I am back from the trip to customs and have my EVO.
So the trip itself cost me about 15$ and they charged me another ~70$ at customs.
So far this trade-in cost me almost 400$. I hope at least the bamboo is going to be in one piece.
*Opens the package*
Contents:
-2x ELB
-4x wristband
-a nice little hydrafoot gift (in contrast to my other one, it has only 2/3 radius, has a hollow joint, and has a nicer looking edge)
(The hydrafoot on the right is the gift)
-oh and the power cord of course.
The bamboo is not broken and there is no almost drool inducing restriction like in my old Cloud.
When I pulled on it, the loud whistle has startled me, but I like that it has much less drag than my old unit, that is exactly what I was wishing for.
Now let's get to the issue that striked me the first second I saw it and I'm still completely mind-blown how something this obvious on first glance could possibly slip through QC:
THE TEMPERATURE KNOB IS MISSING! WTF?
Did they even LOOK at these units before shipping them? It's not really a critical issue, it's just ugly and not so user-friendly.
Luckily, the knob holder is exactly the same as the OG, so I can put my Cloud+ knob on it.
However I hate how ugly that knob is. That must have been the ugliest batch of knobs ever put on clouds.
...An ugly knob is always better than nothing, so I'm putting it on:
BEFORE /
AFTER
So let's deal with this and continue testing...
Oh, there is another tiny thing I noticed:
The power switch is not perfectly in place, the off side is not pushed all the way into its place, so I've pushed it in with a quiet audible click and now it's in place.
Assuming that every single working unit had the red light issue so far my is probably going to be doing this too.
When is this happening? Randomly? When you move the dial? When?
I'm really scared of this. I'll just keep attention on it every second it is on and probably it will be fine until this gets resolved.
So when I forget about the missing knob the units looks completely ok. Everything is aligned and smooth.
Once last thing that concerns me is that the bamboo intake is touching the enclosure on the bottom. I don't know how much force if any is there, but I know that this was what killed my old Cloud. Its bamboo was touching the enclosure at the GonG end under some pressure and after 200 days the bamboo broke for this reason. No other stress was there.
So, I'm going to turn it on, try playing with the knob and see how these LEDs respond and then if everything goes OK I'm going to hit it.
*Turns the unit on*
I like how the red light is brigher now. ... ...I just don't want to see it when it's not supposed to be lit.
First LED difference I could see was that it flashed green on the start and immediately turns red. It always flashed that green for a fraction of second when I restart.
I can also see that green flash when I turn the unit off while its red.
My old Cloud+ always started at red. Also I can hear some nasty sound coming out when it heats up and cools down.
This is getting me worrind about the bamboo as a lot of people hearing these sound had the bamboo break shortly after.
The heater is mighty fast. Not even minute of heating passed and I can feel a lot of convection heat on my lips sucking on it.
...
So far I think the LEDs are working way diferently than my old Cloud. The red doesn just change to green immediately when on temp, but flashes super fast between green and red until the green overtakes. Looks like these LED are working like PWM or something like that.
...
So during this short testing I couldn't get the red light issue, but I'm still going to be attentive.
The LEDs actually seem to know what they are doing in contrast ty my old Cloud, which LEDs seemed to me to work more like a timer than actual sensor.
So I'm going to fill an ELB and finally try this thing. When the airflow is so much better than my old unit I am really expecting a really nice hit
...
The hit was thin and tasty. A low temp one. The unit has been on for a while so I think it's already heat soaked, so I'm going up with the dial a bit.
A bad thing is I will have to make some hash marks as this old knob doesn't have these hour marks on it. So there is nothing except the visible angle that tells me the dialed position.
Not really a big issue to me, I have a good visual accuracy for angles so I'm good.
Also the enclosure hotness is not that bad as I thought.
I'll still give it some more time to heat soak, but now it only gets uncomfortable above the vapexhale logo so I can still make a full comfortable grip now without holding it on the bottom.
*Some more time to heat soak on the new ~1hr temp.*
...
This is a Cloud!
So blue, so smooth, so tasty, so effective!
I'm going up some more. Let's try 2hrs!
...
As much time as for previous temp bumps passed and the LED still didn't turn green, so I got scared and turned it off.
No overheat, but when turned back on, it was green.
So maybe the red-light issue? If I didn't restart would it overheat? Can't tell now, maybe next time lol.
I will not be sure until I see the red hot glass, but for now I will keep being paranoid and power cycle at every 15 secods of red light or so.
...
Even bigger Cloud. I can taste the subtle temp difference there but its still so smooth compared to everything, including my old Cloud+.
The small load is still completely green with some slight yellow discoloring. I think I can still go up a lot with the temp. That's what I'm going to do:
*3hrs*
No green light after 15 secods again and a green light after a power cycle. At 15 seconds I will probably get no overheats, so I can't know unless I risk or don't give attention...
The cloud was not so big, because it got already extracted at the lower temps i can feel it
....
Sometimes I get the red light. I can be sure it is in red light mode when i move the dial all the way between max and min and if it doesns go green anywhere it's the red light issue.
When the LEDs are working right it always goes green when I go over the real temp. And goes into that PWM rapid switching at edges.
Really feels like a senzor now when it works right, I like that.
I don't know if it overheats in this "faulty mode". Now it seems to me it either turn the heater off or maintains the temp for me...
I've never seen the glass get red hot at this glitch. I hope it stays at least this way.
When I turn the unit off at max temp I can see a little red glow from the heater (not the glass). Just prior to that I pulled a nice cloud without combustion so I think that's normal.
A red hot glass surely isn't and I don't want ever to see that.
The unit can be in the "red light mode" even after restart.
I really don't know what causes it, sometimes it happens a lot and I can't get it to work right even after restarting a lot, sometimes it works right for a prolonged periods of time...
First time I think the heater went off when I was slowly going up.
Then it went into red light and even restarts didn't help.
One of the restarts even didn't light up the LEDs, that scared me (can something be bad at the power socket? i can rock it back and forth in every direction slightly.)
After a cool down I tried again and now I got great results at max (and did that slight red glow test above). The max feel the same as on my old Cloud, which is perfect.
I think one difference between the EVO and Cloud on vapor output is that EVO gives more more vapor at slower pulls.
And my EVO gives me lighter ABV than the Cloud even when giving the same results.
Maybe this is normal and just my old Cloud was so restrictive I has to pull a lot to get the airflow like slow pulling on the EVO.
I think the restrictions moved down also adds to this.
I really want to love this vape!
It's probably even greater than the Cloud. Just if it wasn't so glitchy. And I still can't comprehen't how the fuck could they send a Cloud without a temp knob
Also I think the first run was the glitchiest. And then I swthed back to the default power cord which wasn't as loose at my soft one.
...
After adding wristbands the top half get as hot as the Cloud in wristbands and the bottom half is cool.
Without them the top 1/4 got super hot, but bottom 3/4 stays cool.
