Healthcabin have sent over the latest entry in the Steam Crave Aromamizer lineup and this time they’ve gone all mouth to lung on us with the Aromamizer Classic MTL RTA. They proudly claim this is a “MTL flavour engine” on the packaging so I was keen to see if this held up to this bold statement. So let’s get started the Steam Crave Aromamizer Classic MTL RTA Review together!
- 23mm diameter
- 35.5mm tall (excluding drip tip & 510)
- 3.5ml capacity
- Single coil deck
- Side airflow with multiple airflow pins included
- Mouth to lung or restricted direct lung vaping
As is normally the case with Aromamizer products, there’s a fair bit included in the box with an easy to follow user guide, a second drip tip, spare glass and O-rings, tri-wing tool, and several airflow pins.
The RTA itself lives up to Steam Crave’s usual quality and feels like it’s built to last with all the threads and O-ring tolerances being spot on. Branding isn’t over the top with deeply engraved lettering on one side and a Steam Crave logo on the other. Out of the box, you’ll have a metal drip tip installed which I detest, luckily there is a delrin drip tip included as well which I opted to use, and as this is a standard 510 size with a flat wide platform on the top cap. You can of course use any of your own favourites.
Removing the top cap reveals two generously sized fill ports and, as with earlier Aromamizer designs, this is an RDTA style build deck which is accessed from the bottom of the tank with the 510 threading actually forming part of the deck itself.
The main body of the tank can also be broken down for easy servicing and cleaning should you need to do so. No bubble tanks here so you’re limited to the 3.5ml capacity, but there is a spare glass included should you need it.
The build deck looked eerily familiar as it’s basically an evolution of deck from the Aromamizer Lite they released a couple of years ago, an earlier attempt at a MTL tank that in all honesty didn’t work too well in MTL mode and was only a fairly mediocre direct lung vape. Installing a coil was easy and there’s even a coil rod guide on either side of the deck to help you get the optimum coil height. I ignored the two included coils as one is nichrome and the other is 0.4ohms which is really better suited for a restricted direct lung vape, and my own simple kanthal round wire build came out to just under 1ohm.
I’ve always found wicking the Aromamizers a bit tricky with their RDTA style decks so I followed the instruction booklet and cut the wicks to the outside edge of the tank as shown above and then tucked things down into the deck, it turns out I didn’t tuck things down far enough though as my first fill promptly flooded the deck! Luckily the press fit deck design means it was easy enough to access the deck again and sort the issue.
The big draw here is the dual side airflow system. Out of the box you’ll find two 1.0mm pins fitted, and in the small accessories box there are pairs of 0.8, 1.5, and 2.0mm pins plus a “blank” pin. These are screwed into the side of the tank on either side and looking into the chamber, you can see that they go right up to the side of the coil. The “blank” pin allows you to reduce the airflow further so if needed you can go all the way down to a single 0.8mm air hole if you crave that super tight draw.
Replacing the airflow pins on the fly is simple enough, although you will need a screwdriver to hand obviously, and this means you can play around with the airflow without disturbing your build. To start off I tried the pre-installed dual 1.0mm pins and I was actually pretty happy with the vape I was getting, but as I generally prefer a slightly looser “modern” MTL vape, I decided to try the 1.5mm pins instead… this was way too loose, almost bordering on a restricted direct lung vape, so I instantly went back to the 1.0mm pins and those have remained in place ever since. Flavour has been pretty good with my standard menthol and peppermint MTL e-liquids so I haven’t been disappointed on that front.
Pros
- Solid construction and great build quality
- Multiple air pins included
- Easy to build
Cons
- Can be tricky to wick
Conclusion
The Aromamizer Classic MTL RTA is a big improvement over my previous experience with Steam Crave’s attempt at a MTL tank and I’ve been using it solidly for the last week. As with the rest of the Aromamizer lineup, getting the wicking right is a bit of an art but I seem to have that sorted now, and the wide range of airflow options should mean that you can tailor this to your own requirements. It’s a bit of an odd size for a MTL tank at 23mm if you’ve built your MTL collection around the 22mm format, but I found plenty of mods that this looked rather nice with.
Many thanks to Healthcabin for sending the Steam Crave Aromamizer Classic MTL RTA out for review.
This review was written by Antony Lord from POTV(Planet Of The Vapes), click to view original review.
