Introduction
Innokin always seemed to be a slightly more mature company, going after the more discreet end of the market, rather than having flashy mods and catering for those who want to produce huge clouds.
I will divide this review into two parts, tank and mod – while I haven’t seen the mod for sale on its own, the tank is available as an individual purchase.
Images are here
Mod review
First Impressions
The Innokin Z80 mod is an 80w, single 18650 mod which features the F0 alternating current mode and a coil refresh function.
To my eyes, it’s an attractive mod – the design is a little too busy to be minimalist, with the padded grip material (soft padded suede on mine), to the brass ring on the fire button giving it a luxury vape vibe. If I was purchasing this myself, I’d probably go for one of the leather version, while the suede feels nice, I’m not sure how nice it would look after six months of vaping.
The up/down buttons are clicky, however the fire button feels a little dull – it does click, but just not as much as I’d like.
The Z80 has a vented screw in battery cap, which tends to be a divisive choice, personally I like them – they are secure and don’t wear out, but I do understand that some people find them annoying.
Functions
You have the regular wattage and voltage modes, power adjustment lock, the ability to put your display into a minimal mode, etc but these are all quite normal and nothing different from other mods.
Where is gets different are the F0 and refresh mode.
F0 mode
F0 mode uses an AC current specific frequency range with different types of vaping to boost flavor and extend coil life – for example MTL uses 51-100hz, while DTL uses 20-50hz. I won’t pretend to actually understand what that means, I’m far more concerned if it actually does something.
But does it work? I didn’t notice any difference while using the F0 mode, maybe there are some subtle nuances with certain juices, using specific coils at a specific power level with F0 mode at a custom frequency, but to me this is like debating the differences in flavor between certain brands of cotton – some people will swear blind they can taste the difference, while others notice zero differences, but without an extensive back to back test with identical setups it’s going to be hard to give a more conclusive answer.
It’s interesting to see companies try to push new technology, so I have to applaud Innokin for that.
Refresh mode
This one is a little easier for me to get my head around, refresh mode drops the power to 40% and draws liquid into the coil in an attempt to boost the flavor levels of a coil that’s starting to lose flavor.
Again, this needs more testing to state exactly how effective it is, but I found that running refresh once or twice on a coil that was getting a little dull did get some of the flavor back, this might just be placebo effect on my part, but it does seem to work.
What’s it not going to do is to bring a totally dead coil back to life, or be able to refresh a coil forever. However, anything that extends the usable life span of a coil has to be a good thing.
Mod conclusions
The Z80 is a stylish mod, that feels well put together and has a decent chipset. While I didn’t find the F0 and refresh modes to be totally game changing, it’s still a nice single 18650 mod. The only doubt I have about it is the suede grip and that is easily resolved by ordering one with the leather grip.
Tank review
First Impressions
Making a primarily MTL tank 26mm seems like a strange choice to me, the Zenith II will not fit on some of my single battery mods, or can only do so with overhang – the flipside to this is that it has a 5.5ml capacity, which is excellent for an MTL tank.
While the Z80 mod is certainly a sexy looking piece of kit, the Zenith II is quite sensible and boring when it comes to the looks department, first thing I’d suggest doing is swapping out the supplied ultem drip-tip, mainly because it’s ugly.
While it isn’t sexy, the Zenith II is practical, the glass tank sits within a metal cage that offers some protection and everything disassembles very easily. Unscrew the top-cap and you can remove the glass for cleaning, unscrew the bottom and you can replace the coil.
Strangely, the 510 is part of the coil – I’m not sure if this will improve performance or not, but getting a new clean 510 pin every time can’t be a bad thing, speaking of coils – the Zenith II is compatible with the entire range of Innokin’s Z coils.
The top cap twists to expose a silicon membrane fill port, which is a nice variation on filling – this style of fill port can however require drip-tip removal depending on your juice bottle style.
Performance
There is a good range of airflow for RDL and MTL, but I would have liked to have seen more precise adjustments available with the tighter end of MTL airflow, somewhere between fully closed and one hole open there would be perfect airflow, however I can’t get there because of the uniform holes.
Ratings
The tank is great, especially when it comes to MTL, the mod is sexy and full of tech – buy just the tank or buy the whole kit – you can’t really go wrong with either.
Disclaimer
The Innokin Z80 kit was sent to me for the purposes of this review by Heathcabin, they currently have the Z80 kit reduced from $47.99 to $39.99 and the Zenith II tank reduced from $19.99 to $16.90 for logged in and confirmed customers.
Innokin always seemed to be a slightly more mature company, going after the more discreet end of the market, rather than having flashy mods and catering for those who want to produce huge clouds.
I will divide this review into two parts, tank and mod – while I haven’t seen the mod for sale on its own, the tank is available as an individual purchase.
Images are here
Mod review
First Impressions
The Innokin Z80 mod is an 80w, single 18650 mod which features the F0 alternating current mode and a coil refresh function.
To my eyes, it’s an attractive mod – the design is a little too busy to be minimalist, with the padded grip material (soft padded suede on mine), to the brass ring on the fire button giving it a luxury vape vibe. If I was purchasing this myself, I’d probably go for one of the leather version, while the suede feels nice, I’m not sure how nice it would look after six months of vaping.
The up/down buttons are clicky, however the fire button feels a little dull – it does click, but just not as much as I’d like.
The Z80 has a vented screw in battery cap, which tends to be a divisive choice, personally I like them – they are secure and don’t wear out, but I do understand that some people find them annoying.
Functions
You have the regular wattage and voltage modes, power adjustment lock, the ability to put your display into a minimal mode, etc but these are all quite normal and nothing different from other mods.
Where is gets different are the F0 and refresh mode.
F0 mode
F0 mode uses an AC current specific frequency range with different types of vaping to boost flavor and extend coil life – for example MTL uses 51-100hz, while DTL uses 20-50hz. I won’t pretend to actually understand what that means, I’m far more concerned if it actually does something.
But does it work? I didn’t notice any difference while using the F0 mode, maybe there are some subtle nuances with certain juices, using specific coils at a specific power level with F0 mode at a custom frequency, but to me this is like debating the differences in flavor between certain brands of cotton – some people will swear blind they can taste the difference, while others notice zero differences, but without an extensive back to back test with identical setups it’s going to be hard to give a more conclusive answer.
It’s interesting to see companies try to push new technology, so I have to applaud Innokin for that.
Refresh mode
This one is a little easier for me to get my head around, refresh mode drops the power to 40% and draws liquid into the coil in an attempt to boost the flavor levels of a coil that’s starting to lose flavor.
Again, this needs more testing to state exactly how effective it is, but I found that running refresh once or twice on a coil that was getting a little dull did get some of the flavor back, this might just be placebo effect on my part, but it does seem to work.
What’s it not going to do is to bring a totally dead coil back to life, or be able to refresh a coil forever. However, anything that extends the usable life span of a coil has to be a good thing.
Mod conclusions
The Z80 is a stylish mod, that feels well put together and has a decent chipset. While I didn’t find the F0 and refresh modes to be totally game changing, it’s still a nice single 18650 mod. The only doubt I have about it is the suede grip and that is easily resolved by ordering one with the leather grip.
Tank review
First Impressions
Making a primarily MTL tank 26mm seems like a strange choice to me, the Zenith II will not fit on some of my single battery mods, or can only do so with overhang – the flipside to this is that it has a 5.5ml capacity, which is excellent for an MTL tank.
While the Z80 mod is certainly a sexy looking piece of kit, the Zenith II is quite sensible and boring when it comes to the looks department, first thing I’d suggest doing is swapping out the supplied ultem drip-tip, mainly because it’s ugly.
While it isn’t sexy, the Zenith II is practical, the glass tank sits within a metal cage that offers some protection and everything disassembles very easily. Unscrew the top-cap and you can remove the glass for cleaning, unscrew the bottom and you can replace the coil.
Strangely, the 510 is part of the coil – I’m not sure if this will improve performance or not, but getting a new clean 510 pin every time can’t be a bad thing, speaking of coils – the Zenith II is compatible with the entire range of Innokin’s Z coils.
The top cap twists to expose a silicon membrane fill port, which is a nice variation on filling – this style of fill port can however require drip-tip removal depending on your juice bottle style.
Performance
- 0.8ohm coil - this is where the Z80 kit went from good to very good. It started off merely okay, but once I put a tank of juice through it, the flavor went from okay to excellent. While the coil is rated from 15 to 18w, I found that it performed best at 16w with one or two airflow holes open. The performance of this coil isn’t strong enough to make me consider giving up rebuildable MTL atomizers, but it does come reasonably close – this is a really nice MTL coil.
- 0.3ohm coil - following the 0.8ohm coil was always going to be hard, this coil isn’t bad – actually it’s pretty good, just not outstanding. If this had been the only coil that I had received, I’d probably be singing its praises. Like the 0.8ohm coil, I found this coil worked well at the lower end of its recommended wattage range – it’s rated 30-40w, but I never needed to push it past 30w. You can just leave the airflow fully open, I enjoyed it the most when treating it like a RDL coil, rather than DTL with the large airflow slot half closed and with the MTL drip-tip.
There is a good range of airflow for RDL and MTL, but I would have liked to have seen more precise adjustments available with the tighter end of MTL airflow, somewhere between fully closed and one hole open there would be perfect airflow, however I can’t get there because of the uniform holes.
Ratings
- Flavor - 8/10 – one coil is good, the other is excellent.
- Features - 9/10 – all the technical and design features you could ask for.
- Aesthetics - 7/10 – the tank looks just okay, but the mod is gorgeous.
- Value - 9/10 – I’d happily pay the price of the full kit for the mod alone.
The tank is great, especially when it comes to MTL, the mod is sexy and full of tech – buy just the tank or buy the whole kit – you can’t really go wrong with either.
Disclaimer
The Innokin Z80 kit was sent to me for the purposes of this review by Heathcabin, they currently have the Z80 kit reduced from $47.99 to $39.99 and the Zenith II tank reduced from $19.99 to $16.90 for logged in and confirmed customers.
