Hi All. Just got the X Cube Ultra this morning and have been vaping it all day.
I'm actually really liking this mod so wanted to share some of my thoughts on it as I think SMOK got a whole lot of things right on this device and really only 1 major thing wrong (spoiler alert, it's the piece-o-shit app) and only 1 minor thing wrong.
Let's get the CRapp out of the way first. This thing is just absolute trash on android. No idea how it is on iOS, but even if it's 10 times better than the android version, it's still not worth your time. Some things worked, most things didn't. And even for the things that worked, the mod would behave kind of funny when connected to the app. I caught it changing wattage on me randomly.
Lastly, the permissions that it asks for are insane. Just insane. For example, it wants the ability to close other apps... Uh.. No. Now, I'm fairly technical, so yes, I know I can specifically deny permissions in android, but not the ones in the 'Other' category which has some of the more dangerous permissions this app requests.
So should you install the app? Actually, yes, you should. Follow the steps below for optimal results:
Now for the good stuff. Let's start with the UI (on the mod). This is by far, hands down, the absolute best 3 button UI I have ever used. This is how a 3 button UI should work. Other manufacturers should take notes here. When in menu, quick press fire button to scroll options, long press to select. Or you can scroll with plus, minus. Or you can select by waiting 5 seconds. The ability to chose here makes this a joy to operate.
The next brilliant thing is the shortcuts. Where pressing two buttons at once performs a shortcut action like cycling through the modes or the boost settings. Or even better, short pressing up/down in power mode increments by 0.1 watts, while long pressing increments by 1 watt (with ramping).
There are only two things about the UI that bug me. The first is just an improvement suggestion and the second is my 'minor thing wrong'. The suggestion: when in the menu, clicking both plus and minus together should exit. The only way out now is to accept all the way through without changing anything. The 'thing wrong': turning the device off. You currently either have to go into the menu, go to power, and select off, or you can use the shortcut. When locked, you hold fire for 8 seconds and it goes into power off menu, you select off and long press. The second method is almost tollerable, but when you power on again, it's still locked! There needs to be a better shortcut. Maybe something like 4 quick presses followed by a long press immediately shuts it off. I don't know why, but I've never been comfortable leaving a device on lock for long periods when not using it. Especially if it's going into my pocket. Maybe I'll have to get over that with this mod as the convoluted shutdown procedure reminds me too much of Microsoft products (linux FTW).
In terms if it's 'killer features' first, I'll mention Bluetooth. If they open this up so that competent people can write apps for it, great. Otherwise, I might play with capturing some bluetooth packets and decrypting to see if the command set is something that can be hacked. I've been looking for an excuse to pick up an Ubertooth, but short of that, I couldn't care less about it. For the vibration, I think that this is actually a useful feature if it lasts the test of time and the motor doesn't seize. The device vibrates on virtually any action or status you can think of, but thankfully, each of these vibrate types has an off option in the menu which is really smart. For example, I have button press vibrates set to off and 'max puffs' set to off, but the other ones like low battery or check atomiser set to on. Frankly, vibrate would be more useful on side-screen devices as this one has a screen right in your face, but even still, if you vaping and talking, low battery would be quite handy as would errors and such. The vibration has 4 strength settings. OFF, MIN, MID and MAX. AKA, OFF, MIN, MIN and MIN. Let's just say the vibration is fairly subtle and the differences between the settings, extremely subtle. Its certainly enough to notice, but it wouldn't vibrate off a desk like a phone might.
Lastly, and this is one of the major reasons I bought this thing, is the placement of the screen. This is one of the few mods that puts the screen in a place where you can actually see it. I've always wondered why someone would go through the trouble of programming a max temp warning which immediately disappears for a device with the screen on the side. Maybe it's for youtube reviews where they do the dry cotton test.
<tangent>It reminds me of the old school mods with the light up fire buttons. You know, the button that your finger is covering when pressing it. Yeah, let's make that light up. That'll be useful. The best was the idiotic provari where you could change the colour of the button you could never see. And before you start typing the comment, no, this is not the same at all. Not even close.</tangent>
Back to the screen. It's such a novel thing to me to be looking at the screen while vaping and not trying to do some kind of side-of-the-mouth-head-tilt-angled-vape to catch a glimpse of it. The screen can be rotated from the default for this purpose. This also changes the plus minus buttons around so that they make more intuitive sense. It's unfortunate that + and - are actually printed on the mod, but that's nothing that a nice wrap can't fix (mid next week from J-Wraps according to their online chat guy).
Which leads me into the fit and finish. I'm not sure this thing needs a wrap, but I like it so much, I'm getting it one. Before I get too far, let's start with packaging. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the packaging for this feels so much more like a typical commercial product than previous vape gear I've bought. It's got copyright warnings, trademark signs, feature info-graphics, warnings, and the 'buy this it's awesome' text that I'm used to seeing on products in retail stores. It's quite a bit nicer than the some of the other vape packaging I've seen. The manual is English only with fully colour pictures, but it actually has a nice textured first and last page. Reminds me of opening up one of the old school iPods (pre-touch) back in the day. Frankly, I didn't think packaging mattered for vape gear until I opened this thing. It's just nice.
For the device itself, it feels great. The finish is fantastic. The silk screened logos are very high quality and appear very durable. The paint also feels fairly durable at least so far. As a comparison, it feels more like the paint on the battery door of the RX200 than the paint on the sides of the RX200. You know, the joyetech family paint job that bubbles and peels in a week.
I don't mind paint that can be scratched, but the crap-tastic garbage like on the iStick 100W TC is so bad it's shameful. I'm hoping that this is the RX200 door style paint, but since I'm clearly in love with this thing, I'm getting it a wrap. Also, it looks like the top plate is easily removed so I might just stuff some coloured cellophane in there to do some matchy-matchy with the button colour.
For those wondering about the battery door compared to the x cube 2, they fixed that problem completely. I can't get this door to move even a micron. It's like it was screwed on.
Performance wise, it works great in wattage mode! I have no idea how it works in TC, and I'm not really sure if I care. I've tried TC before in multiple devices (eVic VT, RX200, iStick 100W TC, etc), but I could never really get into it. I think I have a NI coil from my crown sitting somewhere, so I might try it at some point, but I doubt it'll convert me. It has both TI and SS out of the box, so I guess that SMOK learned how terrible of an idea pay-for-feature was. Battery life is great so far. Vaping for almost 12 hours now (almost done the third tank fill) on a crown 0.5 dual coil @ ~50W on just off the charger Sony VTC5's and battery meter is showing just a hair under half. Not too shabby.
So to summarise, I really really like this device so far. It really fits my vaping style and preferences and is just smart enough to tickle my geek bone. It's a shame the app sucks so hard, but maybe the protocol is hackable.
So I don't really post here much, but I haven't really been this satisfied with a vape product before on day one. There also aren't that many reviews out there on this thing yet, so thought I'd post my thoughts about it here for google to find. There's a couple of youtube vids, but the one reviewer clearly had the intention of posting a positive review as he blatantly can't change the TCR for a coil in the app (tries multiple times) and still goes on to say the app works great...
Hopefully someone gets some use out of this.
TL/DR:
Mod is awesome!
App sucks the big one
, but isn't really required for anything.
Anyone else have this thing? If so, what do you think about it?
I'm actually really liking this mod so wanted to share some of my thoughts on it as I think SMOK got a whole lot of things right on this device and really only 1 major thing wrong (spoiler alert, it's the piece-o-shit app) and only 1 minor thing wrong.
Let's get the CRapp out of the way first. This thing is just absolute trash on android. No idea how it is on iOS, but even if it's 10 times better than the android version, it's still not worth your time. Some things worked, most things didn't. And even for the things that worked, the mod would behave kind of funny when connected to the app. I caught it changing wattage on me randomly.
Lastly, the permissions that it asks for are insane. Just insane. For example, it wants the ability to close other apps... Uh.. No. Now, I'm fairly technical, so yes, I know I can specifically deny permissions in android, but not the ones in the 'Other' category which has some of the more dangerous permissions this app requests.
So should you install the app? Actually, yes, you should. Follow the steps below for optimal results:
- Install app
- Connect to mod
- Change Bluetooth password for anti h4x0r
- Uninstall app
Now for the good stuff. Let's start with the UI (on the mod). This is by far, hands down, the absolute best 3 button UI I have ever used. This is how a 3 button UI should work. Other manufacturers should take notes here. When in menu, quick press fire button to scroll options, long press to select. Or you can scroll with plus, minus. Or you can select by waiting 5 seconds. The ability to chose here makes this a joy to operate.
The next brilliant thing is the shortcuts. Where pressing two buttons at once performs a shortcut action like cycling through the modes or the boost settings. Or even better, short pressing up/down in power mode increments by 0.1 watts, while long pressing increments by 1 watt (with ramping).
There are only two things about the UI that bug me. The first is just an improvement suggestion and the second is my 'minor thing wrong'. The suggestion: when in the menu, clicking both plus and minus together should exit. The only way out now is to accept all the way through without changing anything. The 'thing wrong': turning the device off. You currently either have to go into the menu, go to power, and select off, or you can use the shortcut. When locked, you hold fire for 8 seconds and it goes into power off menu, you select off and long press. The second method is almost tollerable, but when you power on again, it's still locked! There needs to be a better shortcut. Maybe something like 4 quick presses followed by a long press immediately shuts it off. I don't know why, but I've never been comfortable leaving a device on lock for long periods when not using it. Especially if it's going into my pocket. Maybe I'll have to get over that with this mod as the convoluted shutdown procedure reminds me too much of Microsoft products (linux FTW).
In terms if it's 'killer features' first, I'll mention Bluetooth. If they open this up so that competent people can write apps for it, great. Otherwise, I might play with capturing some bluetooth packets and decrypting to see if the command set is something that can be hacked. I've been looking for an excuse to pick up an Ubertooth, but short of that, I couldn't care less about it. For the vibration, I think that this is actually a useful feature if it lasts the test of time and the motor doesn't seize. The device vibrates on virtually any action or status you can think of, but thankfully, each of these vibrate types has an off option in the menu which is really smart. For example, I have button press vibrates set to off and 'max puffs' set to off, but the other ones like low battery or check atomiser set to on. Frankly, vibrate would be more useful on side-screen devices as this one has a screen right in your face, but even still, if you vaping and talking, low battery would be quite handy as would errors and such. The vibration has 4 strength settings. OFF, MIN, MID and MAX. AKA, OFF, MIN, MIN and MIN. Let's just say the vibration is fairly subtle and the differences between the settings, extremely subtle. Its certainly enough to notice, but it wouldn't vibrate off a desk like a phone might.
Lastly, and this is one of the major reasons I bought this thing, is the placement of the screen. This is one of the few mods that puts the screen in a place where you can actually see it. I've always wondered why someone would go through the trouble of programming a max temp warning which immediately disappears for a device with the screen on the side. Maybe it's for youtube reviews where they do the dry cotton test.
<tangent>It reminds me of the old school mods with the light up fire buttons. You know, the button that your finger is covering when pressing it. Yeah, let's make that light up. That'll be useful. The best was the idiotic provari where you could change the colour of the button you could never see. And before you start typing the comment, no, this is not the same at all. Not even close.</tangent>
Back to the screen. It's such a novel thing to me to be looking at the screen while vaping and not trying to do some kind of side-of-the-mouth-head-tilt-angled-vape to catch a glimpse of it. The screen can be rotated from the default for this purpose. This also changes the plus minus buttons around so that they make more intuitive sense. It's unfortunate that + and - are actually printed on the mod, but that's nothing that a nice wrap can't fix (mid next week from J-Wraps according to their online chat guy).
Which leads me into the fit and finish. I'm not sure this thing needs a wrap, but I like it so much, I'm getting it one. Before I get too far, let's start with packaging. I can't quite put my finger on it, but the packaging for this feels so much more like a typical commercial product than previous vape gear I've bought. It's got copyright warnings, trademark signs, feature info-graphics, warnings, and the 'buy this it's awesome' text that I'm used to seeing on products in retail stores. It's quite a bit nicer than the some of the other vape packaging I've seen. The manual is English only with fully colour pictures, but it actually has a nice textured first and last page. Reminds me of opening up one of the old school iPods (pre-touch) back in the day. Frankly, I didn't think packaging mattered for vape gear until I opened this thing. It's just nice.
For the device itself, it feels great. The finish is fantastic. The silk screened logos are very high quality and appear very durable. The paint also feels fairly durable at least so far. As a comparison, it feels more like the paint on the battery door of the RX200 than the paint on the sides of the RX200. You know, the joyetech family paint job that bubbles and peels in a week.
I don't mind paint that can be scratched, but the crap-tastic garbage like on the iStick 100W TC is so bad it's shameful. I'm hoping that this is the RX200 door style paint, but since I'm clearly in love with this thing, I'm getting it a wrap. Also, it looks like the top plate is easily removed so I might just stuff some coloured cellophane in there to do some matchy-matchy with the button colour.
For those wondering about the battery door compared to the x cube 2, they fixed that problem completely. I can't get this door to move even a micron. It's like it was screwed on.
Performance wise, it works great in wattage mode! I have no idea how it works in TC, and I'm not really sure if I care. I've tried TC before in multiple devices (eVic VT, RX200, iStick 100W TC, etc), but I could never really get into it. I think I have a NI coil from my crown sitting somewhere, so I might try it at some point, but I doubt it'll convert me. It has both TI and SS out of the box, so I guess that SMOK learned how terrible of an idea pay-for-feature was. Battery life is great so far. Vaping for almost 12 hours now (almost done the third tank fill) on a crown 0.5 dual coil @ ~50W on just off the charger Sony VTC5's and battery meter is showing just a hair under half. Not too shabby.
So to summarise, I really really like this device so far. It really fits my vaping style and preferences and is just smart enough to tickle my geek bone. It's a shame the app sucks so hard, but maybe the protocol is hackable.
So I don't really post here much, but I haven't really been this satisfied with a vape product before on day one. There also aren't that many reviews out there on this thing yet, so thought I'd post my thoughts about it here for google to find. There's a couple of youtube vids, but the one reviewer clearly had the intention of posting a positive review as he blatantly can't change the TCR for a coil in the app (tries multiple times) and still goes on to say the app works great...
Hopefully someone gets some use out of this.
TL/DR:
Mod is awesome!
App sucks the big one, but isn't really required for anything.Anyone else have this thing? If so, what do you think about it?
