Arriving in a rather unassuming little black box came the latest “proposal” from the budget branch of the Arctic Dolphin design studio, the Arctic Dolphin Elux RTA.
Designed to compliment their Elux mod, Arctic Dolphin have decided to test their mettle in the popular Mouth To Lung (MTL) rebuildable scene.
So, can this little cutie cut it in a market alongside the likes of the Vandy Vape Berserker and the Ehpro True MTL RTA?
Let’s dive in and take a look…
In the Box
- 1 x ELUX RTA
- 1 x Phillips head screwdriver
- 1 x Spares bag, containing O-rings and screws
- 1 x Spare glass tank
- 1 x Micro coil
- 1 x Instruction manual
Features and Specs
- Stainless steel construction
- 1.2ml e-juice capacity
- Glass tank
- Convenient top filling design
- Smaller single coil build
- Easy dual posts build deck
- Adjustable bottom airflow control
- 510 threading connection
- 18mm overall diameter
- 15.5mm inner diameter
Design and Build Quality
Size
With a 18mm footprint the ELUX RTA comes in smaller than the majority of its competition and with this comes a sacrifice. Namely capacity.
Instead of the expected 2ml the ELUX offers only a 1.2ml tank.
This might be a deal-breaker for some. But the way I look at it, we have 2ml capacity on Direct To Lung (DTL) tanks and get on with them just fine. Being MTL, I didn’t expect to be filling up the ELUX too regularly.
Post Type
Arctic Dolphin have given us a very familiar post layout with the offset post deck. I’ve seen this layout work very well in decks like the Oumier Wasp Nano, but with 2mm less build space I’m a little concerned about how fiddly the Elux RTA will be to build on.
Fitting the coils was indeed a little fiddly for my sausage fingers. Not so much with the mounting of the coil, that was very straight forward. But with the high, wide posts I found it tricky to align the properly over the air-flow holes. 
There isn’t enough room to bend the coil away from the posts to give a truly central alignment. Secondly the post screw heads are pretty big when compared to the width of the posts themselves.
This meant I had to be very conscious of the coil being positioned too close to the post in case it made contact with the screw head and caused a short.
When it came to wicking, I knew I wouldn’t need a lot of cotton but I was astonished by just how little I needed.
The 2.5mm coil provided was obviously going to need less cotton than the 3.5mm complex builds I use in my dripper. So, I decided to start with 1/8 of a pad of muji. Good guess, bang on! Trimming the wicks to meet the base of the deck I began to stuff the ends into the very recessed juice wells.
Something didn’t feel right here. Then I realised the similarity between the wicking channels on the Elux RTA and my Kylin mini. I decided to wet the wicks and place them neatly into the recess so that I wouldn’t end up with cotton stuck in the chimney threads.
This worked a treat and I’d recommend you wick in the same way.
Air flow
I’ve come to expect dual airflow mirrored on both sides of a tank. On the bottom air-flow ELUX we’re given just one. I found this to be a very nice way to have full control of the air provided to the small deck. Given how small the air holes are on the deck, there isn’t a need for a lot of air, especially seeing as this is a MTL tank.
The airflow is very balanced and even and the single inlet allows for total control.
The knurling on the AFC is thick and chunky. This adds to the confidence in the control you have over the amount of air to your coils. This was a nice touch and contrasts the dainty design nicely.
Over the 2 weeks of my testing period, I had absolutely no leaking from this beauty of a bottom airflow tank at all. This was very impressive considering it has such a small form factor it does have a tendency to move around in the pocket.
How Does The Arctic Dolphin ELUX RTA Perform?
Fill me up
Removing the top cap to access the fill ports couldn’t be more straight-forward. Using the large knurling on the top cap to unscrew and you are greeted by two long, but narrow, kidney shaped holes.
Even though they are long it was still difficult to get the nozzle from a 10ml bottle of Far NS20 Purple Slush bottle into the holes due to the width, so be careful here not to get e-liquid down the chimney and flood out the deck, as this could lead to leaking out of the AFC.
Flavour Vs Clouds
With a MTL tank you don’t really expect to be “chucking clouds, bro”. But the amount of vapour produced at both extremes of the AFC were decent to say the least. I was very happy with the amount of vapour produced here.
10W
The flavour produced at 10w from the 1.07Ohm micro coil was fantastic. Every part of the 20mg Purple Slush nic salts popped and it was miles better than the flavour I get from similarly ohmed pod systems.
15-20W
As I climbed up the wattage range through 15w and up to 20w it just kept getting better and better. However, at 20w things started to get a little too warm and I definitely hit my sweet spot at 15w.
Pros
- Build quality
- Cracking flavour
- air flow is great
- Flavour just keeps on giving
Cons
- Post screw heads are too big
- Refill ports need to be wider
- Very little room to build
Final verdict
I am truly blown away with the Arctic Dolphin ELUX RTA. They have given us a small and mighty MTL tank that will see users of small pen style mods having tough decisions to make when it comes to venturing into rebuildables.
I say: Take a chance, I hope you’re as impressed as I was!
