Home RBA's RDA Reviews Cool Vapor Arthur RDA Reviewed – The King of the RDA’s?

Cool Vapor Arthur RDA Reviewed – The King of the RDA’s?

November 1, 2017

Today we are looking at the Cool Vapor Arthur RDA. It is a 24mm diameter rebuildable atomiser with a “cross style” bottom airflow.

It features a 24K gold plated base with a dual post deck big enough to wack some beasty coils on. The chamber is domed for an intense flavour experience as well as an Ultem drip tip for insulation against the heat.

But how did I get on with it? Find out in my written and video review!

Introduction To The Cool Vapor Arthur RDA

The Arthur RDA is available in two different finishes which are Stainless Steel/Gold and Black/Gold. I personally prefer the look of the Black/Gold version, but today I will be looking at the Stainless Steel/Gold Version.

As always my opinions are honest and my own.

What’s In The Box

1 x Arthur RDA
User Manual (not included with mine)
Allen Key
U-Tool
Spare Parts

Features

Size: 24 x 35.8mm
Drip tip material: PEI (Ultem)
Body material: 304 Stainless Steel
Base material: 24K gold-plated
Thread: 510 thread
Colour: Black/Gold, Silver/Gold
Cross style adjustable airflow
Easy build dual coil deck
Dome style chamber for intense flavour

Build Quality & Design

We’ll start from the top and make our way down the RDA…

The Drip Tip:

The drip tip assembly comprises of three parts. An Ultem 810 drip tip, a stainless steel drip tip adapter and a 24K Gold-Plated crown.

The Ultem drip tip is quite stubby, but fits nicely in the mouth. The inside is sightly angled inwards to allow any condensation to drip back into the RDA. It is held into the drip tip adapter with a single o-ring.

The drip tip adapter is made of stainless steel and its only function that I can find is to hold in the crown piece. This crown piece is meant for decoration and can be removed if the user wishes. Removing it doesn’t effect the RDA in any way and looks great with or without.

The Barrel:

Below the drip tip assembly, we have the barrel. It is machined from one solid piece of stainless steel with vertical lines engraved into it.

The inside of the barrel is slightly domed, which is notorious for producing good flavour within rebuildable atomisers. At the base it has two channels that the o-rings from the base fit into, as well as a little notch which I am still trying to find the purpose of…

Throughout the time testing this RDA out, I have found that taking the top cap off and putting it back on has been extremely difficult. The o-rings seem to be that little bit too big and have started to pinch and little bits have broken off, much to my annoyance.

The Build Deck:

The deck on the Arthur RDA is a thing of beauty! A 24K gold-plated masterpiece!

It features two wide posts with pretty large holes for your coil legs to go through where they are secured by four golden allen-head grub screws. I have been winding this in and out putting plenty of different builds on there without any warping or cross threading.

In the shadows of the monolithic posts are the juice wells which surround them like a moat around a castle. And blimey are these things deep! Perfect to place your wicks into and a bit of a safety net if you’re prone to overdripping like myself.

Beside the moat-like juice wells are a pair of chimneys which supply an absolute tonne of airflow to the belly of your coils. The airflow can be fully controlled in a similar fashion to a conventional tank by twisting the airflow base.

The Airflow Base Section

So, as said previously, the airflow on the Arthur RDA is quite similar to a bottom airflow tank. A collar that spins around to open or close the airflow.

But in this case, it doesn’t make the holes on the outside change size, it rotates a disc on the inside which closes off the airflow to the bottom of the chimneys. To determine whether your airflow is fully open or not, there is an arrow and a dot.

Line up the arrow with the dot and you have full airflow to the bottom of your coils.

Throughout testing this, I have preferred using the airflow roughly half open. This allows a nice amount of restriction and produces a great amount of flavour.

At the base, you have your usual branding as well as a gold plated 510 positive pin, but surrounding this is a disc that looks like a button.

By inserting the u-shaped tool provided in the box, you can unscrew this and take apart the base so that it can be cleaned. I personally think that this is slightly over-engineered.

How Does the Arthur RDA Perform?

On this RDA, I have been using a pair of Clapton Coils They have come out to 0.1Ω on the Coil Master 521 Mini Tab.

Ease Of Build On The Arthur RDA

Building on the Cool Vapor Arthur RDA is pretty easy! Simply unscrew the four grub screws using the allen key provided.

Put the upper leg in the higher hole on one post and the lower leg in the lower hole on the other post. Tighten down the grub screws and cut off the excess wire from the legs.

After that, adjust the height of your coils so that they’re a decent distance above the chimneys and then get onto pinching and pulsing your coils to make sure that they are heating evenly from the centre outwards.

Flavour & Clouds

Using 12 Monkeys E Liquid the flavour on the Arthur RDA has been pretty acceptable. I wouldn’t say it’s absolutely mind blowing, but it is reasonably good for an RDA. Possibly shortening of the barrel section would improve the flavour of your e-juice somewhat.

As for clouds. They’re nothing to write home about. They’re OK, but I wouldn’t go calling this a cloud chasing RDA. It’s more orientated towards flavour.

Take a look at our top rated vape juice brands.

What I Like

Firstly, I love the design of this. I think that the stainless steel and gold combination isn’t the best of ideas though, I would have preferred the black and gold version. It offers a greater contrast between the two different colours.

The build deck. As stunning as it is, it is also extremely easy to build on and to get your coils central over the airflow chimneys.

The gold! Definitely a bit blingy, but it looks awesome! I like it!

What I Dislike

Taking apart and replacing the barrel section on the build deck. It has just chewed up the o-rings. Hopefully some smaller ones would remedy this.

The height of the barrel section. This could have been made a bit shorter which could possibly increase the flavour production of this RDA.

The airflow control. it’s difficult to see whether it is open or closed. All you have to reference this is by where the triangle is compared to the dot. I would have made this more like a traditional tank airflow with fixed internals and an outer collar that moves.

Possibly an over engineered base? Unless you’re into super deep cleaning your RDA’s, I don’t thing that taking apart the airflow base into about four pieces is necessary. For some it might though.

Final Review Verdict

The Cool Vapor Arthur RDA is a beautiful bit of kit, but it does have the odd flaw which could be easily fixed in the next version. The flavour is pretty good, but the clouds are nothing to shout from the rooftops about.

Which brings me to the question: Would I buy the Cool Vapor Arthur RDA If I lost or damaged it?

No, I wouldn’t. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice RDA, but there are plenty of other RDA’s out there that can produce the same or better flavour, have better airflow control and bring more innovation to the table. And that is one thing this RDA lacks. INNOVATION.