we might be inspired by Ryan's review
Well another day and another RTA. In our never ending quest for flavour we took a look at the Cthulhu RTA. The biggest selling point on this one is it has the largest juice channels currently on the RTA market. It is priced very reasonably and is made from medical grade stainless steel.
The design is very similar to Youde’s Goliath and Goblin, but with an increased deck size and juice channels as well as top filling! The deck is easy to build and you can jam in 3mm coils if you wish (2.5mm performed better). We built a 0.35 Ohm 24 gage setup and found it didn’t like that much heat so we went down to a 0.4 Ohm 26 gage for review purposes.
Wicking this bad boy is much easier than some of the other RTAs out there thanks to those juice channels and it is next to impossible to get a dry hit (if you chain super hard, like 4-5 long hits in a row you can get the taste of a dry hit starting, but who vapes like that).
Juice consumption seems reasonable, a full 4ml tank lasting at least a couple hours. Airflow is good, it’s not massive as Cthulhu Mod advertises, the Goblin still has an edge over the rest. We found you get slightly smoother and better taste with the AFC slightly closed, which means there is a bottle neck inside, or we think it could be the rough edges inside the chimney.
That brings us to build quality and design. The materials are very good, threading isn’t janky but looks and feels rough, and that leeds to the overall finish of the internals, or the lack there of a final finish. It feels like production of these units were rushed, there wasn’t the final care of buffing and polishing the edges of the airflow holes, chimney, or threadings. When you get yours double check the airflow channels at the bottom, ours came with drill shavings still attached inside, we had to clear them out.
Top filling works very well and is worry and mess free. No leaking of any sort has occurred. As with most RTAs they seem to like being set below 4 Volts so watch the wattages on this one.
So what do we think? The Cthulhu is a promising design and has many improvements over the Goblin and the Goliath but, and this is a big but. The flavour is a little harsh and we think it’s the build finish that is the culprit here. If the edges were smooth and silky we believe this RTA would be on top, but that just isn’t the case. The fact that this is much easier to wick and doesn’t suffer from the dry hit susceptibility of the competition still make it a considered purchase, but we are all about flavour and we still give the upper hand currently to the Goliath.
Update: Okay so it seems wicking this puppy a certain way makes a big difference! We are upping our rating and opinion of this bad boy. Wick this very similarly to the Goblin (without as much fuss), trim to the deck and have very little wick in the channels (like just a hair), most of the wick sitting on the top of the deck. Make sure you wick the coils just enough, don’t over stuff them. Have the coils 1-2 mm off the air holes and this RTA gives great flavour and no dry hits (you can take really long hauls to your heart’s desire). Wicking just enough rather than as much as possible really makes a difference on flavour. Maybe this one has the edge after all. Make sure to check out Butt Kickers review and tutorial (link is below).
Pros:
– Large build deck
– Doesn’t Leak
– Clean Design Aesthetic
– Easy to Build
– Good Flavour (but a little harsh)
– Easy Top Filling
– Good Airflow
– Great Wicking
Cons:
– Poor Final Finish Internally
– Threading is a little rough
– Rough/Sharp edges inside the chimney
– Airflow ring very hard to adjust
– Airflow a little rough (probably the sharp internal edges)
– Metal drill shavings in airflow channels needed to be scraped and cleared
Website: CthulhuMod.com
Video Review: Butt Kickers
Overall Rating (1-10): 9
re-post from:
Cthulhu RTA