Chris 'majorvapes' SissonHere’s a look at the latest pod system from Eleaf. It’s a simple open pod system with a few elegant touches incorporated into it’s design. I know the market is pretty saturated with pod system right now but at least this one comes with one standout feature you don’t see on many pod devices out there. It’s called the iTap from Eleaf and this is what I think of it.
Package contents:
| 1 x | iTap battery |
| 1 x | iTap cartridge |
| 1 x | GS Air S 1.6ohm Head |
| 1 x | GS Air 0.75ohm Head |
| 1 x | QC USB Cable |
| 1 x | User Manual |
Listed features and specs:
| Size: | 20.0*16.0*102.3mm |
| Weight: | 42.7g |
| liquid capacity: | 2ml |
| Battery capacity: | 800mAh |
| Output wattage: | 30W max |
| Resistance range: | 0.4Ω-3.0Ω |
| Colors: | Blue, Silver, Black |
Packaging and contents:
The kit comes packed in a nice compact cardboard box. An image of the kit on the front lets you know what to expect while a listing of the contents and some basic company info adorns the back. Inside the kit comes safely packed in a thick which sponge insert so everything arrived safe and sound. In the kit you get the iTap device, an iTap pod, two coils, a micro USB cable, a warning card and a user manual. It’s a pretty light weight kit but you do get everything you’d need to get started short of juice.
The mod:
The iTap device is compact and square shaped. It stands at 102.3mm tall, is 20mm wide and about 16mm thick. It feels light like it’s made of aluminum and weighs only 42.7g. It’s essentially a square shaped tube with a mouthpiece on one end and a button on the side. It also sports a micro USB port towards the bottom for charging and can charge at a rate of 1A. It’s got an internal 800mAh battery which for a pod device is quite big. An LED indicator located on the front bottom face of the device is used to indicate remaining battery life, when it’s firing, charging as well as any status alerts.
The top, bottom and button on the device are ringed with rose gold which adds to the elegant look of the device and it’s available in three colours blue, silver and black. On the face just above the bottom ring is printed Eleaf while on the back is printed iTap. Aside from some air holes located on either side the iTap is pretty demure.
Using the device is pretty basic with the usual five clicks to turn it on and off and a press of the button to fire it. No other real functions are included other than the indicator light to show remaining battery. When it’s green the battery is between 60-100%, when it’s blue it’s between 20-59% and when red it’s below 19%. It does of course have the usual protections built in like over-charge, over-discharge, over-current, a 15s cutoff and short circuit protection so the device should remain safe in most any condition. Now probably the most notable feature on this device is the dry-burn protection. It basically works like most regulated TC mods where it attempts to throttle the power when it detects the coil is dry. In theory it’s a great feature but I found in practice not so much. More on that below.
The Pod:
The pod that comes with the kit also acts as the mouthpiece for the device which is pretty common with pod devices these days. It’s got a duckbill shaped mouthpiece which is fairly comfortable to use despite being a bit thicker than most others I’ve experienced. The pod holds 2ml of liquid and is bottom filled with a two pronged rubber grommet that acts as the fill port. I found because of it’s proximity to the coil cap the plug was a bit hard to get out and even harder to get back in especially if you take both prongs out, but leaving one in made the job considerably easier though you lose the venting the other hole provies. The pod uses replaceable coils and to access them you unscrew the coil cap from the bottom of the tank. The cap also has a built-in airflow control ring that can be opened and closed by turning the ring. The airflow only has three tiny holes which you can open or close with the sliding ring. I did find even fully closed that some air would still get through but it can be adjusted from a rather tight mouth to lung to a much looser mouth to lung hit or even a really tight direct lung. For me it’s a comfortable draw and I like that I can adjust it down to just a single hole for a tighter MTL draw. Personally I think it would have been nice if they included a second pod but only getting one in the kit is pretty common.
The Coils:
The iTap pod uses replaceable coils and it comes with two different ones for you to test out. However only one of the included coils can be used with the iTaps anti dry-burn feature as the other one is just a standard kanthal coil. Using the GS Air S 1.6ohm stainless steel coil the device kicks on the dry-burning protection feature that’s meant to protect the user from dry hits when the pod runs low on liquid. Unfortunately after using it I feel that the dry-burn protection function is a bit flaky and when using it I regularly had to re-seat the coil in order to get it working again and when it was working it produced some fairly mixed results. In most instances the first few pulls would be full and satisfying but subsequent pulls the experience would diminish until it essentially would stop working with the indicator light flashing away to let me know it’s run dry despite still being well saturated. Re-seat the pod and poof it was working again. So as much as I value a pod system that can detect when it’s running empty I don’t think this one is quite ready for prime time yet. It could be that I got a bad coil that’s not making a good connection and others may not experience it as I have but I wasn’t long using the GS Air S coil because of this fact. Flavour wise the first few pulls were always quite satisfying but since it seemed to throttle down even though it wasn’t empty both flavor and vapour production tended to drop.
The other GS Air 0.75ohm kanthal coil works as a regular subohm coil but without the anti dry-burn protection that the S version has. Switching to the regular GS Air coil the experience was much more consistent with each hit being almost the same as the last however being that the device is direct output the experience can decline as the battery does. It also has a bit of ramp up so the first pull tends to be a bit lean but subsequent pull are fine. It’s a much warmer, fuller vape and more comparable to others in it’s class compared to the S coil. I’ve actually used these coils before with some past kits and they work really well with salt based liquids. Flavour from these coils is solid and being a subohm it actually puts out a decent amount of vapour as well.
Overall:
I’ve got to say as excited as I was for a dry-burn feature it didn’t quite pan out how I’d expected. Again it could have just been a bum coil that I received but having only received the one I didn’t have any other means of testing the dry-burn protection. However I have seen the same comments from other reviewers so I don’t believe I’m alone on this. Using the standard 0.75ohm GS Air coil made much more sense for me and with the 800mAh internal battery the thing tends to last all day long. So would I recommend the iTap? If you don’t plan on using the anti dry-burn feature I’d say it’s a pretty decent device with good flavour and solid battery life but if you only want it for the dry-burn protection you may want to wait until they’ve ironed out some of the issues.
