Youde iGo

Introduction

IMPORTANT NOTE: You MUST USE CAUTION when working with rebuildable atomizers. These devices are for EXPERIENCED vapers and require the use of both small, non-powered hand tools as well as an Ohm meter. CARELESSNESS WITH and MISUSE OF rebuildable atomizers can lead to SERIOUS CONSEQUENCES.
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Rebuildable atomizers are one of the most advanced areas of vaping I can think of. Because of this fact, the very concept of the RDA can be immensely intimidating to new or casual vapers. But once you’ve built your first stable coil and vaped from one of these little beasties, you may find that you’ve turned a corner in your vaping adventure, one from which there’s just no going back.

The vapor output, throat hit, and flavor produced by RDAs is really something special, unmatched by anything else. Add to that the pride you feel when you do something that, when you first started, you thought would always be way outside your reach, and it all adds up to an amazing experience.

I have two contenders in front of me from Youde’s iGo lineup — and while both are laid out for quad-coil setups, they also are easy enough to build in single-coil or dual-coil style. That’s how I equipped both of them for review, each with dual 1.5 ohm microcoils sporting Ekowool wick and 30-gauge Kanthal stainless steel wire. The reason I didn’t build out quad coils on each device is twofold: First, I personally lack the fine manual dexterity and visual acuity required to install four coils in such a small space as an RDA deck. Second, I actually lost one of the negative posts on the first device trying to build a quad-coil setup despite that personal deficiency.

Since I could then only build a dual-coil on that device, I stuck to dual-coil for both devices to keep the performance evaluation fair.

Let’s get started with the iGo-W2.

The Youde iGo-W2

Build Quality

The first up to bat, the Youde iGo-W2 sports stainless steel construction including the top cap along with great airflow thanks to a pair of 3 airflow holes on each side of the top cap.

However, the design of the W2 reflects a… curious design choice.

The W2 is designed to accommodate dual- or quad-coil setups, employing a thumbscrew on the center post. This was a good choice. Very nice. However, there are no posts, properly speaking, other than that center post.

The “negative posts” actually consist of four Allen screws arranged in the rim of the deck. Here’s why that’s a problem: If you accidentally drop and lose one of those screws — as I did while trying to complete a build on the thing — your RDA just lost quad-coil capability. This particular design element was a bad choice.

While I understand — from both science and the arts — that the very best ideas sometimes arise from some of the very worst ideas, those ‘worst ideas’ usually don’t see the light of day themselves. My thinking is that the “Allen screws as negative posts” idea should have been one of those.

Ease Of Use

Moving on to the question of how easy the W2 is to build for… in my experience, it’s not. Granted, maybe I’m just doing it wrong — but there we have another issue. If my style of installing coils has to be radically different in order to work with the W2, then the W2 isn’t built for people who do it the way I do it. And I learned to do it by watching other vapers build and install coils, as I’m sure is the case for most vapers.

What that means is that the W2 is laid out in such a way that most vapers would have to learn to install their coils in a way that’s radically different from the way they learned to do it. That’s just not good design, in my opinion — and that opinion is reinforced by the fact that the W2 is the only RDA I’ve ever seen laid out this way.

Even its immediate successor was designed more conventionally, which tells me that even Youde knew how unconventional the W2’s design is and actually backtracked from it.

With all that said, I was able, after a whole lot of swearing and fumbling and dropping the atty (and one of its “posts”) to install first a single coil, and then a dual coil, arrangement on it. This brings us to performance.

Performance

The performance of the W2 is, to me, a bittersweet experience. Why? Because, once you have your coil(s) installed, the iGo-W2 is an absolute dream. With dual coils reading a resistance of 0.75 ohms, and with the airflow adjusted properly, the iGo-W2 produces ridiculously thick and luxurious plumes of fragrant vapor.

Beyond the visual vapor output, throat hit gives you a good, solid thump — with the right eliquid, of course. But it’s in flavor that the combination of Ekowool wick, dual microcoils, and the airflow afforded by the W2 really just lights up your senses, and lights up my face with a huge, goofy grin.

I’ve spent a whole two days now vaping Vaporetti’s “Como Caramel” (Dave, a link to the review there, please) from the iGo-W2, and it has just been absolute, sinfully decadent bliss.

Overall

Overall, though, I don’t believe I’d recommend the iGo-W2. Although its performance is stellar, its design is simply too unconventional and, most troubling of all, it is dependent for its “posts” on Allen screws, which seem to have been invented for the purpose of being dropped and lost.

While these tiny stress-inducing things are enough of a pain when all they do is secure an RDA’s posts, nobody is done any favors with a device where they are the posts.