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Vandy Vape Pulse V2 BF Review: Test Results Are In
Product intro and specs
The Vandy Vape Pulse V2 mod is the latest mod from Vandy Vape and a follow up to the popular Pulse 80W and Pulse X squonk mods released a couple of years ago. Vandy Vape probably don’t need much of an introduction these days as they have made many popular products, with big hits like the Kylin 2 RTA, Jackaroo Mod, and Bonza series of RDAs. They also had some not-so-good ones like the Simple EX kit, the Maze RDA, and the Pyro V2 RDTA, so they seem to be very hit and miss overall.
The Pulse 2 is a single 2×700 battery squonk mod (takes 21700, 20700, and 18650 batteries) with a color screen. It’s rated for 95 watts and is designed to be lightweight. The chip itself is water-resistant, but the mod is not IP rated. Keep reading to find out how it performs.
This mod was sent to me by MyVpro for the purpose of this review.
Price: $56.99 (Here)
Colors: G10 Obsidian Black, Resin Rainbow, Sky Blue Resin, Flame Red Resin, and more.
Specifications
- Dimensions: 82.3 mm x 28.4 mm x 54.7 mm
- Power range: 5 - 95 watts
- Operating voltage: 3.2 - 4.2 volts
- Output voltage: 0.5 - 6.0 volts
- Maximum output current protection: up to 34 amps
- Coil resistance range: 0.05 - 3.0 ohms
Kit contents
- 1 x Pulse V2 mod
- 2 x Instruction manual
- 1 x Warranty card
- 1 x QC Type-C USB cable
- 1 x Proper user guidance
- 1 x 18650 battery adapter
- 2 x Squeeze 7 mL bottle
First impressions
When I first got this mod, I liked the design a lot. It’s very similar to the original Pulse mod but with a new chip and a few design changes. It’s small, lightweight, and water-resistant. It’s not IP rated like the Jackaroo or Aegis line, but is water-resistant enough that you can wash it off if need be and it should survive juice spills. It also features Bluetooth and an app as well. It’s got a plastic-ish body like the original Pulse mod, nice replaceable panels on the side, and a color screen. The one big change I noticed is that you can now refill the bottle without removing it via a latch on the bottom of the mod. Overall, I really liked the design from the start. It’s small, lightweight, simple, and easy to fill.
Build quality and design
The Vandy Vape Pulse V2 is a solid, nicely built and well-designed mod. It’s mostly rectangular, but still very comfy in the hands. It features a front-facing color screen and an off-center 510 pin. It is very lightweight as well, weighing in at only 103 grams with an empty bottle. It’s about the same size as many of the smaller dual-18650 battery mods on the market. There are six color options, but all come with a black frame. The panels are removable and replaceable via magnets, and as far as I know, Vandy Vape plans to offer them sold separately as they did for their Pulse squonk and Swell mods. So, you get a good amount of customization options there. Branding wise they kept it very nice and simple. There is “Vandy Vape” engraved into the body on the backside opposite the screen, and a small “Pulse 2” engraved in the body seen via the large squonk window.
The battery door is a standard magnetic side door. With the Pulse 2, to remove batteries you’ll want to take off both panels so you can push the battery out from the back side. Removing and installing batteries is very easy, and the doors all fit very nice with no play. The mod features a 0.96-inch bright color screen and you can change the color scheme from the six options in the mod.
There is no button rattle on this mod at all either. The 510 pin is great and gave me no issues with any atomizers. The 510 pin is not centered and can handle a 26 mm atomizer flush to the sides without overhang. I heard that some reviewers had issues with a sticky fire button, but I’ve put over 1000 puffs on mine and no such issue has occurred for me personally.
Features and functions
The Vandy Vape Pulse V2 has pretty much every mode we see on mods these days. It’s the same set up as their Swell mod. You have Power mode (watts) with preheat options, Voltage mode, Bypass mode, and Temp control mode for Ni200, Ti, and SS. No TCR mode but the TCR is adjustable in each of the preset modes. If you use the app you can also set preheats up to do watt curves as well, but the app isn’t very user friendly overall. But it works well enough and we’ll go over that more later. Pretty much all the necessary features that we expect to have on a regulated mod are here.
The Pulse 2 mod is listed as a waterproof mod but not with any IP rating. It’s more of “juice and running water-resistant” than actually “sitting in a pool of water type resistant according to the specs. So, to test this, I started by running the mod under water, then drying it off—and it still worked great. To take it up a notch for my second test, I poured e-juice on the mod and left it sitting overnight. Then the following morning I washed it off in the sink to clean the e-juice off the mod, dried it off, and it still worked with no issues. So, while it may not be fully waterproof, it does do a great job of being juice/leak resistant, and it’s easy to clean off in a sink.
Using the Pulse V2
As far as the menu goes, it still follows the basics of their past mods and is pretty good. It’s pretty much the same as the Swell.
- Five clicks of the fire button to turn on and off
- Three clicks to enter mode swap (use up and down to scroll and fire to accept)
- Use up and down to enter the menu
- Four clicks to adjust settings inside of a mode
- Press + and fire to lock the mod (locks adjustment buttons only, can still fire)
- Press – and fire to flip the screen
- In the menu there is a settings icon which allows you to remove modes from visibility, change the color of the font on the screen, or do a factory reset.
Power mode performance
Testing on this mod was done with Samsung 30T Batteries. They list the specs at 95 watts, 6 volts, and 34 amps. Very happy they listed all three as all companies should, but most don’t.
During my testing, the max achieved wattage was 111, so a little underrated at 95 watts. The amp limit I got was 35 amps which is above average for a single battery mod these days where the average is 28-30. And that’s a great rating at 34 amps from Vandy Vape. The volt limit I got with a 0.66-ohm coil was 6.311, which is a little over their listed 6 volts. It also shows there is a boost circuit like all single battery mods should have.
The mod adjusts in 1-watt increments and it scrolls pretty fast, making it very easy to adjust. During my testing, the mod did a great job of not getting hot. From an accuracy standpoint, it mostly hits on the high side, so I’d recommend starting 5-10 watts lower than you normally vape, to be on the safe side.
They list 1-amp charging on this mod which is decent for today’s standards, and while I don’t recommend charging mods internally, I did test that just for informational purposes. I found the max charge rate to be 0.96 amps. Their rating is great, but it’s always best practice to use an external charger.
Overall a really good performer in power mode and great ratings on their specs. You can see the full test results above.
Temperature control performance
Using SS316L Wire in SS mode, I tested four builds:
- One simple round single coil
- One simple round dual coil
- One fancy wire single coil
- One fancy wire dual coil
The Pulse V2 has the full watt limit available of 95 watts and while there is no TCR mode, you can adjust the TCR in each of the modes. Sadly, the mod uses the same non-standard system as Voopoo and past Vandy Vape mods which I would like to see changed on future mods.
The default TCR for SS was 1300, which didn’t work at all. After testing it anywhere between 1000 and 1500, I couldn’t really get a good vape from it at all. It was very inconsistent and couldn’t be dialed in. TC is something Vandy vape really needs to improve on or just remove it from their mods so it’s not a waste of time and source of hope for people. Definitely a fail as usual in this department.
Squonking performance
As far as the squonking goes, it worked great with no issues. I love the included silicon bottle. It comes with a tinted black bottle as the spare and a clear one as the pre-installed one. The bottles have a nice 7 mL capacity. The squonk window is very large as well and easy to squonk. This is the biggest change compared to the Pulse 80 and the Pulse X.
The bottle is removed via a latch on the bottom. If you unscrew it about a quarter of a turn, you can pull the whole bottle assembly out for cleaning. To refill though is the best part of this. You unscrew the latch on the bottom with the mod upside down and fill directly into the bottle. Very easy and no mess from removing bottles. I love the filling on them. Well worth having propriety bottles and makes sense for the application. The latch itself has a magnet so it closes by itself which is nice too.
On the negative side, the spare is only the bottle without the cap/latch that seals it, so you can’t carry a spare bottle around. But in this case, the pros outweigh the cons. Overall, a very nice and innovative filling and squonk system that never gave me any issues, and a big reason to get this over the previous Pulse squonk mods.
App usage
Now for the app. Some mods with app companions started appearing in the 2015-2017 period, but it was a disaster for the most part. Then after that it seemed to have died off as a gimmick, so I’m happy to see Vandy Vape trying to bring it back. Vaping trends always occur in cycles anyway, where something goes out of style then comes back years later like fashion. This is why we see things that died down years ago making big comebacks in vaping like mesh and vape pens.
As far as using the app though, I had much better luck than the first time I did it with the Swell mod. I had apps installed for iOS and Android already, but the iOS version I had is no longer good, but they have a new one you can download. I only used the Android one for this. Once I updated the app and logged in, it was still paired with my Swell mod. I was able to add the Pulse V2 very easily and connect to it—reconnecting later on is spotty but doable. It really should auto-connect like any other Bluetooth device out there. I personally would like to see improvements there, since the app has been out a while now. As far as the app functionality itself, there are three main areas.
Area 1 is the “find my device” area where you can click a button to make the mod beep. It’s a faint beep not overly loud, so not really sure how much it’ll help, but likely good enough to figure out which room in your house you left it in. You can also change your name and set up an anti-loss function which isn’t explained, but what it does is alerts you that you’ve left your mod behind when your phone gets far away from it.
Area 2 is the “update” area, that allows you to update firmware via your phone. That’s a great function and much more modern than the old way of plugging your mod in a PC and having to hold buttons. With the Swell, I was able to easily upgrade and download the new UI theme they had. Currently there are no updates or UI’s to download for the Pulse V2 though. It’s just blank.
Area 3 is the “control” area. This allows you to program your device. It’s very simple and easy to do. First tab is power which has a slider for your watts as well as a plus and minus button to tap and adjust. It updates instantly on the device. It also shows your puffs and resistance and battery levels on the phone. Below that are the preheat options which they call “set the flavor”. You can also program and save your own custom watt curves as well. The second tab is the temp section, which allows you to select SS, NI, or TI, adjust the temp, and adjust the power. Sadly, no way to set the TCR here, which seems like a big omission. But since TC doesn’t work well on this mod, there’s no point to use that tab. Lastly, there is the voltage tab, which is simple and just has the option to set the volts instead of watts.
Pros / Cons
- (+) Great build quality
- (+) Compact and very lightweight
- (+) Plenty of color options
- (+) Swappable panels for customization
- (+) Water resistant and easy to clean
- (+) Handles 26 mm atomizers without overhang
- (+) Nice bright and large color screen
- (+) Excellent squonk filling system
- (+) Battery door is easy to open and swap out batteries
- (+) Accurately rated for Volts/watts/amps
- (+) Good power mode performance
- (+) High amp limit
- (+) Watt curve and voltage modes available
- (+) App makes updating firmware easy
- (+) App control is a nice feature
- (-) TC mode works poorly
- (-) Non-standard TCR system
- (-) Watt curve mode needs app to set up
- (-) App could connect better at times
Gallery
Verdict
Overall, Vandy Vape did a great job with this mod. If you don’t use temp control and want a good-sized and lightweight squonk mod that won’t die if your atomizer leaks, this is a great option indeed. Outside of the TC performance, I don’t have major complaints on the mod itself. It does feel like a good upgrade to the previous Pulse mods as well with the app, color screen, and squonking system. It’s a really good squonk mod overall if you are not a TC vaper.
Let me know what you think in the comments and thanks for reading!
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Article Author: Anthony Victor
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