The Augvape Merlin is a single coil, bottom airflow, top-fill flavor RTA that provides a restricted lung hit, smooth draw and dense, delicious flavorful clouds.
Rating:
The Augvape Merlin is a very flavor oriented RTA with some very familiar design features. The Merlin seems to take all the best design elements in tanks over the last couple of years to provide a very enjoyable restricted lung vaping experience.
Disassembled Merlin
The Merlin RTA has the following features:
The Merlin RTA is available for around thirty bucks and is well worth it, particularly for flavor chasers that are looking for a restricted lung hit or a mouth to lung tank.
It is well designed but also well machined. There were no sharp edges, loose fitting parts or stuck screws on the tank tested in this review. Also there was no noticeable machine oil residue, but it received a wash regardless for safety reasons.
As far as the overall look and feel of this tank, it reminds me quite a bit of the Griffin RTA. Obviously the Merlin is built for single coil and not dual coil but the general layout is not all that different.
The velocity deck for the Merlin is offset away from the center of the tank as we see with pretty much every RTA and RDA out there, positioning the posts a bit closer together but allowing for the single coil to hang right above the single bottom airflow port.
The deck arms have smaller post holes which rules out any of the thicker clapton style builds but it works well with single wire or twisted wire builds. The selection of a velocity style two-post deck makes it very familiar to build on and the grub screws seem to be heat treated as I haven't had any problems with any of them after rebuilding this deck quite a few times.
As you can see in some of the gallery images, there is a removable airflow reducer that comes pre-installed on the deck, but it is easily removed with a flathead screwdriver. The reducer makes the airflow go from restricted (without the reducer) to very tight for the mouth the lung vapers out there.
While normally, using mouth the lung isn't my thing, the experience of using the tank in this fashion was still quite enjoyable. If I were to be using a higher nicotine juice or had limited time to vape I would probably choose to go this mode more often.
When using this tank however, I just can't get over how great the performance is with no reducer with the air control wide open. Taking a smooth, long, restricted drag off this tank is just flat out good. The flavor is wet and delicious, and the vapor is really dense.
wicking
The juice flow on this tank also seems well thought out. The holes in the the juice flow control are big enough to supply a steady stream of juice to the cotton and coils when properly wicked. When in use you can take a few chain drags without having any issues with dry hits.
The control itself is good but not the best. There isn't free rotation of the controls like we see with similar tanks. The sweet spot seems to be very small turns, turn a little to close, turn back a bit to reopen. It can't just keep turning. That being said it isn't that big of a deal and it shuts off when you need to refill the tank and opens back up no problems.
The capacity of the tank is 4ml and it is top fill. 4ml is quite generous for flavor RTA and the tank isn't that thirsty when using just plain jane spaced coils. There is some pretty nice knurling at the top to unscrew the top.
Default drips aren't usually anything to talk about but this one is pretty well shaped, for my big mouth anyway. It has a concave cylindrical shape which is perfect for the type of drags that are expected. The shape has a really pleasant lip feel and I didn't have any desire to swap the tip out.
This tank is right at home with a higher ohm build and low to moderate wattage. At .4 ohms and 22w, I got a single battery mod to last pretty much all day with a 3000mah battery and I am not a light vaper. High nic, lower wattage vapers would get more battery time for sure.
For sure! This is one of the more enjoyable tanks that I currently own. I have this thing sitting on a single battery mod most of the time when I am relaxing in front of the TV.
The flavor this RTA produces is very good but when paired the reduced airflow it makes it more of a pleasant experience and a welcome change of pace to just giant clouds constantly.
As far as value, this thing should be considered a steal.