KZ's long overdue VapeDynamics Duo post-mortem review
Disclaimer: I was contacted directly to beta-test this vape because I participated in two test runs for Ciggo/Bauway of Herbstick fame in the past, and my contact over there moved to another company that was helping VapeDynamics to release their Duo product. While I didn't pay for my unit, I have no vested interest in this company nor have I been compensated in any other way. I don't have any blog or website to generate revenue and I'm not making my living out of vape reviews.
I really wanted to love this vape: it was promising the specs were rather good. I knew it wouldn't excel either on the dry herbs front, being your classic ceramic oven conduction type, nor on the 510 front, lacking advanced features found in modern mods. But it looked rather well made and versatile.
This will not be a fully featured review because I unfortunately can not recommend this vape in its current form.
Stay away from it!
510 mode and overall impression
The device is rather heavy for such a small size. I suspect that the shell is some form of cast alloy and not aluminum. Not really a good point as you can definitely feel it in your pocket.
The 510 part is working ok, but it doesn't have support for stainless steel TC mode nor custom TCR mode, limiting its use to Ni200 (0.1 to 0.8 ohm) or Titanium (0.1 to 0.3 ohm), or classic variable wattage mode (0.1 to 3 ohm) It's also limited to 50W max. I might still use it from time to time as a pure mod, but you can easily find better units for cheaper these days.
You can charge it over USB at 1A (requires a recent computer with beefy ports) and they provide a very small charger brick with a USB connector.
It works with 18650 cells which is fine yet expected for this kind of device. I don't like the screw lid, it's a bit tedious to open and close. This leads us to the first problem: It comes with a battery re-badged to their VapeDynamics colors that immediately caught my attention. The label says 40A max 3200mAh yet we know such a cell doesn't exist on the market.
The cell has a triangular top, a black insulation ring and sports a circle embossed on the negative terminal. To me it screams like "rewrapped Panasonic cell". The problem is: best Panasonic cells with this capacity are only 10A continuous discharge! After grilling them on the subject they told me their supplier was IMREN, which is notorious for rewrapping crap cells and involved in many of the accidents reported by the press.
This cell is garbage, I don't know what its real rating is but when I used it in another mod with the Project, I started getting "weak battery" messages mid-charge at less than 40W and it was sagging so much it made me uncomfortable. So please, discard this crap ASAP or at least do not attempt to use it for high power applications (might be ok for a small LED flashlight although it's not protected)
Finally the device came with two 510 attachments for wax and concentrates but I don't do either so I can not report on how they work.
Dry herbs mode
This is where it all goes wrong! The vape had a hell of a robot-fart smell when new, so I proceeded to do the mandatory empty burn-ins. But it was not going away, to the contrary, I found that it was getting worse and worse!
At some point I put the vape right in front of a blowing fan, and after a few minutes the screen displayed an "overheat" error message. Obviously the hot air was not meant to travel in the reverse direction, but it was stinking so much I wouldn't have dared trying to suck air from it instead of blowing in really... And since there was no real defined air intake spot to blow into anyways...
So I got tired of it, it wasn't going anywhere and the stench reminded me my awful experiences with the FlowerMate 8 and the Elo beta-testing. I knew that smell by heart! To dis-spell my doubts, I dismantled the device... and oh my!
First of all, the grill on the side is not metal, it's some kind of plastic sheet made to look like it. The thing is completely soaked in glue and excess glue (see white arrow below) could be seen all over the inside of the shell:
This is through this "grill" that the air intake takes place by the way. But it was not the culprit as the glue was rather odorless. Yet already worrying...
Once the air has passed through this grill, it travels all over the electronic PCB, and is sucked by the hole at the bottom of the bowl assembly. This hole is right above the DC converter IC on the board (not visible in the following picture), this is why when I blew air in it, it triggered the internal temperature sensor and led to the overheat message.
The bowl is encased in some form of plastic shell (nylon or teflon, hard to tell) and wrapped in your usual rockwool + polyimide tape insulation (this adds to the smell, but those with good eyes should have already spotted the real issue on the previous picture)
Then here it was, in all its glory and in copious amounts: the damn silicone bonding glue, AKA white hot snot, right next to the bowl!
The hotter it gets the worse the smell, exactly like in the FM8 and Elo. I understand it's common practice to do that to secure stuff in electronic devices, but come on! What were they thinking? How could they miss that awful stench? It's braindead really!
Here's a last picture of the other side for completeness:
So here we go, the bottom-line is: unless you scrape this shit thoroughly away, the smell is not going to disappear and I don't think inhaling those fumes is healthy at all.
If you happen to own this device, try to clean all the white goo if you can. And if you don't, stay away from the VapeDynamics Duo until they get it right (and I doubt they will, the company has not answered my messages once they said they would fix the damn thing, so we can safely assume that they went out of business now)
Gambling for science
