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I have been a bit lax lately in my reviews. RL has just been keeping me super busy. That aside, yesterday I bought a couple Kanger Mini Protanks. I absolutely love the regular sized ones so I was excited to give this a whirl too. What can I say? It is everything I expected it to be and more.

Over the past month or so I have become increasingly dependent on my regular Protanks to be my steady all day, every day vape companions. They just work, and after I got a little used to the slightly airy draw on them, it feels quite alien to try anything else. The Minis are no different.

The Minis are slightly smaller version and skirted to fit your eGo with precision and a nice clean look. They also recess nicely into bigger eGo threaded mods like a Vamo or iTaste SVD and look nice doing it. The draw is the same as the regular Protank, and they even use the same atomizer heads.

These are a rock-solid device and you can bet I will be carrying them around, along with the regular sized as well (which by the way looks stellar on my Provari).

I cannot wait until the Protank 2 rolls along!

Some days being a reviewer is a lot cooler than others. They are always nice when I get surprise packages from Kingpin though…

A few weeks ago (I am horribly backlogged on things I want to blog about) Kingpin sent me a nice surprise package. In it was a couple of their new Vivi Nova tanks, a large Vivi Nova, a spare replacement tank tube and one of their eGo pass through batteries and a couple extra drip tips. (Free for the purpose of review – I hate disclaimers).

Oddly enough, I really didn’t expect much from this. You see I have used eGo style batteries in the past, and I have also used nova style tanks. I like the eGo style batteries enough, but I am *not* a fan of vivi nova tanks. Every single one I have tried and tested had problems after a while. They would work fine for a spell and then they would get burney tasting and / or start gurgling, and *nothing* irritates me as much as flooding / gurgling tanks. So, it was actually sort of fortuitous that I have been so blasted busy these last few weeks and I had been sort of forced into *really* giving these a run for their money.

Here’s the interesting part. I have literally had no problems with any of this gear the entire time I have had it. I thought to myself, something must be *really* different here. As it turns out, there is. It’s quality control, plain and simple. It has to be. If you look at the products that Kingpin carries, you’ll come to the conclusion that they *seem* to be a little behind most other vendors. Some people I have talked with think their prices are a little on the high end as well. Since I have had the chance to actually look at and test these products first hand, I beg to differ. These products, which are things the vast majority of vaping people should be familiar with, are made with impeccable quality. The eGo battery is a little different than most. It’s casing is harder than most with that rubberized coating. This is reminiscent of some high end expensive kit from Volcano. Very durable, cleans easily, fires every time. The novas are where it’s at though. After I used them long enough to realize they are way different than any others I have tried, I started giving them a lot closer look. Other than the fact that they have a spring loaded 510 connection (completely brilliant and ALL 510s should be this way), I noticed probably the most important thing. All the center posts are completely straight and correctly aligned. Every single other nova style tank I have has a misaligned center post. This means that the rubber grommet doesn’t seat just right at the top and eventually you get flooding and whatever other issues, but none of that here. As for the no-burney taste, I can only chalk that up to perhaps just having better quality silica and coils. Again, all quality control.

I did mention that they included a couple extra drip tips as well (good price btw). These are your standard plastic tips and work just as you would expect, and I am pretty sure they were included because of the drip tips that came included with the novas. They are flat sided whistle tips. Although tips like these are a little position dependent, I actually found them quite comfortable to use.

Now I did get this all separate and loose, however, most people would go for the kit that includes all this goodness. That would be Kingpin’s Hitman EV Passthrough Vivi Kit, which comes with 2 650mAh passthrough eGo batteries (with that snazzy Hitman logo) + trim rings, a usb charging cable. 2 nova tanks, and 2 extra nova heads. All that for a very reasonable $48.95, and you can upgrade the batteries during order to 900mAh for a measly $2 more. Again, let me restate this is really good equipment. I have literally been pushing a single one of these batteries hard for the past 3 weeks until it gets HOT to the touch (I haven’t been nice to it at all). The battery is great and the combo together is just fantastic! It’d be a great starter kit or even a nice reliable and good working backup kit to have.

So you got yourself a new E-Cig. What’s the most inexpensive way to dress it up? Personalize it? Even improve your vaping experience? Add a drip tip, of course!

Drip tips are, to me, fascinating. There are so many shapes and sizes and colors and materials that it can just boggle the mind. Not to mention that they are fun to use and inexpensive to collect! Vapor4Life was cool enough to send me some free so I could show them off and tell you about them in this review!

Firstly, I should explain what a drip tip actually is. A drip tip is a comfortable little tip that fits snugly into the atomizer end of an e-cig. Their history actually started long ago when smoking an e-cig was done with just a bare atomizer with a cartridge tip inserted. These cartridges had a small amount of filler material in them that you saturated with your e-juice and, when it was inserted into an atomizer, the filler wicked a little juice into the atomizer allowing you to vape. Think of this as a very early version of a cartomizer, in 2 pieces, with way less filler material. The issue with this is that it really didn’t hold much e-juice and if you let it get dry, you could easily get a burnt taste. Many people would drip their e-juice into the tip often to keep things moist and working well. Eventually, this evolved into using the whole setup without any filler at all. You would drip a few drops into the tip and is would just run right into the atomizer, then you would drip some more and vape some more, etc. and so on. That “drip tip” was the mouthpiece, and although it took on additional function and refinement, the name stuck.

Today, many people still vape by dripping, using their drip tips directly on top of an atomizer, but you are much more likely to see them attached and being used as a mouthpiece on a cartomizer, clearomizer or tank and if you are using only Vapor4Life gear, that’s what you are doing. A note here on usage is that I have seen many new vapers who assumed that they somehow put this tip on their cartomizer or tank and drip their e-juice into it to fill it. Do not do this. You will simply flood your device. They are not “fill tips” 🙂

On to the review! Vapor4Life sells a nice variety of drip tips in various styles, colors and materials. What they sent me, and what you see in the included pics is a set of Ming Vase tips, a set of Swirl tips, a Stainless Ming, a Chrome tip and a black Kalabash (the one that looks like a chess pawn). They also carry Ribbon style tips, which are the same shape as the Swirl tips, but are clear with a ribbon of color swirled through them. They all appear to be very well made with no uncomfortable sharp edges or burrs or anything of the sort. They fit well in all my tanks and cartomizers and are comfortable on my lips and a really good looking accessory, in my opinion. I was never really a fan of having that hard carto in my mouth, and using a drip tip makes all the difference in the world, and, apart from that, the aesthetics can be practical as well. Imagine having *gasp* more than 1 e-cig ready to go (yes, always have a backup) and they look identical. Pop on different colored drip tips and you now know which e-cig in your pocket has the peanut butter and which one has the menthol! What could be better or easier than that? As far as the different shapes, they all feel a little different on your lips, so that is more of a personal preference thing. My preference is the feel of the Mings, but then again, that’s just me.

Any way you look at it, if you haven’t yet tried a drip tip, you need to. And not just one, several. Get ’em in different colors and styles and see what you like best. For little more than $5 a piece, you can afford to have a little fun here, and there is nothing wrong with a little fun once in a while.

One of the things that really bothers me about my Provari is I am constantly changing batteries in it. Granted, I got a Provari Mini, which only takes button top 18350s (or 16350s) but I can go through 3 in a day pretty easy. For you full size Provari owners, you get to use an 18500, so it’s not quite as bad – maybe one battery change. Well, I started hunting around for a way to use a bigger battery in my Provari and came upon a couple solutions. The first is to buy the extended battery cap. This lets a Mini user like me use an 18500 and a full size user use an 18650. The problem with that is I just don’t like the look of it, and I still want more battery. More digging revealed that someone else thought of this and made a nifty little device called a Twins telescopic extension. Now THAT is a nifty idea! It’s a telescoping bottom for the Provari and Provari Mini to extend either device for 18650 use (and anything in between). This also has its issues though. It is *very* difficult to find them in stock anywhere except Europe and they are on the expensive end +-$40 here in the states +shipping.

Well, Just the other day I was following an ad for something and landed upon CigTechs website and beheld a wonderful thing! The have a extension ring for the Provari called the Tatroe Ring Provari, which not only will let a Mini user use an 18500 **and** their own bottom cap for a more (IMHO) finished Provari look, but it will bump a full sized Provari up to 18650. By that reasoning I figured I might just be able to use 2 of them in conjunction to be able to get an 18650 running in my Provari Mini! The killer part of this entire thing is these are extremely reasonably priced at only $15. That is not only 2.5 times less expensive than the Twins, but even less expensive than the Provari extended bottom cap.

Queue here to a couple days later and I am thrilled to let you know that you can, indeed, use 2 of them together to run an 18650 in your Provari Mini, and I think it looks darn nice to boot! The diameter of the rings are the same as the Provari body, so it feels right and solid. Beautiful threading. You keep your own bottom cap, and, like I said, they are inexpensive and IN STOCK! Fast shipping and good customer service from the CigTech folks as well, Just can’t beat this if you are a Provari owner!

When most people think about customizing their e-cig / mod, most people think of J-Wraps, and for good reason!

J-Wraps was nice enough to send me some of their product to review, and I, and my wife had a lot of fun with it! J-Wraps is a company that makes adhesive backed covers for most popular e-cigs / mods. Most e-cig users get really attached to their e-cigs. Not only are many of them quite expensive, but they are also not quickly replaced. If you have a new mod, cover it up and protect it. If you have an old battle worn one, cover it up and make it like new again! Basically, think of these as something like a vinyl sticker in a large variety of designs and styles that you can use to personalize, customize and protect your e-cig.

The wraps are actually fairly easy to apply because they aren’t permanent, so you can pull and re-stick them to get them placed just right. It’s also possible to save and reuse them if you are really careful. If you pull too hard you may stretch them a bit, which makes them a little rumply 🙂 You can also clean these – BOTH sides! One of the first wraps I tried to apply, I peeled off the backing board and then promptly dropped the wrap onto my carpet, sticky side down. It was absolutely covered with cat hair and fuzz. It turns out that you can clean gunk even off the sticky side with a little mild soap and warm water. I washed mine off and stuck it on my vanity mirror so it could dry, and once it was, I peeled it off and stuck it on my e-cig. No problems whatsoever!

Below you’ll see pics of those J-Wraps on a variety of mods. Some I received free from J-Wraps for review purposes and some I actually won at a local vape meetup. My favorites were the textured ones like the Carbon Fiber and the Ostrich. My wife really liked the Blue Hologram. J-Wraps has got something there for everyone and will even do custom jobs as well. Any non-custom wrap is available for less than $20 That’s a deal that is hard to beat on a great product! See for yourself!