Introduction
Based on previous Dead Rabbit RTAs, I thought I knew what the Dead Rabbit RTA 3 was going to be like, especially when it came to the deck and airflow. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Product overview
The Dead Rabbit RTA 3, is a 25mm, 3.5/5.5ml top-to-bottom RTA, which promises flawless flavor and a 100% leak-free vaping experience.
More images are here
What do you get?
First impressions
Although it’s 25mm at the bottom of the base, the base tapers out to 27mm and then comes back to 25mm – my guess is that it’s to give you more to grip on when removing the RTA from your mod.
The design aesthetics are quite plain and restrained, mine came with a silver logo/branding on the outside of the chamber, but from what I can see all other versions have body colored logo/branding which is almost invisible.
Taking the RTA apart revealed some details that I wasn’t expecting – firstly, rather than the usual rabbit ear style posts, it has a half-pipe style postless deck, and unlike the previous Dead Rabbit RTA’s airflow that hits the coils from the top, the version 3’s airflow comes in from the top, but comes down the side of the chamber and hits the coils from the side and bottom.
One welcome change, is the revert to a twist off top-cap, rather than the slide-to-fill cap of the version 2.
Build
As with all postless decks, the coil legs need pre-cutting – fortunately, there is a coil cutting tool included, which is marked at 5mm.
The deck is a little cramped, so getting both coils in place can be slightly awkward – I found that installing the first coil, pushing it as far from the center as possible, putting in the second coil and the aligning everything made things much easier.
Wicking isn’t that hard, as long as you thin the cotton enough. For my first attempt, I cut the cotton flush with the outside of the deck and fluffed/wicked it a little – this didn’t really work, and it was struggling when I tried to chain vape it. Second attempt used the same length wicks, but with much more fluffing/thinning – this worked perfectly.
Overall, there’s nothing overly hard about the build process, it just requires a little more thought than some of the recent RTAs that don’t require coil pre-cutting, have a guide to center the coil and wick like an RDA – it’s about on the same difficulty level as the Kylin Mini V2 and Arbiter 2.
How does it perform?
I decided to go with the supplied coils, as Hellvape’s coils are usually good and well suited to their atomizers.
The build came to 0.17ohms for the pair, and worked really well from 55 to 75w with the airflow fully open, and 45 to 55w with the airflow shut down about 50% - this surprised me a little, I had assumed that this would be a 85w+ RTA, especially when using the supplied fused claptons.
Most importantly, the flavor at these comparatively low power levels was excellent – if I compare it to other dual-coil RTAs that I’ve tested over the last year or so – Arbiter 2, Torch, Fat Rabbit, Blotto Max - it has more accurate and intense flavor than any of them.
The only issue that I had with the performance, was that although it wasn’t getting overly hot, there didn’t seem to much gained by pushing it above 75w.
Airflow
This is the easy section of the review – it’s smooth, it lives up to the claims of being leak-free, and it works well when fully open or partially closed. Oh, and the diagonal airflow slots pleases my eyes.
What could be improved?
I only had one issue with this RTA:
Because it’s top-airflow, the base of the RTA is very short – it’s hard to get a decent grip on it to remove it from the RTA. I ended up unscrewing the glass half the time, instead of removing the RTA. Even with just the deck on my mod, it was hard to remove the base.
Conclusion
So, neither the design nor the performance was what I was expecting – this is not necessarily a bad thing.
If I wanted a high-power cloud-chucking RTA – I’d probably be looking at a 28-30mm RTA, rather than this one.
However, for a dual-coil flavor-chasing RTA at medium power levels, this is as good as I’ve tried.
It’s not only that this is good enough to replace some of my favorite dual-coil RTAs (which it is), but due to it performing well at around 45w, it’s also good enough to replace some of my flavor-chasing single-coil RTAs.
The only negative point that is worth giving is a warning: it might take a couple of attempts to get the wicking performing perfectly – but, at least if you mess up the wicking, it’s not going to leak,
Disclaimer
The Dead Rabbit RTA 3 was provided for the purposes of this review by Hellvape.
Based on previous Dead Rabbit RTAs, I thought I knew what the Dead Rabbit RTA 3 was going to be like, especially when it came to the deck and airflow. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
Product overview
The Dead Rabbit RTA 3, is a 25mm, 3.5/5.5ml top-to-bottom RTA, which promises flawless flavor and a 100% leak-free vaping experience.
More images are here
What do you get?
- Dead Rabbit RTA 3 (fitted with 3.5ml straight glass)
- 2×3.0mm 0.37ohm Ni80 fused clapton coils
- 2×3.0mm ageleted cotton
- 5.5ml bubble glass
- Coil cutting tool
- Accessories/spares
First impressions
Although it’s 25mm at the bottom of the base, the base tapers out to 27mm and then comes back to 25mm – my guess is that it’s to give you more to grip on when removing the RTA from your mod.
The design aesthetics are quite plain and restrained, mine came with a silver logo/branding on the outside of the chamber, but from what I can see all other versions have body colored logo/branding which is almost invisible.
Taking the RTA apart revealed some details that I wasn’t expecting – firstly, rather than the usual rabbit ear style posts, it has a half-pipe style postless deck, and unlike the previous Dead Rabbit RTA’s airflow that hits the coils from the top, the version 3’s airflow comes in from the top, but comes down the side of the chamber and hits the coils from the side and bottom.
One welcome change, is the revert to a twist off top-cap, rather than the slide-to-fill cap of the version 2.
Build
As with all postless decks, the coil legs need pre-cutting – fortunately, there is a coil cutting tool included, which is marked at 5mm.
The deck is a little cramped, so getting both coils in place can be slightly awkward – I found that installing the first coil, pushing it as far from the center as possible, putting in the second coil and the aligning everything made things much easier.
Wicking isn’t that hard, as long as you thin the cotton enough. For my first attempt, I cut the cotton flush with the outside of the deck and fluffed/wicked it a little – this didn’t really work, and it was struggling when I tried to chain vape it. Second attempt used the same length wicks, but with much more fluffing/thinning – this worked perfectly.
Overall, there’s nothing overly hard about the build process, it just requires a little more thought than some of the recent RTAs that don’t require coil pre-cutting, have a guide to center the coil and wick like an RDA – it’s about on the same difficulty level as the Kylin Mini V2 and Arbiter 2.
How does it perform?
I decided to go with the supplied coils, as Hellvape’s coils are usually good and well suited to their atomizers.
The build came to 0.17ohms for the pair, and worked really well from 55 to 75w with the airflow fully open, and 45 to 55w with the airflow shut down about 50% - this surprised me a little, I had assumed that this would be a 85w+ RTA, especially when using the supplied fused claptons.
Most importantly, the flavor at these comparatively low power levels was excellent – if I compare it to other dual-coil RTAs that I’ve tested over the last year or so – Arbiter 2, Torch, Fat Rabbit, Blotto Max - it has more accurate and intense flavor than any of them.
The only issue that I had with the performance, was that although it wasn’t getting overly hot, there didn’t seem to much gained by pushing it above 75w.
Airflow
This is the easy section of the review – it’s smooth, it lives up to the claims of being leak-free, and it works well when fully open or partially closed. Oh, and the diagonal airflow slots pleases my eyes.
What could be improved?
I only had one issue with this RTA:
Because it’s top-airflow, the base of the RTA is very short – it’s hard to get a decent grip on it to remove it from the RTA. I ended up unscrewing the glass half the time, instead of removing the RTA. Even with just the deck on my mod, it was hard to remove the base.
Conclusion
So, neither the design nor the performance was what I was expecting – this is not necessarily a bad thing.
If I wanted a high-power cloud-chucking RTA – I’d probably be looking at a 28-30mm RTA, rather than this one.
However, for a dual-coil flavor-chasing RTA at medium power levels, this is as good as I’ve tried.
It’s not only that this is good enough to replace some of my favorite dual-coil RTAs (which it is), but due to it performing well at around 45w, it’s also good enough to replace some of my flavor-chasing single-coil RTAs.
The only negative point that is worth giving is a warning: it might take a couple of attempts to get the wicking performing perfectly – but, at least if you mess up the wicking, it’s not going to leak,
Disclaimer
The Dead Rabbit RTA 3 was provided for the purposes of this review by Hellvape.