Back when I was still paying attention to this stuff stabwood mods were a new-ish rarity and you only saw them on $500+ small batch mods. I definitely had stabwood envy that I never indulged.
So when I was updating my vape gear recently and saw that I could get a stabwood Lustro for around $120 shipped I had to get one. I got two in fact. One copper and one brass. This was especially appealing to me because I have a thing for bronze wristwatches. The copper one looks closer to bronze, and is a little tougher to mate with an rta. I went with the coffee resin Manta and it looks good. The brass one I stuck a gold Fatality M25 on, and that is perfect as the gold Fatality is of the non-shiny type and matches the mod about perfectly. If you had the latest version of the QP Design Kali kit you'd be good to go for either Lustro, as that comes with copper and gold bodies. I keep an rda around for dialing in recipes, but for everyday vaping I prefer an rta. I vaped 306s for years so I am always going to lean toward a restricted DL style over wide open and airy. Plus for me I think the smaller chambers on rtas tend to produce more saturated flavor. Lastly, I'm not into clouds. Vaping 75w on an rta already fogs up my house plenty, which is annoying but the price I'll pay to vape. I hate wiping everything down to remove all the vg, especially the tv screen which is a real pita.
I'm a chain vaper, so these are the last 2x18650 mods I'll ever buy. 3x18650 and 2x21700 work better for me as often as I have to switch batteries.
So these Lustros. The wood and metal bits are mated nicely with no big gaps or anything else alarming. They don't look like $500 mods, but neither do some $500 mods. The wood is lovely. Overall in the department of fit and finish, these mods punch way above their selling price.
The firmware. Jesus this firmware. This shit is broken. The touchscreen functionality _barely_ works, and the first thing I do is disable the swipe for power adjustment because not doing so will absolutely ruin your day. I will never update the firmware on these, because if this firmware was any more broken than it is, these mods would be unusable. The good news is, if you're like me and you only vape wattage and never mess with TC, once you go in and adjust the settings the way you want, you'll never have to deal with how broken this firmware is again. So after the initial frustration of fighting these boxes to set them up, everything works. My build resistance doesn't jump all over the place during the life of the build. They read all my attys. They use batteries the way you would expect your mod to use batteries. So the meat and potatoes of the firmware is fine, once you get past setting them up. I can't speak to the TC stuff because I don't use it. The only thing missing for me that I wish it would do is that this firmware doesn't tell you how many amps your build is pulling at the power you're vaping at. Not a dealbreaker, but since every other mod I ever owned told me I miss it here. The front LED thingie can be disabled, but since it doesn't seem to impact battery life significantly and it's fairly unobtrusive I left it on.
I'm not doing anything on these Lustros I couldn't do on any $40 Chinese mod, so is the $80 upcharge worth it for the stabwood? Yeah for me it is. I cheaply scratched an itch for stabwood with these two. They really are lovely mods for the price I paid. They feel great in the hand and vape well.
So when I was updating my vape gear recently and saw that I could get a stabwood Lustro for around $120 shipped I had to get one. I got two in fact. One copper and one brass. This was especially appealing to me because I have a thing for bronze wristwatches. The copper one looks closer to bronze, and is a little tougher to mate with an rta. I went with the coffee resin Manta and it looks good. The brass one I stuck a gold Fatality M25 on, and that is perfect as the gold Fatality is of the non-shiny type and matches the mod about perfectly. If you had the latest version of the QP Design Kali kit you'd be good to go for either Lustro, as that comes with copper and gold bodies. I keep an rda around for dialing in recipes, but for everyday vaping I prefer an rta. I vaped 306s for years so I am always going to lean toward a restricted DL style over wide open and airy. Plus for me I think the smaller chambers on rtas tend to produce more saturated flavor. Lastly, I'm not into clouds. Vaping 75w on an rta already fogs up my house plenty, which is annoying but the price I'll pay to vape. I hate wiping everything down to remove all the vg, especially the tv screen which is a real pita.
I'm a chain vaper, so these are the last 2x18650 mods I'll ever buy. 3x18650 and 2x21700 work better for me as often as I have to switch batteries.
So these Lustros. The wood and metal bits are mated nicely with no big gaps or anything else alarming. They don't look like $500 mods, but neither do some $500 mods. The wood is lovely. Overall in the department of fit and finish, these mods punch way above their selling price.
The firmware. Jesus this firmware. This shit is broken. The touchscreen functionality _barely_ works, and the first thing I do is disable the swipe for power adjustment because not doing so will absolutely ruin your day. I will never update the firmware on these, because if this firmware was any more broken than it is, these mods would be unusable. The good news is, if you're like me and you only vape wattage and never mess with TC, once you go in and adjust the settings the way you want, you'll never have to deal with how broken this firmware is again. So after the initial frustration of fighting these boxes to set them up, everything works. My build resistance doesn't jump all over the place during the life of the build. They read all my attys. They use batteries the way you would expect your mod to use batteries. So the meat and potatoes of the firmware is fine, once you get past setting them up. I can't speak to the TC stuff because I don't use it. The only thing missing for me that I wish it would do is that this firmware doesn't tell you how many amps your build is pulling at the power you're vaping at. Not a dealbreaker, but since every other mod I ever owned told me I miss it here. The front LED thingie can be disabled, but since it doesn't seem to impact battery life significantly and it's fairly unobtrusive I left it on.
I'm not doing anything on these Lustros I couldn't do on any $40 Chinese mod, so is the $80 upcharge worth it for the stabwood? Yeah for me it is. I cheaply scratched an itch for stabwood with these two. They really are lovely mods for the price I paid. They feel great in the hand and vape well.