Review: IGO-W8 (JAWS) by Youde

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Ever since I started vaping I've been using mech-mods and genesis atomizers (and the occasional dripper from time to time) and I've been quite happy with my Hellfire atties and 18350 mods, but I figured with all the fuzz about sub-ohm coils and 100s of watts it was time for me to try something new. So to get started I figured I needed a regulated mod that could give me some watts and an atty that knew how to use them. With a little help from the guys at UKEcigStore I soon had a package en-route to Norway. The atty in the package was the IGO-W8 (or Jaws). I'll get back to  the mod later on and do a review of that as well. A couple of words on safety first: When dealing with low resistances you need to think about safety. If you don't know Ohm's law, learn it: http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/ohms_law_calculator.php. I also highly recommend you read this post by Phil Busardo on battery safety: http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/wordpress/battery-information/. For your own safety and for the safety of those around you, please be careful and make sure you know what you are doing. By that I mean: Know your mod: What safety features does it have? Can it step down the voltage? Where is the vent holes? Know your battery: What is the safe discharge rate of your battery? Know your setup: That means measure your resistance and calculate how many amps are drawn at any given voltage you plan to use. This is where you get to use your knowledge of Ohms law. Some specs: Coils: As you can see from the images the IGO-W8 has 3 negative posts and a common positive post (well depending on which way you put your battery of course), so it's built for a triple-coil setup. Adjustable airflow: It has an air-control system with one "hole" pointing at each coil, and an outer brass control ring, also with similar holes that can be twisted to line up more or less with the holes in the inner wall to give you more or less airflow. Juice wells: Under each coil (if you set them up where they should be of course) is a pretty deep juice well. Nice for stuffing a fair bit of cotton or silica in, so you can put quite a lot of juice in there without having it leaking out of the air-holes. Top-cap: The top-cap is constructed with fins that will get rid of some heat so you don't burn your lips when vaping. Nice feature that seems to be quite popular with dripping atties these days. If you have a look around you'll find quite a few with top-caps constructed this way.  Connector: Standard 510.  Materials used: 304 Stainless Steel and Brass (for the air-control ring). Size and weight: Diameter 22mm, Height 35.3mm, Weight 48g Design and looks: I think this atty looks quite nice actually. Using brass for the air-control-ring works quite well if you ask me. The top-cap fins also looks kind of cool in addition to actually having a useful function. Set-up: I'm not used to more than one coil in my atties, so this was a bit of a new experience for me. I decided to go for around .5 Ohms using 3x1.5 Ohm coils. Using 28AWG and a 2.5 mm drill-bit that means 9 wraps on each coil, something that proved to be a bit of a challenge for a guy with as many thumbs as I have. I didn't watch any videos before hand and that didn't make it easier. BUT, once you get the hang of it it's not that hard actually. After a little while I figured that I should just connect all the coils vertically to the positive connector, tighten the screw and then turn them all horizontally and connect the negatives, which would have been easier if I had 3 drill-bits of course. After connecting and adjusting the coils it's just a matter of pulling some cotton or silica through them (enough to fill the juice-wells) and juice up. I bet a lot of people can do this faster, and prettier, than me. You can of course choose to set this atty up in a lot of different configurations but it's designed for triple coil setup and I'm pretty sure that is what will work best considering how the airflow control is designed, so you are a bit limited there. If you don't want sub-ohm setups you'll need to go for some higher resistance wire or maybe increase the diameter of your coils as fitting much more than 10ish wraps of 28AWG will give you quite a challenge. On the other hand, you don't have to use a lot of time wondering how you're going to set up your atty, so from a beginners point of view this limited setup options might as well be a good thing. In use: After the build was finally done, it was time to see what this thing could do. Now the mod I had at the moment did couldn't step-down the voltage below 3.7 so that means ... 25W. Around 10 more than I've ever tried before. Damn that is some vapor. Of course I had to crank it up to 50W pretty quick, and I was sure this little thing was going to explode. It snaps and cracks and makes all kind of noises and gives me a shitload of vapor and flavor. Playing around with the airflow a bit I find that it gives you more than you need at max and I prefer to keep it a lot less than that as I think it gives more flavour that way. The design of the airflow control makes it easy to adjust the amount of air you let into the atty to exactly what you want. The o-rings between the outer and inner ring is comfortably loose so its no hassle to adjust it either. The same goes for the o-rings on the top-cap actually. They're tight enough to keep the cap in place, but loose enough to make it easy to pop the cap off and drip when you need it. When it comes to the heat fins on the top-cap... they seem to be working fine... I didn't burn my lips even when vaping at 50W. The 510 connector on this atty is not the longest I've seen. This could be a bad thing or a good thing depending on your mod-collection I guess. It will sit flush on most mods, but you'll need a mod with an adjustable center (or one that's a perfect fit). Now most mods nowadays have this so I don't think this would be a problem for many users. Anyway, if I was to say one thing I'm missing with this atty it would be an adjustable (or spring-loaded) centerpin. Conclusion: I'm quite impressed to be honest. This atty costs no more than £19.99, and to me it seems like a bargain. It seems to be solidly built, o-rings are not too loose, not to tight. I bet there are atties out there that are easier to set up, but it's not too bad actually. Now at this price you don't get any fancy materials like titanium body and gold plated contacts. Overall I'd say this is a lot of atty for your money, and a great way to start exploring dripping atties and multi-coil setups. Disclosure: All my reviews are my honest opinion even if I am affiliated with the company manufacturing or selling the product.  The atomizer was sent to me free of charge for the purpose of this review. This review contains affiliate links.

Ever since I started vaping I've been using mech-mods and genesis atomizers (and the occasional dripper from time to time) and I've been quite happy with my Hellfire atties and 18350 mods, but I figured with all the fuzz about sub-ohm coils and 100s of watts it was time for me to try something new. So to get started I figured I needed a regulated mod that could give me some watts and an atty that knew how to use them. With a little help from the guys at UKEcigStore I soon had a package en-route to Norway. The atty in the package was the IGO-W8 (or Jaws). I'll get back to  the mod later on and do a review of that as well.

A couple of words on safety first:
When dealing with low resistances you need to think about safety. If you don't know Ohm's law, learn it: http://www.ohmslawcalculator.com/ohms_law_calculator.php. I also highly recommend you read this post by Phil Busardo on battery safety: http://www.tasteyourjuice.com/wordpress/battery-information/. For your own safety and for the safety of those around you, please be careful and make sure you know what you are doing. By that I mean:

• Know your mod: What safety features does it have? Can it step down the voltage? Where is the vent holes?
• Know your battery: What is the safe discharge rate of your battery?
• Know your setup: That means measure your resistance and calculate how many amps are drawn at any given voltage you plan to use. This is where you get to use your knowledge of Ohms law.

Some specs:

• Coils: As you can see from the images the IGO-W8 has 3 negative posts and a common positive post (well depending on which way you put your battery of course), so it's built for a triple-coil setup.
• Adjustable airflow: It has an air-control system with one "hole" pointing at each coil, and an outer brass control ring, also with similar holes that can be twisted to line up more or less with the holes in the inner wall to give you more or less airflow.
• Juice wells: Under each coil (if you set them up where they should be of course) is a pretty deep juice well. Nice for stuffing a fair bit of cotton or silica in, so you can put quite a lot of juice in there without having it leaking out of the air-holes.
• Top-cap: The top-cap is constructed with fins that will get rid of some heat so you don't burn your lips when vaping. Nice feature that seems to be quite popular with dripping atties these days. If you have a look around you'll find quite a few with top-caps constructed this way. 
• Connector: Standard 510. 
• Materials used: 304 Stainless Steel and Brass (for the air-control ring).
• Size and weight: Diameter 22mm, Height 35.3mm, Weight 48g

Design and looks:
I think this atty looks quite nice actually. Using brass for the air-control-ring works quite well if you ask me. The top-cap fins also looks kind of cool in addition to actually having a useful function.

Set-up:
I'm not used to more than one coil in my atties, so this was a bit of a new experience for me. I decided to go for around .5 Ohms using 3x1.5 Ohm coils. Using 28AWG and a 2.5 mm drill-bit that means 9 wraps on each coil, something that proved to be a bit of a challenge for a guy with as many thumbs as I have. I didn't watch any videos before hand and that didn't make it easier. BUT, once you get the hang of it it's not that hard actually. After a little while I figured that I should just connect all the coils vertically to the positive connector, tighten the screw and then turn them all horizontally and connect the negatives, which would have been easier if I had 3 drill-bits of course. After connecting and adjusting the coils it's just a matter of pulling some cotton or silica through them (enough to fill the juice-wells) and juice up. I bet a lot of people can do this faster, and prettier, than me.

You can of course choose to set this atty up in a lot of different configurations but it's designed for triple coil setup and I'm pretty sure that is what will work best considering how the airflow control is designed, so you are a bit limited there. If you don't want sub-ohm setups you'll need to go for some higher resistance wire or maybe increase the diameter of your coils as fitting much more than 10ish wraps of 28AWG will give you quite a challenge. On the other hand, you don't have to use a lot of time wondering how you're going to set up your atty, so from a beginners point of view this limited setup options might as well be a good thing.

In use:
After the build was finally done, it was time to see what this thing could do. Now the mod I had at the moment did couldn't step-down the voltage below 3.7 so that means ... 25W. Around 10 more than I've ever tried before. Damn that is some vapor. Of course I had to crank it up to 50W pretty quick, and I was sure this little thing was going to explode. It snaps and cracks and makes all kind of noises and gives me a shitload of vapor and flavor. Playing around with the airflow a bit I find that it gives you more than you need at max and I prefer to keep it a lot less than that as I think it gives more flavour that way. The design of the airflow control makes it easy to adjust the amount of air you let into the atty to exactly what you want. The o-rings between the outer and inner ring is comfortably loose so its no hassle to adjust it either. The same goes for the o-rings on the top-cap actually. They're tight enough to keep the cap in place, but loose enough to make it easy to pop the cap off and drip when you need it. When it comes to the heat fins on the top-cap... they seem to be working fine... I didn't burn my lips even when vaping at 50W.

The 510 connector on this atty is not the longest I've seen. This could be a bad thing or a good thing depending on your mod-collection I guess. It will sit flush on most mods, but you'll need a mod with an adjustable center (or one that's a perfect fit). Now most mods nowadays have this so I don't think this would be a problem for many users. Anyway, if I was to say one thing I'm missing with this atty it would be an adjustable (or spring-loaded) centerpin.

Conclusion:
I'm quite impressed to be honest. This atty costs no more than £19.99, and to me it seems like a bargain. It seems to be solidly built, o-rings are not too loose, not to tight. I bet there are atties out there that are easier to set up, but it's not too bad actually. Now at this price you don't get any fancy materials like titanium body and gold plated contacts. Overall I'd say this is a lot of atty for your money, and a great way to start exploring dripping atties and multi-coil setups.



Disclosure:

• All my reviews are my honest opinion even if I am affiliated with the company manufacturing or selling the product. 
• The atomizer was sent to me free of charge for the purpose of this review.
• This review contains affiliate links.