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Wismec Sinuous Ravage230: A Slick Little Dual-18650 Mod With Wonky Temp Control

vuJim

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When it appeared my new Vandy Vape & Tony B Swell was a temp. control fail I set out looking for something that would do TC well. Looked here, there, and everywhere. Reading/watching the reviews, it looked like the Wismec Sinuous Ravage230 would get 'er done. So ordered one. (Shout-out again to Element Vape for the quick ship!)

Herewith, my capsule review of the Wismec Sinuous Ravage230

The fire button is nice and clicky, the up/down and "back" buttons less so. Hinged battery door on the bottom is easy enough to open and close. Seems pretty secure. "+" and "-" are clearly marked, but at the bottom of the battery wells, so you need light in there to see them. It's a fairly compact mod, but heavier than I would have expected.

I am somewhat disappointed in the display. It's not quite as unreadable as my Sigelei Kaos Z in bright light, but nearly so. Battery life is just so-so. It's not the battery hog my SMOK Mag P3 is, but it does go through them pretty fast. The UI is straight-forward and intuitive. Works fine in VW mode.

Using it in TC has been an interesting adventure. For starters: I don't know what preset TCR they're using for SS TC mode, but it appears to me to be way off. In fact: When I first got it I put it into SS TC mode, set the temp. to 230°C (or somewhere around there), hit the Fire button, and...

... promptly fried cotton, coil and my throat!

You see: The default wattage in TC was full-bore: 230W. (I'd noticed that and thought nothing of it. Temp. control, right?) Well, being as SS TC mode doesn't appear to actually ever limit power, I did a 230W vape on a 0.3 ohm pair of SS316L coils! Mind you: This was the same build I'd been running on my Mag P3 in TC mode, at 235°C or there-about, and it'd been perfect. (After that incident the coils had actually changed their base resistance by about 0.07 ohms.)

I did a lot of experimenting with the mod, subsequent to that, trying to see if SS TC mode was actually usable. To see if maybe I'd done something wrong. I could not get it to behave in SS TC mode no matter what I did. Only way it was usable was to run the wattage limit down to 50-55W. Then it acted just like power mode. I may still be missing something, but, for the life of me I can't figure out what it could be.

Not to fear: The Sinuous Ravage230 has a TCR mode.

Once again: They've either got something wrong in hardware or their TCR tables are out of whack, because any build I did would cause it to go nearly instantly into power limit, even running the temp. up to 315°C. I finally threw caution to the wind, said "To hell with the recommended TCR range for SS316L," and simply started bumping it up. Finally got it to behave in TCR mode at around 112 or so.

Another bit of wonkiness: When the mod detects a coil change, sometimes it throws up a "resistance change" screen, and sometimes it doesn't. (It seems to do it on resistance increases, but not decreases?) Even more wonkily: Sometimes the resistance change screen stays up when you let go of the Fire button--more often it does not. This is a problem: You're registering a new coil in TC mode. But you just had to hold down the Fire button to tell it "Yes, this really is a new coil." Now the coil's heated, but the mod's registering it as a new coil in TC mode, so it's got the wrong baseline resistance for the coil. (I'm thinking I'll try putting it in VW mode when changing coils, then, when it cools off, change to TC mode. I think that'll cause it to re-register the baseline resistance properly.)

I checked Wismec's site for a firmware update. The site claims there's a v1.10 firmware upgrade, but the actual download indicates it's the same firmware that was already on the mod and, after the update, the mod indicates it has the same firmware version as it did before applying the upgrade.

So, all-in-all: It's a nice enough little mod, but, given the wonky behaviour I've experienced from mine, I cannot recommend it.

Addendum (2020-06-03): I've sent the particulars of what I wrote above off the Wismec customer support to see if they have anything to say. I'll keep y'all updated on the response--or lack thereof.
 
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