I’m back with an old-school vape review!
The video below was produced in segments over a period of time. I did an unboxing with first impressions and then added some final thoughts after using it for a while.
Transcript:
The iJoy Tornado Nano came out around June 2016, so it’s about two years old now, but this thing was so popular that it was still being sold until about mid-2017, which is actually when I bought it. Yup, this has been sitting in my drawer unopened for a year now!
I bought this thanks to a recommendation from one of my subscribers, George Gonzalez, who I haven’t heard from in a really long time now. He’s a super nice guy. George if you’re out there, I hope you’re doing well! 🙂
And I got to talking with one of my other subscribers, Tony, who was telling me about how good this tank still is. So it prompted me to finally get this review out!
This tank originally sold for about $30-40, but you can find it now for around $16. It came in black and stainless steel colors, and I got the stainless steel version.
Let’s talk specs:
- 24.2mm diameter tank
- 4ml capacity
- 18.6mm two post deck
- Peek insulator
- 24k gold plated 510
- Top filling system
- 510 Delrin drip tip
- and It’s made of stainless steel
And one of the features iJoy heavily promoted was that the wide surface area of the deck helps to keep the entire subdeck and deck of the RTA cool.
In the box you get:
- the iJoy Tornado Nano
- a rebuildable deck
- two pre-made coils
- one chip coil
- a color changing glass barrel
- accessories – hex keys, screws, and o-rings
Clear and Black Tanks
There are two tank sections that come with the Tornado Nano; clear and black. There’s not much to say about the glass, but the black tank is pretty unique. While you’re vaping, the black tank will warm up and will turn white, which is a neat idea.
The main issue with the black tank though is that you can’t see through it to see how much e-juice you have left. You could take the top cap off every once in a while to check, but it’s a real pain. I much prefer the clear glass tank.
Drip Tip
The drip tip on the Tornada Nano is built into the top cap, so you can’t take it off and use your own. That’s a slight con, but the drip tip works fine, so it shouldn’t be a deal breaker.
The tank also comes with 510 drip tip, which plugs right into the drip tip, so that’s a nice option too if you want it. It looks a little funny, but it’s not too bad.
Coils
The chip coils that come with the tank are built at around 0.3 ohms and contain dual round-wire builds with a diameter of about 2.5mm. These coils work great and produce a decent amount of flavor. The flavor isn’t amazing, but it’s not bad. I had no problems with dry hits after chain-vaping either.
Even though this tank is old, you can actually still find pre-made coils for this if you do a little searching. They cost around $10 to $13 for a pack of five 0.3 ohm coils.
- https://www.eightvape.com/products/ijoy-tornado-nano-replacement-coil-chip-coil-0-3ohm-pack-of-5
- https://www.sourcemore.com/ijoy-tornado-nano-replacement-coil-chip-coil-5pcs-0-3ohm.html
Rebuildable Deck
On my first build, I used the two Clapton coils that came with the package. I didn’t like the flavor at all. It was muted and just didn’t work well. This might have been due to the coils being too big for the deck or it may have been too much cotton. So I rebuilt the deck with two simple round wire builds, used less cotton, and the flavor was great!
At one point, I had a problem with the deck shorting out, which I believe may have been caused by the coils being too big and touching the walls of the metal cover that goes over the rebuildable deck. I couldn’t find it touching, but I can’t think of what else the problem was because after taking those out and putting in much smaller coils, I had no problems at all. I just want to give you heads up that you will need to keep the builds small in here. It seems to work better overall with smaller builds anyway.
Refilling
This is a top-fill tank and requires that you unscrew the top cap. The problem I found with this top cap is that there’s no good place to grab it. It can get pretty tight and I’ve had to use pliers to get it off. I wrapped the top cap in cloth so that I wouldn’t scratch it. So that’s a big drawback of this design. You just have to be careful not to over-tighten it.
But once it’s off, you just dump in the e-juice and you’re good to go.
Airflow
The airflow control ring is that base of the deck and it moves nice and smooth. You can adjust the airflow quite a bit for whatever your preference is. If you like a restricted lung-draw, it’ll work. And if you want a lot more airflow (though still slightly restricted), you have that option too.
Leaking
This tank suffers from what many bottom airflow tanks do, and that’s leaking after refilling. It could be that there’s not enough cotton on the wicking channels or it could be that the tank has lost pressure and flooded. I’ve found that if you close up the airflow holes, fill up the tank and then open them back up, it’ll help prevent leaking, but sometimes it’ll still leak.
In that case, make sure that you’re prepared to catch that e-juice before it pours all over your device, then take a few hits to re-pressurize it. It should be good after that unless you just didn’t wick it with enough cotton.
Flavor
With the rebuildable deck and their included coils, the flavor wasn’t very good in my experience, but that could be entirely my fault with how I wicked it. After rebuilding it with my own coils, the flavor improved drastically. So if you find that your tank has a muted flavor, try rebuilding it. Using less cotton and positioning the coils as close to the airflow holes as possible can definitely help.
The flavor with the pre-built coil was decent but not as good as I would like. When I compared flavor on this tank compared to the Goon 1.5, it was no contest. The Goon just has tons more flavor. But the Tornado Nano isn’t bad for a tank. My suggestion would be to build your own coils if you want to get good flavor from this tank.
Accessories
This tank was so popular that there were a bunch of other accessories made for it later.
There’s a chuff cap, which is really hard to find now, but I found them on HeavenGifts.com for only $2.
And in addition to the black color-changing tank, you could buy yellow. I actually found those still being sold on a couple of sites for around $2-4.
- https://www.myfreedomsmokes.com/ijoy-tornado-nano-color-changing-glass.html
- https://www.elementvape.com/ijoy-tornado-nano-replacement-glass-tube
- https://www.heavengifts.com/product/IJOY-Tornado-Nano-Color-Change-Glass-Tube.html
There were lots of different colors of regular glass that you could buy too, like orange, blue, green, black, red, pink, and yellow, but I can’t find those being sold anywhere anymore.
I see that Eightvape.com still sells the frosted glass, so that’s cool.
And if you really want something different, I found a website called VapeCentralGroup.com that sells custom painted replacement glass tanks for $20. It’s a little pricey, but it’s custom painted and the designs look awesome.
Final Thoughts
I think that covers everything. It has a few drawbacks, mainly the difficulty in removing the top cap and not being able to see the e-juice in the black tank. But with the clear glass on and a good build in the rebuildable deck, I found this tank to be awesome! Even being two years old, it’s still worth buying!