Smoant Charon Mini 225W Review by KingPin!

[KingPin!]

Hi Folks

“Charon the 4th” is on the agenda today. Smoant’s first outing was a hugely successful affordable alternative to the Lost Vape Therion. This was all around the time the old style OLED displays were all the rage and temperature control was all about Yihi, Evolv and Hohmtech.

Smoant saw a niche and wanted to carve out the mid-range part of the market for themselves, one of the reasons they are widely regarded. Whilst still in their Charon honeymoon phase the released a straight up Variable Voltage version, then headed over to the touchscreen territory; with the follow up TC218 and a new form factor to suit (although still using the same chipset - the Ant218). Sometime after and with a decent amount of development they launched the Ant218 V2 which bought in new support, improved settings and response times. This chip was first seen in the Ceylon and then Ranker mods featuring their all new TFT colour screen and interface.

Which brings me to the Charon V4 or “Charon Mini 225w”…. for short!, featuring their latest tweaks in the Ant225 chip.

With the little family history out of the way, let’s get on with it. Smoant kindly sent me this for the once over. As always I don’t like to make recommendations in my reviews instead I’ll share my findings to bolster your research should you be interested in the product.



Manufacturer Specs

• Ant225 chipset
• Size: 45mm(L) X 29mm(W) X89mm(H)
• Batteries: Takes 2 x 18650 batter
• Display: 2.0 inch TFT color screen
• Output range: 1 – 225 W
• Output modes: VW (Min, Normal, Max)/ VW Curves / Temp (Ni, Ti, SS) / TCR / TC Curves
• Resistance range: 0.1 – 2.0 Ohm for TC mode / TCR mode / TC Curves 0.1-3.0 Ohm for VW / VW Curves
• Temperature control: 100 – 315°C / 200 – 600°F
• Center 510 connector
• Two different UI available to choose
• Pass-through available
• Firmware upgradeable
• Reverse protection/ Over-heating protection/ Low voltage protection/ Overload/Short-circuit protection/ Over-time protection

What’s in the box?

• 1 x Charon Mini
• 1 x USB Firmware/Charging Cable
• 1 x User Manual
• 1 x Warranty Card

Product Information: http://smoant.com/charon-mini-225w-upgradeable-tc-mod/index.html
Available Colours: Black, red, gold and rainbow available

Impressions, Build Quality

Starting with the form itself: The panel edges are all pitched front and back which makes it very comfortable to hold it either hand, whether it’s quite deserving of its mini title compared with the Charon TS218 or not I’m not so sure, however it’s definitely mini compared with the original Charon’s or the later Ranker (which I own). The paintwork is lovely, I’m not normally a fan of the unicorn colour on any of my gear, but it actually suits this mod well. I would say this mod is more suited to the right handed vaper (over lefty’s like me) because of how the fire button works which I’ll come onto later.



It has a full zinc alloy frame, buttons and battery cover so there is a little bit of bulk to it at 254g when two batteries are loaded (which I personally like).

The screen cover is very much a finger print magnet, so expect to wipe it off often, although this is the cost of having a nice large colour display, and as it happens this display is really bright and vibrant when turned up to max. Only with the brightest of sunlight do I struggle to see the screen (that and wearing sunglasses). Out of the gear I’ve got; I can think of only one other screen that would rival the vibrancy of the Charon mini and that’s the Eleaf Tessera.



I personally think the latest Smoant menu system is one of, if not the best out there (Ant218 V2 onwards). It’s just so intuitive to use, they have removed about as much waste as you can with all the modes on offer, and everything is perfectly placed and easy to find…it just works. The only thing to remember is 5 clicks to turn on/off, 3 clicks to access the menu, hold the fire button to go back. If you want you can customise the screen with your own wallpapers, but I kind of like keeping it simple with the blue space background.

The 510 plate is situated centrally and slightly raised. It seats 25mm atomisers flush without overhang. You will notice a slight gap when the atomiser is screwed down because the plate sits just slightly higher than the mount. To be honest I don’t mind this because I have a few tanks where I have trouble turning the bottom airflow control ring if they sit flush.



The gold plated positive pin inside the plate sits at a depth of 3.82mm and will push down to about 5mm which covers pretty much every thread length I’ve seen so far, I certainly haven’t had any issues with it picking up or reading my atomisers accurately.



The mod has venting underneath although I’m not quite sure what it’s venting since the tray covers that area entirely. It’s probably helping to reduce board overheating during charging. Battery markings are clear which is good to see and reverse polarity works (I tried all combinations).



There is no ribbon to help you remove the batteries, however the terminals at the top are both spring loaded with plenty of play, so pushing on the bottom of the battery allows you to remove it easily.

Both cells stick out slightly once inserted however the battery door covers them fine. Whilst on the door it has a plastic insert just in case either of the battery wraps has a tear the user hasn’t noticed, so no accidental shorting. There is a slight wobble on the door at the bottom, this is probably because it’s being held in place by a single magnet. Coming back to my “form” point in the opening paragraph, the wobble is a lot less noticeable when using it in the right hand with the screen facing out over the left, but I’d prefer it not to be there at all.

 

[KingPin!]

Impressions, Build Quality Continued

I decided to take a look at what’s under the hood (just remove those 6 screws in the pic below)…going through what I’m seeing:




The paintwork does extend inside both front and rear panels which is good.



Everything is metal including the buttons. The fire button is the one area I’m disappointed with using the Charon Mini. They used a small sponge to keep the button plate flat and it doesn’t really work all that well, plus over time it’s going to flatten. Whilst the actual soldered fire switch has nice feedback, the plate covering it does not. I feel there should have been a spring system in here to serve two purposes, 1. It relieves strain from the switch doing all the work to increase its longevity, 2. It stops the button for feeling spongy in certain places and sticking which I noticed. This is the main reason why this mod suits right handed vapers more in my opinion, because with the screen facing outwards your finger rests properly at the top of the plate which is the only point that seems to work well.




The 510 plate is secured with a nut, that’s not going anywhere which is good. In addition it’s a single sealed unit rather than a floating 510.
The soldering on the board itself looks neat and tidy.

The wires used for the positive (blue) and ground (black) are nice and chunky. The positive and negative joints look a little dry to me but I can’t see any signs of cracking yet.



Not sure why there is powdery stuff everywhere inside? Maybe the assembly engineer using a powdered flux sneezed or something?

Finally there is no seal between the casing parts? So watch out for major leaks on this one. At the very least I would like to have seen a seal around the battery tray and around the screen.
Power Mode

You have 4 wattage options to choose from; Min, Nom, Max & VW Curve. I wasn’t noticing too much difference between the Ant218 V2 and this latest version, to the point when I picked it up; I was thinking Smoant’s only change was increasing the wattage cap slightly, however in power modes it does seem to feel a marginally more “gutsy” using it in max mode.

I’m still not entirely sold its new architecture rather firmware tweaks and a better 510 assembly. One thing they have sorted is the mod continues to play ball almost the entirety of the battery range which is something Smoant has always seemed to struggle with beforehand.

Overall I feel the wattage range is accurate up to at least 120W which is the limit of where I like to vape. Battery life seems to be pretty decent as well, normally Smoant cut out at around 3.4V but this is allowing me to drain slightly deeper to approximately 3.2V.

The VW (Variable Wattage) Curve is easy to use, just set your desired wattage at 1 second intervals to create yourself a profile as you vape which is useful for longer draws outside of temperature control.

Same as the Ranker - You will have to cycle through .1 increments of wattage selection outside of the curve mode up to 100watts. I feel up to 20 watts this is necessary for the MTL vapers, between 21-80 half watt increments are acceptable but beyond that it should just be whole watts as it takes more time to cycle through the settings. Many manufacturers set their devices up like this and Smoant is no exception.

Temp Control (TC)

There are three standard settings in temp control “Nickel, Titanium, Stainless Steel”, then you have the TCR and Temperature Curve options as well

To be honest I’ve not felt the need to drop out of standard Stainless Steel mode to venture into TCR (which is the manual sodding about bit if the standard settings doesn’t work). However in the interest of completeness I did record my findings for TCR.

Trying to match the profile of the standard setting I found the following to be fairly accurate as to how I was using TC …..Set the TCR value to 0.00115, temp at 450.F and preheat to 60W.

This TCR value is higher than I was expecting normally it sits somewhere between 0.00088 – 0.00098 even on the Ranker I was using it at 0.00094 ….but there you go. it just goes to show each mod and coil is different and why it takes time to dial it in.

Three things to note: in the manual TCR and TC Curve modes the following can be changed on screen without having to access the menu:

The TCR can be changed at any time by pressing Fire Button and Up (+)

You can lock your starting resistance at room temp pressing the (+/-) buttons together

You can adjust on screen pre heat wattage by pressing Fire Button and Down (-)

One of the features I love about the TCR mode is it tells you as you cycle through what sort of metal the range the TCR is for. Not seen any other companies introduce this yet and for any new vaper it’s a brilliant feature.

I didn’t bother using the custom temp curve at all because I personally find it to be a little gimmicky. You can treat the Temp Curve much like a Power Curve except you are changing the temperature every second instead.

Charging and Batteries



I found there to be a slight voltage variance between cells during on board USB charge and “in use” discharge on the Charon Mini with the left cell (look straight on from the back).

Therefore my voltage range is recorded in two parts;

Left cell I recorded a low of 3.13V and max of 4.1V

Right cell I recorded a low of 3.25V and Max of 4.21V

It takes approximately 2hours 30 minutes to complete a charge cycle using Sony 3000mAh VTC6’s from cut-off with the mod warming but not feeling too hot.

So a 0.1V variance is ok although a lot of companies aim for a variance of 0.03V+/- , so as it stands I’d recommend externally charging batteries for this mod since both didn’t cut off at 4.2V. On a positive note battery life seems to be improved when in use, and Smoant have finally adjusted their low cut-off point.

Pros

• Accurate Power mode (Max is the best to use)
• Standard SS temp control was working really well for me
• Plenty of modes to choose from including basic curves
• Very intuitive menu system
• Solid construction
• Strong magnets on the back
• Great threading on the 510 plate
• Plenty of throw to the firing pin (will accommodate most atomisers)
• Helpful Manual
• Lovely screen size and picture quality / brightness
• Can customise the screen saver if that’s your thing
• Can access quick settings in main screen without having to dive down
• Up/Down buttons engage nicely
• Improved Cut-off

Cons

• Fire Button – it can be temperamental
• Slight wobble in the bottom half of the battery door
• Slight variance between battery discharge and charge [not major]
• The casing seams don’t have any seals so watch for major leaks
• TCR setting for temp control seemed a bit high although still within their range
• Mod really suits right handed vapers
• Gets a bit slippery when juice gets on the surface

Final Conclusion

There are two main things which I would like to have seen improved (although sorting the whole list is always a nice to have). The Fire Button; in my opinion is probably one of the most critical user components, it’s going to get a lot of abuse over time so it has to be spot on, even if doing so adds a tiny bit more cost to the unit. I feel the Charon mini could be better in this area in particular. In truth the battery door wobble is a minor annoyance and both of these areas are a lot less noticeable for the right handed vaper (which sadly I’m not).

However with those two things out of the way, in the month I’ve had this mod before this review drop it’s been used heavily every day, it’s been broken down, re-assembled and leaked on and I’ve not had any issues with it in any mode. Smoant have honed their chipset well, and have a decent 510 assembly on the Charon mini. It has a great menu system and lovely screen. I guess where to go from here is the question and for that we’ll just have to wait and see.

Thank you for reading my review. I hope you find the information useful, until next time KingPin!

 

[St.Roostifer]

Great review kingpin!. Thorough as always and I appreciate it even more on this because I have serious interest in this mod.

The fire button is my biggest concern. Do you think there's any chance it could stick?

I'm right handed so the button placement in relation to the screen is not an issue for me. It's the same as the Laisimo L3 I have. I have used it with the left hand before but I have to watch it or I'll accidentally touch the touch screen with my left hand and change the settings. At least I wouldn't have to worry about this with the Charon mini.

I really like the menu on the original Charon and it looks like Smoant made some nice changes to the menu. A big one I notice in your review is the adjustable curves. On the original the only way to set a power curve was to download the Charon's firmware to a compy and then plug the Charon into the compy to set the curves. They wisely skipped this step so now it can be done on the mod itself without plugging into the compy. Huge pro for me.

Other than the fire button I absolutely dig this mod. I had lots of interest in before reading your review and even more so now. Thanks again kingpin for another insightful review.

 

[KingPin!]

Thank you very much as always matey

I’ve never had the button properly stick down but it’ll catch before it pops back out, this is if I engage it at the bottom ...there are dead zones as well again all at the bottom up to the centre

However I’m a lefty mate so I’m pressing with my thumb or using the screen facing into my palm so sometimes I catch it wrong as a result.

With the mod in my right hand my finger naturally rests at the top and not had any issue with it there

 

[St.Roostifer]

Thank you very much as always matey

I’ve never had the button properly stick down but it’ll catch before it pops back out, this is if I engage it at the bottom ...there are dead zones as well again all at the bottom up to the centre

However I’m a lefty mate so I’m pressing with my thumb or using the screen facing into my palm so sometimes I catch it wrong as a result.

With the mod in my right hand my finger naturally rests at the top and not had any issue with it there

Who would have thought the fire button has a g spot?

Seriously though, thank you again for the review. Always good to know the niggly points before making a purchase. I'm putting the Charon mini at the top of my mod wish list.

 

[KingPin!]

Just a quick update @St.Roostifer ...nearly two months in now mate and I’ve been using this mod every day since I got it ...still working like a charm

More importantly the fire button seems to have broken in a lot better now ...god knows how many puffs I’ve taken on it but that’s a good sign