As the name suggests the Dovpo Riva DNA250C mod is a new box mod featuring the popular Evolv DNA250C chipset.
The Riva isn’t the first Dovpo device to have a DNA chip. Some others include the Odin 200 – Mini DNA75C Mod and the College DNA60 mod.
Placing themselves right at the beginning of the ‘Vaping Boom‘, Dovpo was founded in 2012 with a vision of offering innovative vapes and being an industry-leading brand. Its mission is to be a reliable and to make the best possible devices.
Dovpo is one of those brands that I haven’t had tons of experience with, but it is also a brand that I respect and appreciate.
Let’s get to it and see what the Evolv DNA250C Mod has to offer…
What Can We Expect From The Dovpo Riva DNA250C Mod?
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C is a 200w dual 18650 mod, which I found surprising because the mod feels quite big so I was expecting a dual 21700 mod, but look at it now I suppose it is a little but too thin for dual 21700s.
With the use of real leather and Zinc Alloy the mod looks and feels pretty smart.
Thanks to the Evolv DNA250C chipset, the Riva has wattage control, temperature control and balanced charging.
The mod also has a watt boost mode and even a ‘Replay‘ mode.
It has a 0.96″ colour TFT screen which has has not been wasted, there is so much to look at!
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C mod has a micro-USB which I think is a little bit disappointing but it does has a 2A charge rate.
According to Dovpo the 510 connection can accommodate 26mm atomisers or smaller.
Watch Harley’s Video Review Of the Dovpo Riva DNA250c
Inside The Box
- 1 x RIVA DNA250C Mod
- 1 x Micro USB Cable
- 1 x User Manual
- 1 x Battery Usage Warning Card
- 1 x Warranty Card
I didn’t get the manual that’s in the pictures, I got a A4 print out… written in German… I don’t read German, but thanks for that Dovpo.
Dovpo Riva DNA250cMod Specs
- Size: 80mm x 43mm x 39.5mm
- Material: Zinc Alloy + Leather
- Weight:151g
- Chipset: Evolv DNA250C
- Battery: 2 x 18650 Batteries
- Output Voltage Range: 0.2v – 8.0v
- Working Mode: Variable Wattage,Temperature Control, Boost, Replay
- Wattage Range: 1.0W – 200W
- Display: 0.96” Full Color TFT Screen
- Charging: MicroUSB 5V/2A
Design & Build Quality
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C Mod is available in 9 different colours.
As you can see in the picture, all the colours consist of either a silver, gunmetal or black Zinc Alloy frame, with different leather patches.
I received the Silver and Dark Brown, however it’s that dark, I’d bet my life savings that it is black.
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Mod Body
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C is made of zinc alloy with a real leather patch on the back.
Combined they feel great, the Zinc alloy is nice and smooth, while the leather is awesomely comfy and warm to touch, together they are really inviting.
At the beginning of the review, I said it’s pretty big and it is, but it isn’t huge.
Thanks to it’s shape the Riva feels pretty good in hand, irregardless of whether you prefer to fire with your finger or thumb.
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Buttons
The Riva has 4 buttons in total, the fire button, a select button and the ‘-‘/’+’ buttons.
I do love mods with a select button.
They just make operation simpler and open the door to more functionality.
The fire button is round with a diameter of 10mm and it protrudes from the front of the mod by 2.5mm (including it’s surround).
Maybe that’s why it’s nice and easy to press, however the downside of it protruding more than any of the other buttons, it is pretty good at firing in your pocket, if you leave it on.
The other 3 buttons measure at 9.5 x 5mm and again they’re nice and easy to press.
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C 510 Connector
The 510 connection on the Dovpo Riva DNA250C Mod is placed at the front of the mod.
I know there will be many people wishing that the 510 was centred to allow bigger atomisers.
Let’s face it, if it was centred we would be able to fit at least up to a 33mm atties, however that isn’t the case so we are restricted to 26mm – personally I don’t mind that.
The connection plate is held down by 2 torx screws. Although it feels quite secure, again I know a lot of people reading this will be wary of it coming loose. I understand that because I seem to be really good at breaking connectors with this type of fixing.
I have to admit when buying a mod I don’t usually pay attention to how the connection plate is held down because this style is really popular, and lets be fair it does also depend on how the mod is designed under the plate.
For example if the hole is tight and designed well, it will be more durable that just a round hole.
If I haven’t already mentioned the threads are beautifully smooth.
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C Battery Door
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C mod makes use of a hinged bottom door.
Again this is one of those designs that make me a bit cautious and they’re quite common.
The problem with this kind of battery door is the latches often wear away or bend making it less secure.
However on the Riva mod the latch is fairly big, making it less likely to ware away and the entire door is quite thick making it less likely to bend.
Dovpo has managed to fix one of my annoyances with this type of door though.
I am terrible for accidentally catching the door and dropping the batteries but as we mentioned the latch is pretty big, additionally it feels a bit tighter. As you would expect it doesn’t even attempt to open when jolted.
That’s not what I’m on about though, the Riva has a spring in the hinge preventing it fully open. Not allowing the door to open fully prevents the batteries from falling out, so if you do accidentally open it, your batteries won’t drop.
Fear not though with a small amount of effort you can push the door fully open to allow the batteries out.
All in all it opens and closes pretty nicely. I have to say it’s built pretty well, there’s no wiggling or wobbling.
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Screen
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C has a 0.96″ TFT Colour Screen, which is a common size screen for mods at the minute, but because the mod is so big it looks so small.
The screen is absolutely rammed with information but it’s simple at the same time… I like it. Here’s what I mean.
First of all while the device is turned off the screen can still be on…. I don’t like that but the screen shows the coil resistance and battery level across the top. The battery level is displayed as both a bar and percentage.
Just below that is the time and date, with the Evolv logo in the center.
When you press the any button a little * appears at the bottom of the screen, if you press the fire button 5 times, it then unlocks but if you press any other buttons when you get to the 5th press the *’s turn orange, as if to say access denied.
When the device is ‘turned on’, the resistance and battery info at the top stays the same.
However below that we have the current mode, power setting and the settings menu button… which is simply the word “Settings”. Information appears below that, for example “Firing”, “Weak Battery” and so on.
With a black and white screen which uses a blue selector, the display looks very… mature. I was expecting a colour change option in the settings but I couldn’t find any… and Dovpo didn’t let me have the manual, so I’m only 99% sure that you can’t change the screen colour.
Using Dovpo Riva DNA250C Mod
To get the mod up and running all you need to do is slide the battery door open, put your batteries in (see the battery door for battery rotation indicators), then close the door.
At this point the mod turns on and you should see the ‘Off’ screen, as described above.
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Operation
- On/Off = Fire button 5 times
- Select = Select button (between ‘+’ and ‘-‘)
- Navigate = ‘+’ or ‘-‘
- Replay = Go to the replay mode, fire the device how you would normally at whatever wattage you prefer. The middle empty rectangle will now display “Save Puff” this will make the mod replicate the last puff when you fire, until you remove it. PLEASE NOTE: Replay is only for temperature wires (not standard, kanthal coils).
Change Mode or Power Setting
- Navigate to the current mode or current power setting
- Press the middle button to select it
- Circle through the modes using ‘+’ or ‘-‘ until you get to the mode you want
- Press the middle button to select and save
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Settings
To enter the settings menu, simply navigate to ‘Settings’ at the bottom of the screen and press the select button.
The settings menu goes in to some depth, so lets take a closer look.
First of all we have the atomiser settings, in here we can change the settings regarding power and resistance. So we can change the mode, manually change the resistance, get the mod to recheck the resistance, change the power setting, temperature, boost mode, and punch level (0-11).
Next up if the Puff Info. This is quite interesting because it displays a chart to show the power battery level and power/temperature setting for each puff. At the top is arrows to change which puff you’re looking at, between the arrows is the number of puff you’re looking at.
Diagnostics has a ton of information, but it is just information, we can’t actively change anything. There is 8 different information points including the boards temperature, USB input voltage and other information about the device.
Finally we have the System option, in this menu we can change the brightness, time and units. At the bottom is an ‘about‘ selection, which takes you to the general information about the mod including the serial number, and patents.
To go back at any point you just navigate to the ‘back‘ selection which is located at the bottom of every screen.
How Does The Dovpo Riva DNA250C Perform?
The first thing I always look at is the actual power output.
I like my coils and vapour hot. I mean my go to lately is dual coils reading at 0.2ohms and firing at 135w.
Now when you tell people that people always respond with “you can’t do that, ohms-law bla bla“. Well, sorry guys but Ohm’s Law is on my side, if you have the right mod and the right batteries.
The Dovpo Riva DNA250C can fire 0.2-8V and it can handle pretty high amps, although I’m not going to state what amps because the lack of a manual is making it hard to find the official amp specs.
Does It lie? Let’s Push It To It’s Limit
The only way I can follow on from that, is to check if it lies.
Now what I mean by ‘lie’ is often mods will let you set it to a wattage, but when you fire it, the mod isn’t capable of getting to that power so it just fires as high as it can.
Mods don’t technically lie because they often tell you the other information (Volts, Amps Resistance) and we can use that information to work out what it’s actually giving us.
So I set the mod to 200W went into the diagnostics menu and had the longest drag I could.
Using my 0.19ohm build the mod says it’s kicking out 5.5V (5.567V) and 29.3A. Using Ohms law we can work that out to be only 161.15W (and a resistance of 0.18771ohm to be more specific).
OK so it didn’t hit 200W with my 0.19ohm dual coil build, but that was pretty ambitious and let’s face it 161.15W on a 0.19ohm build is impressive and plentiful.
FYI: my [Samsung 30Q] batteries throughout this test were between 90-80% according to the mod – for anyone reading this…
Dovpo Riva DNA250C – Menus, Navigation & Display
I like the set up of this mod, it’s fancy but in a new way, they seem to have put information before a fancy screen.
The screen does look great, but in a more formal way… In other words it looks good without the graphics that look like something out of a car or spaceship.
It’s easy to navigate and I liked it using. A downside for me was the fire button doesn’t act as a select button, which took some getting used to but at the same time, you can fire the mod while in the menus so that’s ‘six of one half a dozen of the other‘.
A little hack for you: on the home display the mod only goes up and down in increments of 0.5w.
However if you go into the atomiser settings you can go up and down in increments of 0.1w.
If you use the atomiser settings to change the wattage to 20.1w, the home settings will still adjust In 0.5w increments from 20.1 (for example 19.6w, 20.1w, 20.6w, 21.1w).
Battery Life & Charging
I don’t really want to go into the battery life too much because it is massively dependent on what batteries and power you are using.
However I will say, what I’m sure many people will be saying. I think the Riva mod would have benefited more with 21700 battery compatibility.
On the upside it does have 2A balanced charging. This basically means the mod recognizes each battery and looks after them when charging, rather looking after one more than the other.
Dovpo Riva DNA250C Durability
So we’ve discussed 2 potential weak spots in the design (the connection plate fixing and the battery door).
Although I can’t really comment on the connection plate, I am convinced the battery door is the most durable battery door, that I’ve ever seen of this style.
All in all, the mod is excellently built and I feel quite confident that it should be durable enough.
I do still feel reserved about the connection plate though…
Pros
- Looks and Feels Great
- Fast Firing
- Really Well built – Especially the battery door
- Very Information Friendly
Cons
- Only 18650 (not 21700)
- Potential 510 plate vulnerability
Final Review Verdict
It is a beautiful mod. It has a super elegant mature design. It is the business suit of mod and I can’t fault it.
In danger of repeating myself the one thing about the device that causes long term concern for me is the 510 connector, I’m not saying it’s not secure but at the same time I don’t dare say it is.
Mean while although the battery door utilizes my least favourite design, it is certainly the best of its kind. If I ever had confidence in a mod that had this style door, it would be this one. I really love how it doesn’t just fling open too.
The mod is fast firing and capable of packing a punch far more than many of us would like.
In regards to usability, Dovpo has diverted from the norm, there’s little bits about the mods operation that we don’t usually see. For example the mod doesn’t fully turn off, it logs relevant key presses on the screen and puts information at the forefront with it’s diagnostics menu.
It doesn’t look totally unique to some other devices on the market, but with it’s shape, zinc alloy and real leather, it certainly feels pretty special…
It’s a shame it’s not 21700 though!
