I've posted this elsewhere on the net, but thought it might be appreciated here!
So my Fogger v5 came today: £21.95 courtesy of RedJuice.co.uk.
It's a good vape and a really good tank for the price, but with a few disappointments:
For anyone unfamiliar with the Fogger: It's a dual-coil rebuildable kayfun style tank atomiser, with a tank on the outer layer, and an inner layer containing the atomiser coils and wick, fed with four juice channels from the tank, and two airflow holes; one for each coil. This much is the same between the v4 and v5.
Here's everything that came in the box, with the tank fully disassembled:
From top left to bottom right:
Here's a pic of my v4 and v5 side by side:
The v5 tank is a little taller with the top cap. My v4 has a custom drip tip, as I got it second hand without one, so ignore that.
Here's a close up of the base; it's the best I could do, as the macro focus on my phone wasn't playing ball. It came assembled with the screws in place:
The juice channels are much wider than my v4 (but on the v4 the juice channel size changed, depending on which version of the v4 you had), which is nice; it's fixed the issue where I'd have to move wick away from the juice channels to avoid blocking juice flow into the chamber.
What you can't quite make out is the small rubber grommet (it's the little blank square on the threading) - This fixes an issue with the v4 where the airflow control ring could move fairly easily, occasionally sealing off airflow if it was in your pocket, left upright overnight (even gravity seemed to eventually take effect) or accidentally brushed a bit of clothing while it was in your hand. That was a nice addition.
I decided to try using the pogo pins first, since I hadn't built using them before. Don't bother, they're absolutely worthless, as they don't secure the wire solidly enough: I feed wire straight through and build both coils on a single strand, rather than two individual coils: As soon as I started building the second coil, it tugs on the first and pulls it out of place, or apart, as you can see here:
The screws are good though, and I must admit it was easier to build decent coils compared to the v4: feeding wire through the holes and securing it with the screws means that you don't run into the issues you had with the v4, where you'd wrap the wire around the screws and screw them down to secure it, which led to the coils being pulled out of position or shortened/lengthened with the rotational movement.
The deck size is a little small, as the Kayfun style outer tank/inner chimney design limits the space available - this is not a good tank if you like building large coils! I built a couple of coils consisting of 8-9 wraps of ribbon kanthal (unsure about the gauge, came free with another kanthal order) around a 1.8mm screwdriver, measuring 1.5 ohms, and pulse fired at 10W to heat and squeeze them together:
Wicked up with rayon:
Wick pulled upwards, and first section of the chimney screwed down. Same as the v4:
After this I did the same I did on the v4: Snipped the wick to the top of the chimney, fluffed it a little with a screwdriver, and pushed it to the base.
On the v4 I'd normally rotate a small phillips head screwdriver in the juice channels to push wick away from them and allow flow, but I decided not to initially, as the channels are wider now, and I thought I'd be good.
This didn't seem to result in much vapour, so I went back and did my v4 voodoo to clear the channels, this didn't improve things however, for reasons I'll show further on.
So I screw on the top cap, and take off the o-ring that covers the feed hole (easily done with fingernails thanks to the notch, hooray for no required tools!), and attempt to fill it:
The small hole and o-ring gap means you can't get a seal on the hole with a dropper, and the same problem is likely to happen with snub-nosed dropper bottle tops. A needle tip would work better here.
That doesn't mean it doesn't fill with the above setup: The smaller hole on the other side of the cap means that air can escape as you fill it, and so I was able to fill it with the dropper, albeit with some mess with liquid in the o-ring groove, as you can see.
The main problem is that there is no way of seeing how full the tank is once it passes the glass tank section; on the v4, you stopped filling when the liquid reached the point where the tank met the base cover, and leaking wasn't an issue as the juice channels were above the liquid level when the device was upside down. This is something I forgot in this case, as you can see below with the fill cap on:
Whoops, I left the airflow ring open, thinking that maybe the liquid would flow from the top air hole when it was done. My mistake.
The good news is that if you fill with a needle-tip or syringe, and remember to close off the airflow, you can tell when the tank is full as the liquid will come in through the top air hole. And that means you can really fill it to the top. Sweet!
But onto further problems: Even with the airflow control set to maximum, and my earlier drilling of wick away from the juice channels, airflow was really tight. Here's a pic of the airflow hole:
Unscrewing the tank slightly revealed that there was a LOT more of the hole underneath the control ring. I could remove the ring entirely, but that would make filling it a pain, as we found earlier with the leaking. Thankfully, the tank piece above the airflow ring is separated, so what I did was unscrew that slightly, allowing the airflow ring to spin higher, as you can (or can't, due to potato quality macro) see below:
It did fix the airflow issue, however it's disappointing that I had to partially disassemble the tank to get it working. The tank is still solid when slightly unscrewed though.
I'm still having some issues with slight leaking when the airflow ring is open, even when not filling it, but I may be able to fix that with better wick positioning.
But regardless of all this; how does it vape?
It's pretty good, actually. Plenty of vapour and flavour at 20W, but it's about on par with my v4, in all honesty. The v4 has good flavour/vapour production too though, so that's not to say that it's a bad RBA. It's excellent, just as the v4 was before it.
Pros:
Cons:
In summary:
Much like the v4 before it, it's a great Kayfun style tank for the price with good flavour and vapour production once you tweak it a little. Top filling is great, though those of you without needle nosed bottles or a syringe may wish to invest in some if you buy this. The pogo pins aren't worth using, but the wire holes and use of screws to anchor wire to the posts is a big improvement over the v4. There are improvements that can be made, such as raising the airflow holes from the deck to avoid leaking and make wick setups less sensitive, increasing the size of the fill hole and adding an o-ring to allow larger bottle noses and droppers to make a seal, and either increasing the size of the airflow hole to fix airflow issues, or raising how high the airflow control can spin to expose more of the existing hole. Maybe we'll see a v5.1 in a while, but in the meantime, it's still a great tank despite a few shortcomings: I'm still happy with my purchase! If you already have a v4, unless top-filling really appeals to you, I would probably suggest waiting for the next revision to see if they fix these issues.
So my Fogger v5 came today: £21.95 courtesy of RedJuice.co.uk.
It's a good vape and a really good tank for the price, but with a few disappointments:
For anyone unfamiliar with the Fogger: It's a dual-coil rebuildable kayfun style tank atomiser, with a tank on the outer layer, and an inner layer containing the atomiser coils and wick, fed with four juice channels from the tank, and two airflow holes; one for each coil. This much is the same between the v4 and v5.
Here's everything that came in the box, with the tank fully disassembled:
From top left to bottom right:
- The box with magnetic clasp. Not pictured: Holographic seal tape. Kind of crappy instructions on back.
- Standard size drip tip.
- Top cap, with standard drip tip mount. Covers the feed cap.
- Top tank piece, with feed hole and air release hole.
- Top feed o-ring - seals off feed and air release holes.
- Pyrex glass tank.
- Chimney top.
- Chimney shaft.
- Tank base ring, sits between glass tank and base/airflow ring.
- Mini screwdriver keyring, with phillips and flathead tips.
- Airflow control ring.
- Atomiser base, with standard, adjustable 510 connection, and wire feed holes in posts, built for dual-coil setups.
- Post screws.
- Spares bag, containing
- Wick. No mention of material, likely silica.
- Wire. No mention of material or gauge, likely kanthal, appears to be a thin gauge too.
- 2 spare post screws.
- 2 pogo pins.
- 2 large black replacement o-rings, for tank seal.
- 1 smaller black replacement o-ring, for top feed seal.
- 2 clear drip tip replacement o-ring seals.
- 4 clear base pin o-rings.
- 2 clear replacement o-rings for chimney.
- 1 replacement plastic insulator, for atomiser base.
Here's a pic of my v4 and v5 side by side:
The v5 tank is a little taller with the top cap. My v4 has a custom drip tip, as I got it second hand without one, so ignore that.
Here's a close up of the base; it's the best I could do, as the macro focus on my phone wasn't playing ball. It came assembled with the screws in place:
The juice channels are much wider than my v4 (but on the v4 the juice channel size changed, depending on which version of the v4 you had), which is nice; it's fixed the issue where I'd have to move wick away from the juice channels to avoid blocking juice flow into the chamber.
What you can't quite make out is the small rubber grommet (it's the little blank square on the threading) - This fixes an issue with the v4 where the airflow control ring could move fairly easily, occasionally sealing off airflow if it was in your pocket, left upright overnight (even gravity seemed to eventually take effect) or accidentally brushed a bit of clothing while it was in your hand. That was a nice addition.
I decided to try using the pogo pins first, since I hadn't built using them before. Don't bother, they're absolutely worthless, as they don't secure the wire solidly enough: I feed wire straight through and build both coils on a single strand, rather than two individual coils: As soon as I started building the second coil, it tugs on the first and pulls it out of place, or apart, as you can see here:
The screws are good though, and I must admit it was easier to build decent coils compared to the v4: feeding wire through the holes and securing it with the screws means that you don't run into the issues you had with the v4, where you'd wrap the wire around the screws and screw them down to secure it, which led to the coils being pulled out of position or shortened/lengthened with the rotational movement.
The deck size is a little small, as the Kayfun style outer tank/inner chimney design limits the space available - this is not a good tank if you like building large coils! I built a couple of coils consisting of 8-9 wraps of ribbon kanthal (unsure about the gauge, came free with another kanthal order) around a 1.8mm screwdriver, measuring 1.5 ohms, and pulse fired at 10W to heat and squeeze them together:
Wicked up with rayon:
Wick pulled upwards, and first section of the chimney screwed down. Same as the v4:
After this I did the same I did on the v4: Snipped the wick to the top of the chimney, fluffed it a little with a screwdriver, and pushed it to the base.
On the v4 I'd normally rotate a small phillips head screwdriver in the juice channels to push wick away from them and allow flow, but I decided not to initially, as the channels are wider now, and I thought I'd be good.
This didn't seem to result in much vapour, so I went back and did my v4 voodoo to clear the channels, this didn't improve things however, for reasons I'll show further on.
So I screw on the top cap, and take off the o-ring that covers the feed hole (easily done with fingernails thanks to the notch, hooray for no required tools!), and attempt to fill it:
The small hole and o-ring gap means you can't get a seal on the hole with a dropper, and the same problem is likely to happen with snub-nosed dropper bottle tops. A needle tip would work better here.
That doesn't mean it doesn't fill with the above setup: The smaller hole on the other side of the cap means that air can escape as you fill it, and so I was able to fill it with the dropper, albeit with some mess with liquid in the o-ring groove, as you can see.
The main problem is that there is no way of seeing how full the tank is once it passes the glass tank section; on the v4, you stopped filling when the liquid reached the point where the tank met the base cover, and leaking wasn't an issue as the juice channels were above the liquid level when the device was upside down. This is something I forgot in this case, as you can see below with the fill cap on:
Whoops, I left the airflow ring open, thinking that maybe the liquid would flow from the top air hole when it was done. My mistake.
The good news is that if you fill with a needle-tip or syringe, and remember to close off the airflow, you can tell when the tank is full as the liquid will come in through the top air hole. And that means you can really fill it to the top. Sweet!
But onto further problems: Even with the airflow control set to maximum, and my earlier drilling of wick away from the juice channels, airflow was really tight. Here's a pic of the airflow hole:
Unscrewing the tank slightly revealed that there was a LOT more of the hole underneath the control ring. I could remove the ring entirely, but that would make filling it a pain, as we found earlier with the leaking. Thankfully, the tank piece above the airflow ring is separated, so what I did was unscrew that slightly, allowing the airflow ring to spin higher, as you can (or can't, due to potato quality macro) see below:
It did fix the airflow issue, however it's disappointing that I had to partially disassemble the tank to get it working. The tank is still solid when slightly unscrewed though.
I'm still having some issues with slight leaking when the airflow ring is open, even when not filling it, but I may be able to fix that with better wick positioning.
But regardless of all this; how does it vape?
It's pretty good, actually. Plenty of vapour and flavour at 20W, but it's about on par with my v4, in all honesty. The v4 has good flavour/vapour production too though, so that's not to say that it's a bad RBA. It's excellent, just as the v4 was before it.
Pros:
- Good vapour production and flavour!
- Pyrex glass tank, so should handle most liquids.
- The use of holes for feeding wire, and screws to secure them down works really well, much better than wrapping around screws.
- Top filling without needing a mini screwdriver, or needing to remove the tank from my mod is a great idea, and would be perfect with a few tweaks.
- When you top-fill with a needle-tip/syringe, you can really fill this sucker right to the top.
- Fixing the free spinning airflow control is a nice addition.
- Lots of spare parts for future maintenance. Every tank manufacturer should include these!
Cons:
- Vapour production not much of an improvement on the v4.
- The pogo pins are completely useless, thankfully they're not the only option in the package thanks to included screws, and that works fantastically.
- Deck size is a little small, this is not a good tank if you're looking to build bigger coils.
- Slight leaking issues from the airflow holes if you don't get your wicking perfect. Raising the airflow holes in the base, with deeper liquid wells to push the wick into on each side would probably fix this. This is actually the same as the v4, but I seem to have more issues with leaking on the v5 for some reason.
- Top filling means you need to remember to close the airflow hole at the bottom, unless you like making a mess, but that's a minor issue, and more of a "use your brain" situation.
- Top filling setup is messy without a needle nose bottle or syringe. A larger hole and a small o-ring to allow for a seal to be made with droppers and snub-nosed bottle caps would be better.
- Airflow is really bad without a little adjustment of the base ring. Fixable, but shouldn't need to be fixed, so somewhat disappointing in terms of build quality.
In summary:
Much like the v4 before it, it's a great Kayfun style tank for the price with good flavour and vapour production once you tweak it a little. Top filling is great, though those of you without needle nosed bottles or a syringe may wish to invest in some if you buy this. The pogo pins aren't worth using, but the wire holes and use of screws to anchor wire to the posts is a big improvement over the v4. There are improvements that can be made, such as raising the airflow holes from the deck to avoid leaking and make wick setups less sensitive, increasing the size of the fill hole and adding an o-ring to allow larger bottle noses and droppers to make a seal, and either increasing the size of the airflow hole to fix airflow issues, or raising how high the airflow control can spin to expose more of the existing hole. Maybe we'll see a v5.1 in a while, but in the meantime, it's still a great tank despite a few shortcomings: I'm still happy with my purchase! If you already have a v4, unless top-filling really appeals to you, I would probably suggest waiting for the next revision to see if they fix these issues.
Last edited:
