Vandy Vape Rath RDA Review by Owen

Introduction

The Rath RDA was released by Vandy Vape about six months ago, so unlike my reviews of brand new products, I’ve had the chance to watch a lot of YouTube reviews on it which left me with two distinct impressions.

• The deck is allegedly a copy of the Dang RDA and OhmBoy (the designer of the Dang RDA) is upset.
• There is zero consensus on if the Rath is primarily a single-coil or dual-coil RDA.

The first point doesn’t really concern me, however the second point does.

So, what’s missing? This is becoming an annoyance of mine – you need to pre-cut your coil leads, so where’s the coil measurement tool?

First Impressions

At 24mm, the Rath isn’t a huge RDA, but from looking at the deck it seems clear that it’s a dual-coil RDA. However, then you look at the top-cap/inner-barrel, which extends down into the RDA and is really thick resulting in the chamber being far more compact than it initially seemed, it points more towards the Rath being a single-coil RDA.

The aesthetics are good, but it could really have done without the three ‘Wolverine style’ slashes on the barrel of the RDA.

The top-cap rotates nicely to adjust the airflow and the barrel locks into place on the deck.

Build

The Dang RDA’s Rath’s clamp system makes this a nice and easy build, precut the coil/s, drop them in, tighten everything up and wick it. No special tricks or techniques are required.

How does it perform?

• 1× tri-core fused clapton, spaced, 3.5mm, 0.23ohms, coil legs cut to 5mm this was an old coil that had already seen some action and was looking for a new home, I mainly chose it because it was 3.5mm and looked perfect for a single-coil direct lung build. Trying it at 45w was very underwhelming, vapor production was acceptable but flavor was muted. Pushing the power up was like night and day – at 55 and then 60w with the top row of airflow holes closed, I got the flavor that I was looking for. It doesn’t quite have the flavor detail of the Mongrel RDA, but it was very close with thick satisfying vapor production and full flavor.
• 2× 26g 2.8mm 0.33ohm fused claptons, coil legs cut to 5.5mm these were the coils supplied with the Rath RDA. Are they really 2.8mm? because my 3mm coil rod fits inside with room to spare. Despite my feelings that the Rath would be more suited for a single-coil build, these coils went in with no issues. The dual-coil experience was very similar to the single-coil experience, just at a higher wattage and with a warmer vape. To start to see decent flavor with this build, I took it to 75w and above with good results.

I do plan to try maybe a 2.5mm 28g fused clapton dual-coil build at some time – but I have my single-coil build back in right now and I’m enjoying it, so that’s going to have to wait.

With both builds the barrel did become hot, however the top-cap didn’t and even with my lips on the top-cap, I didn’t come close to burning myself.

Airflow

The airflow is a two section setup. On the barrel there a series of fifteen honeycomb holes – top row four, middle row five and bottom row six. The top-cap also has a stepped slot that slants downwards.

By twisting the top-cap you firstly close down the top-row one hole at a time, followed by closing down the middle and bottom rows together.

Overall, the airflow is very smooth due to the honeycomb, but there is one minor issue – the locking barrel doesn’t have enough movement, so that if you start closing down most of the airflow, you can’t get it completely centered.

Squonk or drip?

Either is fine. With side airflow situated high on the barrel and a deep juicewell, you’re going to have to try really hard to oversquonk the Rath and also because of the side airflow, there are no reasons why you can’t just dump lots of juice straight down the drip-tip.

What could be improved?

• Remove the slash marks on the barrel.
• Provide a coil measurement tool.
• More movement to allow cut-down airflow to be centered.

Disclaimer

The Rath RDA was provided for the purposes of this review by Healthcabin who currently have it in stock. 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.

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