reveals two decent sized post holes considering the small size of the rba head, but you’re obviously not going to get monster builds like a staple staggered fused clapton in here. Smaller, simpler builds are definitely the order of the day. Coil installed, the screws hold everything in place nicely with no unexpected clipping of wire going on which you can often get with this sort of thing so a big plus point on build quality on that front. You’ll need to clip the wire as close to those posts as you can, there’s not a lot of wiggle room round back between the posts and the bell cap.
The included 510 adapter, of course, means that you can pulse your coils to work out any hotspots, check the final resistance and test for any shorts. It also means that you can use contact coils and also dry burn and reuse your coils when needed.
I wicked it up with a 45 degree cut as shown and then installed the top hardware.
Now for the moment of truth, how does it perform. For this part I decided to use my SMOK RPM 40 with the Nord pod as this would allow me to control the wattage for this first run. Installation is exactly the same as a stock coil, simply press fit from the bottom. My build came out to 0.78 ohms, and after some initial gurgling which I suspect was down to me over saturating the wick, everything settled down nicely. 25 watts seemed to be the sweet spot for this build and I discovered the RUOK rba has a surprisingly open airflow. Flavour was good but nothing mind-blowing. I was also experiencing some leaking as well.
Lessons learned, I returned to the RUOK rba the next day with a slightly more adventurous second build, a small 2mm inner diameter clapton! (0.38mm core, 0.1mm wrap in ss316L) This was a little more tricky to install as the claptoning was catching on the post holes. After a couple of minutes of jiggery pokery though, I did manage to get it installed. For the wicking this time I tried the bow tie and pancake technique.
Back to the RPM 40, the coil came out to 0.43 ohms and this was instantly better than the simple contact coil with bags of flavour anywhere between 28 and 32 watts. There’s a decent amount of cloud production as well. Once again there’s a bit of gurgling initially and a teensy bit of leaking from the rba but I’m able to chain vape on this build with no hint of a dry hit.
For the third run, I decided to keep my clapton build as I was quite happy with this and wanted to address two other issues, the slightly loose fit of the RUOK rba in the pod and the wicking.
Removing the lower and upper o-rings from both the RUOK rba and a used Nord coil revealed that the authentic o-rings are a little beefier than the ones supplied on the RUOK as shown below (RUOK o-rings on the left, authentic stock coil on the right).
First of all I tried replacing just the lower o-ring but this was a no go as the rba would no longer fit into the pod. Replacing the two upper o-rings though has worked marvels, and the RUOK rba now fits in place quite securely, problem one solved. Reewape may just want to look at beefing the o-rings up on future runs, or you can of course simply do what I have and use some o-rings from a used authentic coil.
For the wicking I tried a slight variant on what I’d done the day before:
- Line the scissors up with the base of the 510 adapter
- Angle the scissors in towards the top of the coil and cut
- Saturate the wick and again apply the pancake technique
- Assemble the top hardware
This seemed to do the trick, no more gurgling or leaking. Again it performs well between 28 and 32 watts and holds up to chain vaping.
Compatible pod systems
One thing that surprised me when I first looked at the RUOK rba section on Reewapes website was the list of Nord compatible pod systems, I hadn’t realized there are so many:
- Smok Nord pod .
- Smok RPM nord pod
- Smok Fetch mini Nord pod
- Volta AIO kit
- Blitz realm kit
- Smok vape pen
- Smok trinity pod
- Hotcig marvel pod
- Oukitel mate
- Oukitel bison
- Dovpo peaks
- Lusty nevoks
- Nikola antares
I myself have three of the kits on the list, the original Nord, the Trinity Alpha and the RPM40, so how does the RUOK rba perform on these systems.
- The RPM40 gave me the best results because you can fine tune wattage and it worked perfectly with the supplied Nord pod that comes in the kit.
- On the original Nord performance was good but not quite as enjoyable as on the RPM40 because of the lack of power adjustment. You could compensate for this though by trying different builds until you find your sweet spot.
- The Trinity alpha stubbornly refused to work showing an atomizer short error. I was able to get it working intermittently with the pod only part way installed which is obviously less than ideal, but the rba gave good flavour with my build on the medium and high settings when I could get it to work!
Pros
- Easy to build 2 post design
- 510 adapter so you can check and dry burn your builds
- Great airflow for a restricted lung hit vape
- Works with a wide range of Nord compatible aio systems
Cons
- Top o-rings too loose, but fixable by using o-rings from authentic coil
- Too airy if you want a mouth to lung experience
- May not work with all the systems listed (e.g. smok trinity alpha)
Conclusion
One question that’s likely to be asked is should you get the RUOK rba instead of SMOKs official RPM40 rba. Yes absolutely, the RUOK wins out every time simply because it works with a wider range of pod systems and because it has a 510 adapter which means you can check and clean your coils properly.
If you have any of the Nord compatible pod systems but hate being tied to stock coils then the RUOK rba kit is an essential purchase. It’s inexpensive, fairly easy to build especially if you’ve had any experience on small rba decks from the past, I’ve been getting pretty good results out of mine and fully expect to be using it for some time to come.
Many thanks to Reewape for sending the RUOK rba out for review. Also keep an eye on the reviews section because they have also sent out the RUOK Ghost mech mod for review as well.
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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