Norseman Mech
Member For 4 Years
I received this Crius RDA free of charge from Cigabuy for the purpose of this review. Regardless of this, it will not color my opinion on this review in any way, shape or form.
Packaging
This RDA comes in the well known packaging from OBS. It is a rectangular box with a picture of the Crius RDA on the front, on one side you will find the scratch and sniff and on the other QR-codes to OBS Instagram and Facebook. On the backside you will find measurements, what the package contain and the color on the RDA.
Inside it has this yellow box looking like a drawer where the RDA and a small box containing the spares resides. I really like the presentation you get when you buy an OBS RDA.
The RDA
The Crius is a 3-piece RDA with the deck, airflow sleeve and top cap as the three parts. The one I got is black and just looking at it I must say that it looks really good. The engravings on the black airflow sleeve brings out the aluminum and it looks neat.
The machining on all parts look really good but I am sorry to say that the o-rings that holds the airflow sleeve barely manages to hold it while they are dry and as soon as you get liquid on them they won’t be doing what they are intended to at all.
The airflow sleeve doesn’t sit good and I feel like it will fall off just by me looking at it the wrong way. The top cap however does sit snug so they have at least managed to do something right with some o-rings. Good thing is that the deck and the airflow sleeve both got cut outs and notches that fits together which ensures that the airflow sleeve doesn’t rotate and end up sitting in all kinds of direction besides the intended.
Yet again I ask myself how hard it can be to do some beta testing and make sure that the o-rings do what they are intended to do…
The deck is something that does resemble the DOTRDA deck and it is gold plated and I can imagine that the conductivity is really good. It is a single post thingy and the white in the middle is high tech zirconia and work as the insulator and the contact points are on the top and bottom. Zirconia is apparently really hard and corrosion resistant which is a good thing considering where it sits. You tighten down the legs on the coils with a single phillips head screw and the coils does sit tight and stays in place.
It got a 7 mm deep juice well and that should ensure that it holds a fair amount of liquid. Being a single post thingy means that you got plenty of room for fairly big coils and also room for a lot of cotton.
It is squonk ready and in order to use it on a squonk device you only have to take out the allen screw that sits in the 510 pin. Do that and you got a squonk RDA on your hands.
Building on this RDA is easy as pie and if you put one coil in it and cut the legs and do the same thing on the other coil, do that and all you have to do is to put both coils in and tighten it down and Bob is your uncle… Unfortunately for you single coil users this one isn’t for you since there is no way of turning off the airflow to suite a single coil.
It is built to have 810 drip tips and I have tried a few of the 810 drip tips that I have and they all sit snug in it. The attached drip tip however isn’t one of my favorites to be honest and I have been using the RDA with another drip tip in the time I have been using it.
The airflow on this one is what I would call top airflow and it has 4 cyclops slots which all are adjustable. The air then goes into the airflow sleeve which got another sleeve attached to the inside and let the air out in two cyclops slots in the middle of the sleeve. Good thing about this airflow is that it makes it almost leak proof since the air holes are sitting so high up.
Fully open it is really airy and it is really easy to adjust it to your liking. The airflow is smooth and it doesn’t make any noises what so ever. I have been rocking it with the airflow slots closed nearly half way and had a nice experience with it.
So does it deliver on flavor you might ask and all I can say to that is – yes… I have managed to get good flavor out of it and enjoyed it to be honest. It might not be great but good isn’t half bad and considering what I have gotten out of many other RDAs this one at least does what it is built for. And for you cloud junkies, it does also deliver on dense big clouds if that is your thing. You need however to be prepared to accept a loss in flavor if you go for clouds.
Assessment
All in all I must say that it is a good RDA that deliver on flavor. It is well built and of a high quality. Mayor con is the lower o-rings that barely is worth to be called o-rings the way they work. The o-ring issue can be solved with a bit bigger o-rings to ensure that the airflow sleeve sits snug. It does look good and is easy to build on and the one I got is hybrid safe and squonk ready.
Can I recommend it to others?
If you are in the market for a nice looking, easy to build RDA that has good flavor I can honestly say go for it. And since it is fairly priced that does help a lot as well.
Pros
Looks
Machining
7 mm deep juice well
Easy to build
Flavor
Squonk ready
Hybrid safe
Almost leak proof
Cons
O-rings
Parameters
Width: 24mm
Height: 38mm
Stainless, Black, Blue
Package includes
1 x Crius RDA
1 x Allen key
1 x Phillips screwdriver
2 x Clapton coils
2 x Spare o-rings
1 x Small sheet of cotton
1 x Manual
You will find it here
Crius RDA for $22.09 at the time I wrote the review.
Thanks for reading this far and Vape on!
Norseman