Yachtvape Eclipse RTA Review by Owen

Introduction

I’ve taken a few rides on the hype-train in some of my reviews, with mixed results.

I found the original Profile RDA to be overrated, however the Gear RTA and the Pioneer MTL RTA proved themselves worthy of the hype that they were receiving by being awesome.

So here is the review of the Yacht Vape Eclipse RTA designed by Mike Vapes, a 24mm single-coil, postless deck RTA that is making claims of being a “five star flavor banger“.

First impressions

From everything I had heard prior to receiving the Eclipse, I was expecting the most compact RTA possible, which isn’t the case. This can be seen when compared to the Mad Hatter RTA and Gear RTA.

Apart from having the hex screws hidden in the airflow, everything on the Eclipse looks conventional.

As far as looks are concerned, the styling is quite reserved with ridges on the bayonet style top-cap and airflow-ring.

Build

As with other postless deck designs, you’re going to have to pre-cut your coil leads, fortunately the Eclipse comes with a coil cutting tool, that allows you to measure your coil leads. I went with the recommended 6.5mm which seems to work well.

There are two potential problems with having the screws in the airflow slot:

• firstly, if you unscrew them too far, they will drop inside the airflow slot and get stuck there. I avoided this problem by giving the hex driver two full rotations and no more, this was more than enough to capture the leads, but not so much to risk losing my screws.
• secondly, you can’t see what you’re doing. Aligning the driver with the screws can take a little longer than if they were visible. Ultimately, this is just a minor annoyance and isn’t a huge problem.

You can make both of the above slightly less of an issue by taking the RTA off your mod, rotating the airflow ring as far right as it will go, and slipping off the airflow ring.

What does make putting a coil in a little easier is the notch for your coiling rod, this is especially helpful with postless decks as it takes away any problems caused by your leads not being exactly the same length.

Wicking is very simple and forgiving, I tried too much and too little cotton and the Eclipse doesn’t care. The Eclipse wicks really well, I couldn’t make it leak or give dry hits when chain vaping it, I wish every RTA wicked this easily.

Coils

• 28g triple-core fused clapton 3.0mm, 5 wraps 0.22ohms – from 35w the flavor started to kick in and at 45w I was getting strong flavor, it wasn’t the most accurate flavor but it was good. Overall this build gave me much more flavor than I was expecting.
• 28g quad-core fused clapton 3.0mm, 5 wraps 0.26ohms – this was similar to the first build but turned up a few notches. 45w gave the same nice flavor and average vapor production, but when I pushed it up to 55-60w it became a little more intense. However, it produced a little less vapor that I was expecting from this coil and power levels, I guess that trading clouds for flavor is something that I can live with.
• 26g clapton 3.0mm, 5 wraps 0.4ohms – again good flavor, just a more subdued version of the above two builds. This was the only build that I enjoyed with the airflow cut down a little.

With all builds, I spaced my coil in order to take advantage of as much of the airflow as possible.

The flexibility with coil choice impressed me, far too often an RTA has an optimum build and when you try something else, you lose performance. This isn’t the case with the Eclipse.

Is it a flavor banger?

Yes, 100%. If I compare it to other similar, compact single-coil RTAs such as the Gear, Kelpie, Druga and Mad Hatter, it’s gives more flavor than all of them. It doesn’t require a hugely complex coil and neither does it require high wattage to perform.

The only single-coil RTA that I’m not going to say it beats for flavor is the Kylin Mini V2. The Kylin Mini V2 comes into its own with a large complex coil being pushed to 70w and beyond, that isn’t what the Eclipse is about, so a comparison wouldn’t really be relevant.

Destiny RTA? That seemed to be the benchmark for a while. I still haven’t managed to get hold of one, so I have no idea how it compares to the Eclipse.

Blotto single? Let’s wait and see…

What I don’t like about it

• The top-fill cap. I like quarter-turn top-fill caps, but this one seems to come off a little too easily. Half the time when I’m trying to unscrew the deck, I just end up unscrewing the top-cap.
• Hidden deck screws. It’s just a small thing that makes the build process slightly more annoying
• Height. Mike Vapes designed an RTA to go on SBS mods. It’s too short to fit on my Abyss in SBS mode. Instead of a bubble tank, it should have come with an extension tank+chimney – increasing juice capacity and making it tall enough for the Abyss with one accessory.
• Slight lack of vapor production. When I put 60w through a quad-core fused clapton, I’m expecting a cloudy room.

Conclusion

So, has the Eclipse RTA been over-hyped? Probably a little. It’s to be expected when you have a YouTube reviewer releasing his own RTA and asking his YouTube reviewer friends to review it.

But, that doesn’t mean that the Eclipse sucks. Far from it.

For the last few months, I’ve had builds in the Druga and Mad Hatter – I’ve been alternating between the two and enjoying both of them. Not any more, they are both cleaned out and in the vaping closet. The Eclipse has replaced both of them, so it seems that I’m just as guilty of adding to the hype.

Disclaimer

The Yachtvape Eclipse RTA was provided for the purposes of this review by Healthcabin who currently have it for sale for $26.89. In addition to catering to end users, HealthCabin is also one of the biggest vape wholesale distributors in China, if you’re a vape business owner, just contact them to get competitive wholesale prices.

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This review was written by Owen from Reddit & Vaping Underground, click to view original review there with more photos.