Introduction
There’s no need for ’wait till the end of the review to find out if...’ suspense building BS - the Dead Rabbit Solo RDA is a versatile single-coil flavor-banging RDA that is more than capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Nitrous RDA.
Product overview
First impressions
I was worried when I first saw this RDA, it looks tall and therefore too airy to work well as a restricted DL flavor-banger. Combine that concern with the fact that it comes with a 3.5mm coil, and I had visions of me having to run it fully open at 65w+ to get flavor from it.
As soon as I took of the top-cap, my initial concerns were all proven wrong. The main barrel of the RDA has an inner and outer section, something that Hellvape previously did with the Dead Rabbit Max. This results in narrow slot surrounding the coil, with airflow slammed right into the side of the coil. Looking at the barrel from the bottom, it looks very similar to the Nitrous, however from the top you can see that it’s a little more ingenious, as the airflow control is within the top-cap, not a ring on the outside.
Is the deck postless? Kinda. It has posts, but the screw is on the side and unlike the traditional Dead Rabbit posts, there’s no room underneath to trim the coils, they need to be pre-cut. So, I’ll go with postless.
The supplied drip-tip is far too low profile for me, I knew I wouldn’t like it before I tried it, I tried it and I still didn’t like it.
Build
The coil measurement tool is marked at 5mm, which works well for my build, but it will depend on a couple of factors. If you’re going to go with smaller or larger coils and if you’re planning to use the top airflow row or not 5mm might not be ideal. Either way, when I snipped my leads to 5mm and dropped the coil in, the bottom two rows of airflow holes lined up perfectly. That’s pretty much all you have to do for the coil, snip it, drop it in, align it and tighten everything up.
Wicking is about as easy it gets, I just used a chunk of cotton bacon cut long enough to just about touch the bottom of the juice well, thinned it out and stuffed it in there. I love wicking RDAs, it’s such a stress-free and simple process.
However, there is one thing to watch out with the wicking. If the tails of your wick are thinned a lot, after a while the wicking tends to move within the deck and can block a little of the airflow. Obvious solution: don’t thin the tails of your wicks too much and the wicks will stay in place without any issues.
How does it perform?
I really wanted to try a 4.0mm coil, but the only wire I keep nowadays is for MTL and I don’t have any prebuilt 4.0mm coils. I do have a couple of prebuilt 5.0mm fused claptons that I might try in the future.
Drip-tip
Swapping out drip-tips really helped to fine tune each build. When the airflow was fully open, an 810 drip-tip does really well, however once you start closing it down to one or two rows, using the 510 adapter and a 510 drip-tip makes the flavor pop a little more. As previously mentioned, the provided 810 drip-tip was too low-profile for me, but this is more of a personal preference than criticism.
Airflow
You can close down complete columns of airflow, but I didn’t find this useful – closing down the three rows one hole at a time is a much more effective way of adjustment, so that’s what I did, rotating the top-cap on this RDA is a more comfortable solution than the external ring on the Nitrous.
The airflow is smooth and relatively quiet, it’s quite typical of honeycomb airflow and gives anything from a very restricted DL to full DTL draw.
Drip or squonk
This RDA works really well as a squonk RDA, I found that when I dumped juice down the drip-tip, it got an inconsistent vape, I’d get a couple of far too juicy hits, a few decent hits and then almost nothing – painting the coil and dripping directly into the juice well was much nicer – but squonking is where it shines. The juice well is quite shallow, but with the top-cap in place the chances of over squonking are minimal.
Conclusion
The only con that I consider worth mentioning, is that it’s not as good as a dripper as it is as a squonk RDA. Apart from that, the Dead Rabbit Solo is pretty much amazing.
Is it better than the Nitrous? My personal take is that it’s better made and performs just as well with the correct build, and while it is more versatile than the Nitrous within the realms of single-coil builds, it lacks the dual-coil versatility that you have with the Nitrous.
Overall, it’s one of the best RDAs I’ve tried.
Disclaimer
The Dead Rabbit Solo RDA was provided for the purposes of this review by Hellvape.
There’s no need for ’wait till the end of the review to find out if...’ suspense building BS - the Dead Rabbit Solo RDA is a versatile single-coil flavor-banging RDA that is more than capable of standing toe-to-toe with the Nitrous RDA.
Product overview
- 22×32.8mm (including drip-tip)
- single-coil postless deck (more on that later)
- horizontally and vertically adjustable honeycomb airflow
- 810 drip-tip
- Dead Rabbit Solo RDA
- 1×0.4ohm Ni80 3.5mm coil + cotton
- 510 drip-tip adapter
- coil measuring tool
- spares
First impressions
I was worried when I first saw this RDA, it looks tall and therefore too airy to work well as a restricted DL flavor-banger. Combine that concern with the fact that it comes with a 3.5mm coil, and I had visions of me having to run it fully open at 65w+ to get flavor from it.
As soon as I took of the top-cap, my initial concerns were all proven wrong. The main barrel of the RDA has an inner and outer section, something that Hellvape previously did with the Dead Rabbit Max. This results in narrow slot surrounding the coil, with airflow slammed right into the side of the coil. Looking at the barrel from the bottom, it looks very similar to the Nitrous, however from the top you can see that it’s a little more ingenious, as the airflow control is within the top-cap, not a ring on the outside.
Is the deck postless? Kinda. It has posts, but the screw is on the side and unlike the traditional Dead Rabbit posts, there’s no room underneath to trim the coils, they need to be pre-cut. So, I’ll go with postless.
The supplied drip-tip is far too low profile for me, I knew I wouldn’t like it before I tried it, I tried it and I still didn’t like it.
Build
The coil measurement tool is marked at 5mm, which works well for my build, but it will depend on a couple of factors. If you’re going to go with smaller or larger coils and if you’re planning to use the top airflow row or not 5mm might not be ideal. Either way, when I snipped my leads to 5mm and dropped the coil in, the bottom two rows of airflow holes lined up perfectly. That’s pretty much all you have to do for the coil, snip it, drop it in, align it and tighten everything up.
Wicking is about as easy it gets, I just used a chunk of cotton bacon cut long enough to just about touch the bottom of the juice well, thinned it out and stuffed it in there. I love wicking RDAs, it’s such a stress-free and simple process.
However, there is one thing to watch out with the wicking. If the tails of your wick are thinned a lot, after a while the wicking tends to move within the deck and can block a little of the airflow. Obvious solution: don’t thin the tails of your wicks too much and the wicks will stay in place without any issues.
How does it perform?
- 3.0mm dual-core fused clapton - airflow fully open was too airy for this build, but with the bottom row of airflow holes open, and the middle either closed or half closed, it gave a nicely restricted DL draw. The flavor was good, with excellent accuracy of secondary flavors and all round pop.
- 3.5mm Ni80 clapton - this build worked very well one and a half to all airflow rows open. With all three open at 60w the vapor production was good, as was the flavor. With two rows open at 45-50w the flavor increases, With one and a half rows open at 40-45w, the flavor is even better, with just one row open the flavor is still excellent and it has a nicely restricted draw.
I really wanted to try a 4.0mm coil, but the only wire I keep nowadays is for MTL and I don’t have any prebuilt 4.0mm coils. I do have a couple of prebuilt 5.0mm fused claptons that I might try in the future.
Drip-tip
Swapping out drip-tips really helped to fine tune each build. When the airflow was fully open, an 810 drip-tip does really well, however once you start closing it down to one or two rows, using the 510 adapter and a 510 drip-tip makes the flavor pop a little more. As previously mentioned, the provided 810 drip-tip was too low-profile for me, but this is more of a personal preference than criticism.
Airflow
You can close down complete columns of airflow, but I didn’t find this useful – closing down the three rows one hole at a time is a much more effective way of adjustment, so that’s what I did, rotating the top-cap on this RDA is a more comfortable solution than the external ring on the Nitrous.
The airflow is smooth and relatively quiet, it’s quite typical of honeycomb airflow and gives anything from a very restricted DL to full DTL draw.
Drip or squonk
This RDA works really well as a squonk RDA, I found that when I dumped juice down the drip-tip, it got an inconsistent vape, I’d get a couple of far too juicy hits, a few decent hits and then almost nothing – painting the coil and dripping directly into the juice well was much nicer – but squonking is where it shines. The juice well is quite shallow, but with the top-cap in place the chances of over squonking are minimal.
Conclusion
The only con that I consider worth mentioning, is that it’s not as good as a dripper as it is as a squonk RDA. Apart from that, the Dead Rabbit Solo is pretty much amazing.
Is it better than the Nitrous? My personal take is that it’s better made and performs just as well with the correct build, and while it is more versatile than the Nitrous within the realms of single-coil builds, it lacks the dual-coil versatility that you have with the Nitrous.
Overall, it’s one of the best RDAs I’ve tried.
Disclaimer
The Dead Rabbit Solo RDA was provided for the purposes of this review by Hellvape.