The Serpent RDTA, it has a lot to live up to… The Serpent Mini RTA was and is an awesome little atty. How does this single coil RDTA that shares the same name stack up? Let’s find out…
Aesthetically it shares nothing with the RTA, but it’s not an ugly atty by any means. It’s not overly branded, it’s little tall, the AFC/Base deck section takes up a lot of the height under the top cap, which is good, it means the vapor chamber is rather reduced. It could be a little more reduced in our opinion but nothing to really complain about or hinder performance. The Serpent RDTA is thought out, the design is solid, it performs very well. The top cap tolerances are nice, it holds yet is easy to remove when you want to. The dual juice filling ports with gaskets make for easy filling and keep leaking under control. The inner ceiling of the top cap is nice domed for flavour. The clamp style posts work well and are easy to work with. We wonder about the longevity of the post screws however, when clamping down on your wire leads it leaves an unbalanced pressure on the the screw head (so far so good however). Really for the low cost, great materials, fit & finish, and great overall performance there isn’t much to complain about. Could it be a little shorter? sure. Wotofo’s addition of the Ultem 510 drip tip adapter is a nice touch, you can spruce things up a little bit with an Ultem drip tip. Personally we like the performance and cleaner lines of the Delrin integrated tip, first time ever we like a chuff style tip more (smaller boar tips have issue with condensation, juice in your mouth, chalk it up to the great vapor production).
Flavour is what the Serpent line is all about and the Serpent RDTA doesn’t disappoint. You will enjoy a dense, saturated vape on this baby. The wicking is just so good. There is space under and around the AFC inlet that allow juice to travel right to the very base of the wicking ports, this alleviates any undo pressure or bottlenecking of your wicks and keeps them very saturated. This along with under coil direct airflow and very little travel for the vapor give some true dripper like flavour. There are many much more expensive RDTAs on the market that could learn a thing or two about alleviating undo pressure around your wick leads, this is the magic of the Serpent RDTA (something also shared with the Hobo DrifTank).
Add in some silky smooth airflow and now you are talking. The whole package works flawlessly. The AFC adjusts and keeps it setting with ease. Fully open it’s a barely restricted lung hit (nothing super crazy wide). We like it all over the place, the flavour is good on all ranges of airflow, of course the more you shut it down the more flavour intensity. But the vapor production is great and you find yourself dialing the volume of vapor you are in the mood for (a rather refreshing concept, many attys have a much short setting window for optimal flavour).
Building is super easy. This clamp craze is a good thing, working with them is easy enough. It just a matter of twisting you coil leads into place on a 45º angle and clamping down. Coil alignment is a dead center deal with a couple of mm of space above the airflow. Coils? We played here, claptons seem best but you need to watch your wire guages or you will experience some spit back. The included coils work very well, they look to be 28×2/38-40 fused, Stainless, 3mm ID, 5 wrap claptons. They Ohm in around 0.5-0.6 and like to be run around 30-35W. It gives a great, dense, flavourful vape on the slightly warm side (really sort of cool for us). Really any nice high gauge clapton is going to work well, but it’s nice to see the included coils so dialled in for a change.
Juice capacity is the only real con and even then it’s subjective. 2ml isn’t a lot and is most likely a TPD thing but the fill ports work really well so even if you are filling 3-4 times a day, it’s easy. Almost any bottle type works, you may have trouble (messy) with thicker droppers, but in most cases everything fits nice and tidy into the filling ports. We haven’t had any leaking, you will have some condensation squirt out around the top cap seal if you don’t give the atty a little wipe down while filling.
So.. does it live up to the Serpent name? Hell yes! Much better than the Alto did for sure. The Serpent RDTA might just be the best of the bunch, it’s easier to wick, has better wicking performance, smoother airflow, on par if not better flavour, and really only falls short on looks and overall size (extremely subjective). All this aside, BUY IT! For the money and the performance it is one of the best RDTAs on the market.
Are the units being sold through Fasttech and 3F Vape counterfeited knockoffs, or the very same unit?
Authentic.
This one or kof rdta from hop n vape?
Skip this one its set up for the most part like a Hadaly. The tall part kills it makes so turbulant, yuck. Fail