The Intake RTA was sent to me for the purpose of review from Augvape. This is a collaboration project between Augvape and Mike Vapes.
According to Mike, the name for the Intake was actually an idea from Felix Vapes, another reviewer on YouTube. If you watch Felix’s video, the story is that they were at a conference talking about the tank, Mike said he didn’t have a name for it yet so the group started throwing names out. When Felix heard that it was from Augvape, who just created the V200 mod which is entirely car-themed, he got the idea for the name. And I gotta say, that name is perfect because the airflow intake on this tank is so unique.
So just a quick overview – this is a 24mm, single-coil rebuildable RTA. It has top airflow, which makes it leak-proof and the airflow is redirected to create a bottom-airflow system. The deck is really easy to build and it holds either 2.5ml or 4.2ml of e-juice depending on the glass you use.
Alright, so in the box, you’ll get:
- The Intake RTA with the bubble glass installed
- You also get a spare straight glass tube
- For accessories, they’ve included spare o-rings, seals, a 510 drip tip adapter, a black drip tip, and a screwdriver tool.
And you can get the Intake RTA in four different colors; stainless steel, black, gunmetal, and blue.
The Drip Tips
Starting from the top is the drip tip. The drip tip that comes pre-installed is a really short resin 810 tip. It’s blue with a marble design. From what I can tell it looks like they include the same blue drip tip for all of the different colors of this tank.
Augvape also included a regular black Delrin drip tip. That one is taller, so might appeal to those of you who don’t want your mouth so close to the top. There’s an adaptor in here too, if you want to use a 510 drip tip and that adaptor works really well from my tests. It fits in really snug and it holds 510 drip tips really snug too.
For both of the drip tips and the adaptor, I’ve found them a little hard to pull out, but I like it that way. I don’t want them falling out in my pocket. To get them out, you can just take the top cap off and push them out with something like a screwdriver.
The Top Cap
The top cap covers the e-juice fill ports. There are grooves all around it that makes it easy to take off. It rotates really smoothly and comes off in only a quarter turn. It fits tight enough where you won’t have to worry about it falling off, but it’s also not so tight that you won’t struggle with it.
The way this top piece connects to the tank is a really nice feature. Usually, with tanks, the top caps screw on with threads. Eventually, they tighten down so much that they’re damn near impossible to take off. Well, this cap has these little fins that slide underneath the metal fins on the tank. I really love this design because I hate when I need to get pliers out to fill up a tank. This design is really smart.
Under the cap, you’ll find a really thick seal to prevent leaking.
That seal comes out so that you can clean everything, but I’ve found that it’s a little tough to get back in. I wouldn’t imagine needing to take it out often anyway though.
Airflow Control
The airflow control ring comes off, so you can clean it if you need to. It moves very smoothly and it stops in both directions. If you put the ring back on and it spins freely without stopping, you put it on wrong.
If you close the airflow control down as low as it can go, the airflow is very restricted, but it’s still only a lung-draw. This isn’t a mouth-to-lung tank. If you open the airflow wide-open, it’s still a restricted lung draw, and this is a slight drawback. It’s comfortable enough, but if you like really airy vapes, you won’t like that restriction. I like restriction once in a while, so it doesn’t bother me much, but I really would have liked to have just a little more airflow.
Glass Tanks and Seals
Ok, now for the middle section. So like I mentioned, you get two glass pieces. The bubble tank is pre-installed and holds 4.3ml’s and in the box is a spare straight glass tank, which holds 2.5ml’s.
The glass pieces are held in place with o-rings on both ends and here’s another place where I think a lot of lower-priced tanks fail. On other tanks, I find that the o-rings don’t seal on a large enough surface area or they just don’t seal well at all without a lot of force. That’s not the case with the Intake. These seals work great. I’m really impressed with the construction of this tank.
And because of the tight seals, you can actually take the take apart with e-juice still in it if you want to change anything on the deck, for example to rewick or replace the coil. That’s not an official features and you still need to be careful though!
Another awesome feature is that the spare o-rings included are different colors, so you can change the colors of your tank to match your device.
The Chimney
If you look inside the chimney, you’ll see that there’s a spinning ring inside with two holes. These holes are where the airflow intake pipes on the deck reach up to the airflow slots on the top of the tank. The spinning piece makes it easy to fit the pipes into the right spot and also makes it possible to screw the deck into place.
The Deck
The coolest part of the Intake RTA is the deck. So like I mentioned with the chimney, this deck has these intake posts. The way they work is that that reach up to the top of the tank and lead down to the bottom of the tank and direct airflow right beneath the coil.
This is such a great idea and really sets this tank apart from other tanks. The Intake is a top airflow tank, which prevents leaking, but the airflow pipes redirect that airflow to the deck and pull it up directly beneath the coil to turn it into a bottom airflow tank, which produces a better flavor. That’s one of the coolest things I’ve seen on a tank.
It’s a two post deck, so it’s only a single coil. But there’s quite a bit of space for a single-coil deck, so you can put a long or widely-spaced coil in here if you want. The posts have slots on the sides so that you can easily slide the coil legs into place and tighten down.
You’ll get better flavor with the coil as close to possible to the airflow so try to position it close.
When wicking the deck, the cotton needs to go into the wicking channels. You want them to go in the wick channel, but not packed tight. On my first build, I packed too much cotton into the wicking holes and I was getting dry hits. After I cut the wicks down so that they just barely poked through the wick holes, I had no problems with dry hits.
On the bottom of the tank is the 510 connector pin, which protrudes slightly, but not much. It’s a static pin, but it’s probably not something you want to use on a mech.
It Doesn’t Leak
Everything seals well and I haven’t had any leaking issues at all. I have found that the deck will flood if it sits on its side for a while though. Sometimes I throw my vape into my backpack and it ends up sideways, so flooding might be something you might notice too. It’s not a big deal, but I know some people just can’t stand getting e-juice in their mouth, so I wanted to mention it. To clear out the flooding, you just need to vape it for a few hits to dry out the cotton a bit.
Flavor
Alright, so the most important thing – flavor. Because of how the airflow is redirected to the bottom of the deck, I’ve found that the Intake RTA actually has pretty good flavor. I wasn’t expecting the flavor to be as good as it, but it really is pretty good. It’s not as good as an RDA, but that’s expected.
Everyone is saying that the Intake is very similar to the OBS Engine Nano as far as flavor goes. That was a very popular and highly-rated tank, so if you liked that one, you’ll probably like this one too.
Overall Thoughts
There are only a couple of things I wish were better on this and that would be the resin drip tip color and the airflow. I’ve gotten used to the airflow, so that’s not a big deal, but I would have really liked to have just a little more airflow. About the drip tip color, I don’t like that all of the different tank colors come with the same blue resin tip, at least from what I’ve seen online. I just don’t think the blue tip goes with all of the tanks.
But that’s about it for cons.
I’ve used a lot of tanks and I’ve liked most of them, but they always seem to have at least one issue that leads me back to using drippers.
This is one of the few tanks I’ve used that fits just about everything I want in a tank. It’s rebuildable, it’s easy to build, it wicks well, it holds a good amount of e-juice, it’s easy to open and fill, and the flavor is good. I do think the flavor could be improved, but it’s still pretty good.
But overall, I like this one a lot. I didn’t even want to take it off my daily setup so that I could clean it up and record more video of it.
Anyway, that’s it. If you want to pick one up, you can get it for around $30 just about everywhere. Here are a few good places (affiliate)