Vaporesso Armour

Which Vaporesso Armour to Buy

Three platforms carry the Vaporesso Armour name, but they are not three sizes of the same thing:

• The Armour G is a pod mod: one piece, a pod on top, 80W.
• The Armour Ultra is a sealed sub-ohm kit at 100W on a built-in battery.
• The Armour OCTA is the newest and the biggest, 220W on two 18650 cells.

Every figure below is read off our own product pages.

Kit	Battery	Output	Takes	Sealed	Price
Armour G	3000mAh built in	5 to 80W	2ml pod plus a GTX coil	No	£29.99
Armour Ultra kit	5500mAh built in	5 to 100W	iTank T tank plus a GTi coil	Yes	£54.99
Armour Ultra mod	5500mAh built in	5 to 100W	Any 510 tank, none included	Yes	£44.99
Armour OCTA kit	Two 18650, not included	Up to 220W	iTank T tank plus a GTi coil	Yes	£59.99
Armour OCTA mod	Two 18650, not included	Up to 220W	Any 510 tank, none included	Yes	£49.99

Pick the Armour G if you want one thing in your pocket and a pod you swap in seconds.

Pick the Armour Ultra if you want a battery that lasts days and a kit you can drop or get wet, with nothing to charge separately.

Pick the Armour OCTA if you already keep 18650 cells and want the headroom. Either of the two mods on their own if you already own a tank you like.

Vaporesso Armour G

The Armour G puts 80W and a 3000mAh battery into a 113mm body, which is the whole point of it: pod mod power without pod mod bulk.

A leather grip wraps an aluminium frame, and a 0.96 inch colour screen sits above the fire button. It is the only Armour that is not sealed, so treat it as a pocket kit rather than a site kit.

What the Armour G Ships With

A 2ml top-fill pod and two GTX mesh coils already fitted, 0.2 ohm and 0.4 ohm, so it is ready out of the wrap on a 70VG shortfill. The pod takes the whole GTX range though, down to 1.2 ohm, so closing the airflow ring and fitting a higher resistance turns the same kit into a nic salt device.

Vaporesso Armour Ultra

The Armour Ultra is the sealed middle of the range: 5500mAh, 100W through the AXON Boost chipset, and the iTank T sub-ohm tank in the box with two GTi dual mesh coils at 0.2 ohm and 0.4 ohm. Seven finishes in the UK line-up. The battery is built in, so there is nothing to buy separately and nothing to carry.

Armour Ultra Kit or Armour Ultra Mod

The difference is what is in the box. The kit comes with the iTank T and two coils. The mod is the same chassis, the same 5500mAh battery, the same 100W and the same sealing, sold on its own with a 510 thread for a tank you already own.

That is £44.99 against £54.99, so the kit is worth it unless the tank would sit in a drawer.

Vaporesso Armour OCTA

The OCTA is the newest addition to the Armour range, and the most powerful. 220W through the AXON 3.0 chipset from two 18650 cells behind a locking door.

The cells are not included, which is the trade for the headroom: you keep spares and swap rather than wait on a cable. The screen is the same 0.96 inch colour panel, with a swipe to lock.

The Eight Armour Protections

Vaporesso name eight specific protections, which they call Counting Eight.

Four are about the outside:

1. IPX8 for water to a metre for half an hour
2. IPX9K for a 100 bar pressure wash at 85C
3. IP6X for dust
4. A 1.2m drop rating across 26 angles.

Four are electrical:

1. Charging stops past 75C
2. Output cuts if the two cells drift more than 0.9V apart
3. A ten second cutoff catches a stuck fire button
4. The charge port is wrapped in TPU.

The OCTA kit comes with the same iTank T tank as the Ultra and the same two GTi coils, and takes the whole GTi range. The OCTA mod is the same 220W chassis on its own, 510 threaded, 146.3 by 30.8 by 55mm, 362g, in six finishes.

How Rugged Is a Vaporesso Armour?

Armour is a name that invites the question, so here is what the ratings actually mean rather than the badge.

The Ultra and the OCTA are both rated IP68 and IP69K. IP6X is the dust half: dust tight, nothing gets in at all. IPX8 is the water half: a metre of water for half an hour or more. IPX9K is the one most kits do not have: Vaporesso quote a 100 bar jet at 85C for the OCTA and water up to 80C for the Ultra, which is a pressure washer rather than rain.

MIL-STD-810H is the drop standard. On the OCTA that is 1.2m tested across 26 angles, so corners and edges rather than one flat landing. None of that makes a mod indestructible, and a cracked screen is still a cracked screen, but it is the difference between a kit that minds a building site and one that does not.

The Armour G carries no IP rating. It is leather over aluminium, built to take knocks rather than water, and Vaporesso do not claim otherwise.

The AXON Chipset

Every Vaporesso Armour is built on their AXON chipset, which is what ties the range together. The job it does is holding the wattage steady as the battery drains, so the last third of a charge tastes like the first third rather than going weak and cool. It also reads the coil and stops you firing a 0.2 ohm head at a wattage that will burn it.

The generations differ:

• The Armour G uses the standard AXON chipset at up to 80W.
• The Ultra adds Boost mode at 100W.
• The OCTA is on AXON 3.0 with Boost at up to 220W.

On a high wattage mod, this stability matters more than the headline number, because a 220W mod sits somewhere between 40W and 80W most of its life.

Coils and Pods for the Vaporesso Armour Range

The pod mod and the sub-ohm kits do not share a consumable, which is the most common mix up on Armour. The Armour G takes a pod with a GTX coil pressed into it. The Ultra and the OCTA both take a GTi coil straight into the iTank T.

Kit	What to reorder	Price
Armour G, and the older Armour GS	Armour G/GS pods, two a pack, no coils included	£7.99
Armour G, and the older Armour GS	GTX coils, 0.15 to 1.2 ohm, five a pack	£9.99
Armour Ultra kit and Armour OCTA kit	GTi coils, 0.15 to 0.5 ohm, five a pack	£9.99

A GTX coil will not fit the iTank T and a GTi coil will not fit an Armour pod, so order by the kit rather than by the name. The full picture for both families is on the Vaporesso coils page.

Every other Vaporesso pod format, for the XROS, Luxe, ECO Nano and Vibe kits, is listed by kit with Vaporesso pods.

Batteries for the Armour OCTA

The OCTA is the only Armour that needs cells buying separately, and it needs two. Buy them as a matched pair, the same brand and the same age, and keep them as a pair: the mod cuts output if the two drift more than 0.9V apart, which is the protection doing its job rather than a fault.

Carry spares in a plastic case, never loose in a pocket with keys or coins, and retire any cell with a torn or nicked wrap rather than vaping it. Batteries and chargers covers the cells we stock and the chargers for them.

Replacing a Vaporesso Armour S, Max or Pro

The Vaporesso Armour S, Armour Max and Armour Pro are all discontinued, but they were 510 threaded box mods, which means the tank is the cheap half of the fix. Any 510 tank still fits them, including the iTank T that comes with the Ultra and the OCTA, so a tired tank on a working mod is a tank purchase rather than a kit purchase.

If the mod itself has gone, the OCTA is the closest thing in the range: removable cells like the ones you are used to, a 510 thread, and more power than any of the three it replaces. If you would rather stop carrying spare batteries, the Ultra does 100W on a built-in 5500mAh cell instead.