VT200

It was a fun day yesterday. My friend who also runs the place I stay at in Kota Bharu got my VTbox200 sold for a fair price in less then 12 hours. Took the cash, added and few more bills to the pile and bought the Hcigar VT200. Put an Ni200 atty on it and off she went... Just like the VT40 I sold to him - easy - easy peasy. Hooked it up to my new gen iPad charger last night and she's good to go this morning.

Gorgeous? Yes. Fit's in Clint's small hands? Yes. 18560's? Nope. Any complaints about fit/finish, racing stripes included? Nope. Lighter than the VTbox? Oh yeah. Wondering about battery longevity on a single charge after a little bit more than over a day and half from the Vtbox200? Yup; we'll certainly find out today. My three mods: VT200, Sx Mini M, IPV D2 and all small-hand user friendly.

Was having a serious case of fat fingers and no eyesight last night while trying to wind Ti coils for a TVF4/TF-R2 and decided it was a long day, don't force it, read here some more about winding them and take another whack at it after coffee this morning. Drill is on the charger. Clint is on the java. The Ti wire thread was my bedtime story. Lots of interesting bits and pieces of wisdom there. I'm psyched to see if the drill twist will relieve some of the obstinate springiness of the Ti 28g wire. Been doing fine with a simple graduated winding pin for Ni200, but the Ti 28g was giving me fits last night. And... we be goin' desk lamp shopping today. The lack of contrast between the wire, the deck and the mounting screw slots on the R2? Virtually indistinguishable in the ambient lighting out front on the patio. Might also have to break down and invest in a coil winding tool if I'm going to stick with Ti.

I did a Ti build on the Goblin Mini the other day when I got it and the flavor 'cleanliness' upgrade from Ni200 was immediately apparent. And at my modest settings, I seriously doubt that that I'll be BBQing anything over my flaming Ti-built attys any time soon. And yes, a small bottle of rubbing alcohol and some extra Kleenex made a big difference in how quickly I could pulse off the residual superficial gunk on the wire; like, next to nil. Surprising how much contamination is on the surface of a new spool of wire. Little 28g black lines of it on the Kleenex.

The VT200 works straight out of the box. Yes, there's that power setting in Escribe for the battery that needs to be changed. I'll see if my friend will let me download Escribe to his PC at the front desk and go in and change it as suggested, but I hit the Go button last night and off she went. My unit did not ask the customary "New coil/old coil" question like my VT40, but it may have had to do with the battery being less than half charged when I got it. See what happens today.

Scratchy: Did yours arrive yet???

 

Mine's arriving today.

My spool of 24 ga Ti-1 is quite a bit dirtier than the 26 ga I have.

 

Up and running. Official start time on the VT200 fully charged: 1345, 5.11.2015. Battery life? Only time will tell. The flavor from the successfully-wound, mounted and wicked Ti coils is very clean indeed. Happy about all of it. Mmm... Dr. Brew Rude Beer juice. Airy, yet dense, simultaneously.

 

Got mine charging. One nice thing is that it already had the Watt hours adjustment plugged in. Will upload pic in vapemail thread later.

 

It's official. Granted, I did go to sleep at some point last night, but the VT200 went through a full 24 hour period before the low battery message began to blink. My best guess-timate was about 15 hours of vaping at my modest settings. Dang... if that ain't cool... Lighter than the SX Mini M, no 18650's, no "one year warrantee on the unit, but only 3 months on the USB port" coupled to "internally charging the battery via the USB cable is not advisable" (Yihi, are you listening?). Psyched.

Hey Scratchy? How's it working out for you?

 

Sorry, just saw your question, @ckapp . Mine's been running very nicely. One thing I have found is that the battery is indeed of lower capacity than HCigar advertises. My guess is that its about 1,000 or 1,100 mAh at most. With the battery capacity set to 14.43 Watt hours, it hit the 3.09 V cut-off with about 18% battery capacity remaining. Now, it's been stated that a few full recharge cycles should improve battery life some but I doubt up to 14.43. I plan to do another set of running it down all the way and then fully recharging and seeing if it improves any and then wil adjust the Watt hours to something more accurate. Maybe around 12 Watt hours.

Still, plenty of life for my usage and that became apparent while I was trying to use it much more as a primary mod to check battery performance and it took me more than a day and a half to deplete it. It wasn't the only mod used in that time but used much more than I normally would use a single mod. Probably 80 to 90% of my vaping time during that period.

Absolutely love the DNA200 chipset. The power delivery and temp regulation is just so smooth compared to anything else I have. Next up, a multi-18650 DNA200 mod.

 

Yes. I agree with you and I think (although it's been a while now) that everything about the DNA200 is more seamless in terms of power delivery and smoothness than the DNA40. My only gripe with Evolve's DNA chipsets comes with the Escribe app. No OSX compatibility? C'mon... seriously? After all, we're headed towards 2016 and Apple's operating system is well beyond being a fringe-dweller.

And then we get into YiHi's inclusion of most everything found in Escribe, but local to the chipset itself. Right out of the box, both boards are very easy to navigate and adjust, just to get up and running, thus making it easy for a beginner to enjoy these honkers right out of the box. I just can't connect my brain to a WinTel box to adjust my VT200, so I eek along with the menu system and just get blown away by the sheer performance by the DNA200.

Admittedly, I love what Yihi designs and produces, right down to the diminutive SX130-chipped IPV D2. I've had a very nice rapport with YiHi, complimenting them for demonstrating the elegance and foresight regarding its profiling inclusions on-chip and options in the menus. And with their latest firmware update, the SX350J is good to go to 150 watts now. If they'd just extend the existing case on the SX Mini M a tad more to house a triple LiPo pack like the VT, I think they'd give the DNA200-chipped devices a bit of a run for the money. In one of their replies to me, they just about hinted that something like this is in the works... Looking forward to making the jaunt to Shenzhen in the spring

But, like you, the VT is the all-day carry most of the time now. The Mini fills in the blanks when the VT is charging, but I still enjoy carrying the Mini too and leave the VT at home. I'm seeing the best performance of any previous coiling configs with both devices in keeping with simple, single-strand 28g Ti 9-wrap spaced coils at 2.5mm with the SC/RDTA/V's. Like trying to decide whether to drive the Mercedes or the BMW. Such cool machines, these...

 

I agree with you,this unit gives me the smoothest most consistent vape compared to my 11 other mods

 

Golly... 11? Love to see what's in your garage I thought I was OCD with 3 mods, kinda like S, M & L.

**Updated**

Kinda like all the kids and their battery banks for their phones. You'll wind up with a cube-like bulge in one of your pockets and a USB cable wrapped around your neck. Oh... Nikola Tesla; why did your wireless power transmission get killed by Westinghouse, et al? Can you imagine the possibilities with that one for mods? Fascinating...

 

I might be a "Gear"o"holic!

 

Got That Right

There's a 12 step program for that: "I'm powerless over vaping junk and my life has become unmanageable".

 

My battery died around 11-12% vaping @ 70w/0.19ohm.

Next time I'll see about reducing the power when the "low battery" warning appears.

 

VapnFagan was pretty clear about slim battery life at the higher wattages given the small-ish LiPo's. And after making a joke with Scratchy, I thought about it some more... Those USB battery banks would really come in handy for some folks. There are battery banks which pocket very nicely and I don't think that a USB cable would be that obtrusive if you needed some more power. I just have no idea about the power delivery capabilities of those things and if the VT200 has a pass-through feature. Could be something interesting to ask Hcigar if you had the inclination...

 

Battery life is fine for me. The Sigelei 150 used to die around 30% at similar settings (unless I reduced power).

It does have pass through.

 

At 14.43Wh the battery is dead at 12%, reducing power has no affect.

The only negative I can give this mod is with the board itself, the wattage adjustment is painful due to the speed it moves after a few watts. iStick 20w had the best adjustment of any mod I have used lol.