Let's get the photos out of the way first.
So this mod was the most excited I've felt about a mod in a very long time. It looks freakin' beautiful, is regulated, supports 21700 and it's cheap. Pretty much hits all of my checkboxes. I pre-ordered it the day after it showed up for sale.
Then Heaven Gifts messaged me to see if I want to review it. Sweet! I get the mod before my pre-order would ship, and I get it for free! Heaven Gifts DHL-ed the black plastic frame version over with all the available panels. Can life get any better?
Well turns out nature has a sick sense of humor. The mod broke even before I could use it for the first time.
How did it break?
I unboxed the Anita, gave the silicone bottle a good wash and charged up my battery. I used this fill bottle to fill up for the first time. While screwing it in I heard a pop, I was a little worried but figured it would be alright. Turns out something snapped inside the 510 connector or the housing of the connector. It wouldn't read any of my attys.
Keep in mind I didn't even use any extra force to screw the fill bottle. I've used this fill bottle countless times on my Gbox, tightened it all the way and nothing happened.
Something inside the 510 housing broke. The housing used to be attached to the frame before, now it's hanging down a little bit. The 510 pin sits much lower now. Although still springy it's not as springy as it was before. I tried opening up the mod but it seems like I'd need to use a lot of force to pry it open after taking out the screws. I didn't want to break anything so I contacted Heaven Gifts.
Heaven Gifts didn't have a replacement unit to send me. They've sent out all the promo units they had. So I contacted Arctic Dolphin for support.
How is Arctic Dolphin's support?
In short, bad.
Now it's a common stereotype that Chinese vape companies have the worst customer support. While it's true in some cases, I've always gotten excellent customer support from Fasttech, Heaven Gifts, Health Cabin and Efun.top. May be it's the manufacturers that have terrible support.
Anyways I sent Arctic Dolphin an email the next day, I've also messaged their Whatsapp contact, Mrs. Lareina Liao.
While I never got a reply to my email, I did get a response from Mrs. Liao. She asked me to send a video of the problem which I promptly did. A few days later when I inquired again she informed me she's on a vacation for the next few days. I contacted her after a few days and it was something else. In short 3 weeks later she still hasn't seen the video I sent her.
If your unit is broken and you're out of the retailer's warranty period you can safely forget about support from Arctic Dolphin. But again I don't know how much I was expecting for a $30 mod. I had hoped they would at least be more interested in fixing review units because ultimately that leads to good or bad press.
In any case I'll use it for a few more days, say goodbye to it and then finally take it apart to see what's broken inside. If I can't fix it I don't think I will order another one, I'm building two DNA squonkers and the HCigar Aurora kinda started to look good to me.
If it's broken how are you still writing a review?
Well I wasn't going to let this pretty little thing collect dust. Turns out of all of my RDAs it would only read the B2K. I'd have to push the pin up, from the inside, with a screwdriver real hard after every refill and only then it would only read the B2K. It was a big PITA but I've put this through about 20 refills so far because it's just way too pretty.
Now I don't know if my unit was faulty or if my fill bottle had a 510 pin long enough to break any of the Anitas. I don't know if it's an issue with the plastic frames only or if it extends to the aluminum frame versions too. For this reason I can't recommend this mod, but I can't not-recommend this either.
Moving past my 510 issues I'll lay out what else is good/bad about the mod below. Keep in mind my experience with TC and power delivery cannot be taken for certain since my 510 pin is messed up.
The Good
- Power mode is fantastic. It doesn't feel quite pulsey. It constantly pings the resistance and adjusts the voltage so you won't get a weak vape with TC wires like on some cheap mods.
- TC is very decent as well. SS316 fused claptons work well, no dry hits. It throttles a little aggressively but it's more than usable. Very pleasantly surprised by the quality of TC at this price point.
- No firing delay
- A regulated 21700 squonker with a decent chip for ~$35? Hallelujah!
- Looks amazing! With the orange wood panels it looks a lot like the Lost Vape Epetite which I thought was one of the prettiest mods ever made.
- Comes with an extra panel that blocks the squonk hole, if you want to use it as a regular, non squonking mod.
- The screen can be really bright. I feel like the lowest setting is good for most lighting scenarios.
- Chip seems efficient enough. I get roughly the same battery life as Hugo Vapor Urus. I get ~250 puffs with a Golisi S35 21700 at 50 watts with a 0.3ohm coil.
- Comes with an 18650 adapter if you want to use an 18650 battery. You should really use it with a 21700 though.
- Surprisingly the manual is written in very good English.
The Bad
- The straw is really choked at the bottle cap. It's great if you really don't want it to leak but it's a PITA to put back in when you disassemble it for cleaning.
- Very little extra room for 21700 batteries. It's difficult to put them on, you have to hold the battery perfectly vertical, press down on the springy negative connector with the edge of the battery and slide it in.
- Mod cuts off at 3.4v. I feel like they could have gone lower, as most mods do.
- Battery bar is stupid. It shows you have way fewer puffs remaining than you really do. The battery bar shows half charge when you have 2/3rd the amount of charge left.
- The bottle is too far inside the mod from the squonk hole. I suspect those with chunky thumbs will have a harder time squonking. Also why didn't they just use a rectangular bottle to make better use of the available space? Arctic Dolphin makes their own bottles, they could have easily rolled out a custom one.
- This one is a little harder to explain. Same build on the same RDA at 50 watts on the Anita feels more or less 50 watts on the GBox or the Therion. However the Anita makes it more spitty and the RDA gets hotter for some reason. I've noticed this on cheaper mods before. It doesn't really feel like that old school PWM, but something is different.
Weight with empty bottle and no batteries: 96 grams
Weight with full bottle and 21700 battery: 175g
Bottle height with straw: 58.5mm
Bottle height without straw: 46.5mm
Straw length: 56mm
Bottle diameter: 18mm
It's available for sale at Heaven Gifts in all the possible configurations, including ABS or Aluminum frame.
I've recently opened up an Instagram account. You can find more photos of the Anita there, as well as my other mods/attys and other gear pending a review.
If you use my DNA75c / DNA250c theme Gauges you should probably update it if you haven't in a while. I've pushed a major version 2.0.0 recently that features two main screen UI styles to switch between, as well as many other new features.
Many thanks to Heaven Gifts for sending this out to me to review. I really appreciate them shipping it out ASAP, and for never to attempt to influence a review even to the slightest bit. It's always a pleasure to interact with Christina.
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