You have to hand it to Vandy Vape for releasing the Pulse AIO series of devices. They perform incredibly well and they don't break the bank. Now they've released a full metal pro version of the kit… How does it perform? Well, let's find out!
What’s In The Box?
Inside of the box you will get an instruction manual as usual in different languages with plenty of illustrations inside, A little QC certificate which upon turning it around shows that it's passed (Good to know), A USB-C cable, a little coil cutting guide, Two nice and simple round wire NI80 coils, A spare stock coil (VVC coil), A stock coil Boro tank with a pre-installed VVC coil featuring adjustable airflow at the bottom, A bag with a host of spares with a little tool to help you customise your device and for the flush nut, Two Allen keys, An adjustable airflow wheel for your Vessel V2 RBA\Boro Tank, A chimney section that allows you to remove the pre installed chimney on the Vessel 2 RBA to make it compatible in other Boro tanks, A 510 adapter for building, Some rubber gaskets, Some O-rings and The Vessel V2 RBA tank which features some nice little airflow holes which are of course wide open without the airflow adjustment wheel (ALL of the spares here!) then FINALLY… of course the main device itself. The Vandy Vape Pulse AIO Pro Kit.
A Closer Look At The Pulse AIO Pro Kit
So the colour that you see in the thumbnail right there is the one I’m using for this review and is a limited edition colour variant. There is only going to be 500 of these made worldwide, so extremely limited edition. If you do like the look of this colour I'd grab one while you can as they will go pretty fast! There’s a nice little lip on the bottom of panels so they can be easily removed. Removing the panel at the front of course reveals the internals as well as two little slots/grooves on either side of the button which we’ve seen on previous renditions of the Pulse AIO for helping with removal for customisation. The buttons have a nice amount of “clickyness” with the buttons as more of a feedback instead of annoyingly audible which is nice. A couple of different visible allen screws for removing the plate around your power and wattage adjustment buttons. You can actually customise these with the Pulse AIO Mini panels on the inside here if you wish to and mix it up a little bit. You've got a really nice little screen on the bottom here with your adjustment buttons and a USB C charging port just below.
Up at the top, There's a nice little removable 510 drip tip with the flush nut just underneath which can be removed quite easily but if you do struggle with it, Don’t forget that tool is included to help you. Going over to the other side you have the same nice groove on the bottom of the panel to remove it, Which once removed will reveal where you'll be installing your 18650 battery. The battery compartment itself is nice and clearly marked with the plus and minus battery orientation with the bottom contact being spring loaded giving you no troubles installing and removing your batteries in there. On the same side is where your boro tank will be situated and just below this you will see the name of the device itself, the Pulse, A Tony B project and manufactured by Vandy Vape just below.
On the front edge just near where your drip tip is situated you will see that you've got some airflow slots on the side as is the usual with the pulse series, BUT…. with the panel on the Boro side, You'll see that you've actually got airflow slots in the panels as well which allows for greater airflow from multiple angles. Now we’ve got that covered, let's chuck a battery in this one and guide you around the chip set.
5 Clicks will allow you to turn on your device which reveals the nice brightly lit screen. The wattage goes up in singular watt increments and it will go all the way up to 80 watts but it will not round robin, Meaning You have to go all the way back down through the wattage if you want to go back to the beginning which will have you all the way down to 5 watts. The amount of puffs that you’ve taken are clearly indicated at the bottom next to your ohms reading with your battery level indicator there on the side of the screen. 3 clicks will get you into the mode selection where you can cycle through from stainless steel temperature control, titanium temperature control, nickel temperature control, bypass, voltage and then back to your watts aka, power mode. The up and down power adjustment buttons takes you into a separate menu where you can find the reset puffs option, A version options to see which version of the chip you are using (5.0.1 for me) and then you just press the power button to come out of that. Going along a little further you can select a few more different things here like TCR, A smart mode and normal which is.. well.. just normal. Pushing your up button and power button together will lock your device with pressing it again unlocking it and you down and power button together do absolutely nothing. If you hold it all in together, you will actually take it to stealth mode where you of course won't be able to see a thing of what your doing with no visible indicators on at all, So if you want to be able to adjust your wattage in stealth mode. I'd probably do it when you've actually got the screen turned back on which you can do so by pressing it all together again. And that in a nutshell is about it when it comes to the chip set which I have to say is nice and simple to manage and navigate.
So we're going to get a build in this Vessel V2 RBA. As far as testing the stock coil tank goes it’s widely known that the VVC coils are pretty damn good and will be so again in the stock coil tank, So we’re going to go right into the RBA section. I’ve not used the included round wire coils for building this as I’ve got something a bit more substantial for this deck in particular with that being some Coils By Scott SFC Boro Coils. Taking a look at the deck there are two Allen key screws on each side to choose from with 4 post holes on the deck. This has its advantages in itself as you don’t need to worry about your coil orientation as you have the availability of the post holes there for you to use either way. Under and slightly around your coil there is kind of a surrounding airflow system there which will hit both under a side on to your coil which is pretty smart so when it's inside the chamber, The airflow will go all around the coil and go straight up the chamber. Your working slots are on the sides of the deck/chamber when it’s all together where as on the previous version of the Vessel RBA, They were situated on the very top of the chamber where your deck sat which worked really well in itself.
So the included Allen keys are actually exactly the same so yeah, Either one you can use to install your coil here. Using the included coil cutting guide I can recommend cutting your coils around 6mm so it sits bang on in the centre of your airflow for the best airflow and position possible. Make sure your coil is nice and centralised in your deck for the best airflow circulation. Getting to the wicking part I must say this deck has been insanely forgiving but there is a kind of sweet spot I’d say. The cotton I’ve used as always is going to the trusty Steam Crave Coil Cotton Laces, as they are just silly easy to use and they've never let me down so why change a working formula. Best way to place your wicks in is to cut off level to the edge of the deck as you don't want to overstuff the wicking ports and give it an ample fluffing on the edges and top (not too much though) then lift and tuck while checking through you’re visible wicking port that it isn’t rammed in there on each side to allow for decent absorption. Make sure when you’re done you prime your coil and cotton up edge with a couple dots of e-liquid on the wicking ports where the cotton is visible and you’re good to go. A really nice time building with this build deck as it’s incredibly easy to use BUT, There is one thing that they’ve repeated history on that they really could have changed and that little thing is that there is zero O-ring to support keeping the RBA onto the chamber. Although it’s not quite as loose as the original RBA it’s still something that ideally could have been added and isn’t a difficult add on to bring to the drawing board.
Now at this point I could put the airflow control wheel just on the bottom with everything together in the tank but as I’m going to be using this with fully open airflow anyway I will be leaving the airflow control wheel off. I will say though when you do use the RBA with it installed it closes things off the nice airflow hole airflow hole giving you ample amounts of control but is difficult to adjust when fully installed in your Pulse AIO.
I don’t think I mentioned it previously, But I've been having no trouble actually fitting any of my e-liquid bottles nozzles into the tank to fill up at all. There's no mess at all.
Side By Side Device Comparison
So putting the Pulse side by side with the Ambition Mods x Kilic Customs KIL LITE, They are practically the same height but the Pulse is slightly thicker due to the Panels. Putting the Pulse next to the Cthulhu AIO, Again they are roughly the same height with thickness wise also being about the same. Finally we go side by side with the Veepon KUKA and the Pulse is actually visibly a little smaller height wise than the KUKA with them being very close to the same size in width with the KUKA being a little thicker only by a margin.
Overall Thoughts On The Pulse AIO Pro Kit.
So what do I think of the Pulse AIO Pro Kit? Well straight off the bat, I love the fact that this is now a full aluminium body. The weight on it, the actual quality of the finish, it's all incredible and what we have all been waiting for the longest time for with the best outcome imaginable with nothing I can fault on the actual finish. The actual size of the device as you've read in the side by side comparison part when put next to the Cthulhu AIO, It is pretty much the same size. This is thanks to this rendition of the Pulse has the same form factor as the pulse AIO mini. Yes, some of you may be a little bit bummed out that it doesn't take a 21700, but I like the fact that it has a more pocketable form factor with that 18650 and to be fair, I've had no troubles with the battery life at all even when using at the higher areas of power.
Onto the Vessel V2 a second and I must admit the wicking inside that Vessel V2 deck has kept up consistently the entire way through! I have literally taken 6, 7, 8 solid vapes from it, chain vaping constantly and it STILL keeps up the good game with zero dryness or drop in flavour which is insanely good in my opinion and is overall definitely an improvement over the original Vessel RBA. The flavour pops nicely too thanks to that slightly more condensed chamber and for a more budget friendly RBA that actually comes with this kit, You cannot go wrong other than of course the whole O-Ring situation but it is what it is. There's no movement and there's no gaps or anything like that in the Boro tank itself when it’s all installed but It's just one little thing. So Vandy Vape, If you’re reading this… if you do a Vessel V2.5 or even a V3, Can you please put an O-Ring on there? It'd be much appreciated.
The customisation is great as has been the case with all of the Pulse series of AIOs. The fact that obviously you can change your 510 drip tips and swap them out to an integrated tip if you wish is a nice bonus meaning flush nuts that you get for your other Boro/Billet devices will fit this too. Plus the available panels will be extensive with this being able to use the Pulse AIO panels and accessories that already exist plus the wide variety of modder’s out there making third party custom panels. Everything that comes in the box, also has to be a nice pro as well with the fact you pretty much get everything you need from the off apart from obviously a battery being the only thing that is basically missing.
I do like how vibrant that little screen is and it may look tiny when it's turned off, but actually when it's turned on and it's all lit up, everything's perfectly visible on there. There's not a single bit of information that you're going to miss. Everything on there is really easy to access with the menus really easy to navigate and is just a really simple system to get used to and keeps your little tinkering bits on there If you want to do your temperature control for the true hobbyists out there that really like to mess around with their DIY stuff.
If you do want to use this as a mouth to lung kit from the box then unfortunately you probably won't be able to do that with the included Vessel V2 definitely performing as more of a RDL/DL kind of vape, Even with that airflow control wheel in there. That being said though, There is an absolute ton of Bridges and Boros available now that will fit in this to give you that mouth to lung experience if you require it.
Realistically speaking, I don't have any huge negatives that I can actually say about this variant of the Pulse and it has 99% more pros than cons. On a durability scale due to that full aluminium body is leaps and bounds better than the original Pulse AIOs with zero fear of cracking as the originals did. All I can say is thank you so much Vandy Vape for finally listening and bringing us this fantastic bit of kit. If you've managed to get your hands on one of these, let me know what you think of it down in the comment section.
