So where on the graph of great tanks is the Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA , and does it have the edge over others in the market?
Although probably most well known for their Dead Rabbit series of RTAs and RDAs.
They have also made a rather nice mech mod that I reviewed last year called the Trishul 2.
What Can We Expect From The Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA?
I am so pleased to see such a lot of interesting mouth to lung focused tanks coming out.
When I started getting into vaping, it was all about the big clouds, so it’s nice to see manufacturers experimenting more with mouth to lung.
If you want to read more about the different types of vaping, you can check out our guide on Mouth to Lung vs Direct Lung.
Although Hellvape has traditionally produced sub ohm tanks, it previously brought us the MD MTL RTA that Neil H reviewed
Whilst he wasn’t totally impressed with the flavour, he enjoyed the innovative turntable used.
HellVape was obviously listening as the turntable makes a reappearance in the Vertex! This time you only get one in the package, but there are 3 options on it, rather than the 2 that appeared on the MD MTL RTA.
Incidentally the word Vertex either means the highest point in something, or more accurately the point where two things meet.
So is this meeting of two different airflows producing something that’s top of the pile?
Let’s find out below!
This was sent over free of charge directly from Hellvape (thank you). As usual this in no way impacts my review, and I shall report back honestly with what I find.
Inside The Box
- Vertex MTL RTA
- 3.5ml Glass Tube (not included in TPD version)
- Chamber Extender (not included in TPD version)
- 5x 0.6Ω Kanthal Coils
- 5x 1.0Ω Kanthal Coils
- Cotton Pad
- Accessories Bag
- Manual
Specs
- Dimensions – 22mm x 53mm (2ml) / 58mm (3.5ml)
- Weight – 50g
- Capacity – 2ml or 3.5ml with extended glass and chimney
- Material – Stainless Steel
- Coil – Single Coil
- Airflow – Bottom Airflow with AFC ring (6 options) and turntable under coil (3 options)
Design and Build Quality
The Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA comes in 4 different colours: Matte Black, Stainless Steel (which I received), Gunmetal and Black Gold.
It’s a 22mm RTA so is going to look spot on for smaller mods.
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Drip Tip
The trip tip is a two-piece design.
It has a knurled metal ring at the base, and then has a delrin mouth piece that screws into the top.
It’s plenty comfortable and I like the look of the ring.
I wonder whether the two piece design is going to lead to them bringing out different top sections for it in the future?
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Body
The top section looks like it is split in half and that you would just unscrew upper part for filling.
In fact the line that runs around the outside is just a design choice, and you unscrew this whole top section to access your 2 kidney shaped fill port.
There’s a white silicone seal in the top section.
Unfortunately this has to be my first con in terms of their design. Because you can’t hold onto anything other than the glass tank section, or the bottom AFC ring, you risk unscrewing the deck when you’re trying to fill it.
This is especially true since you need to unscrew the top section, rather than the quarter turn systems that are pretty popular.
Not ideal, but there are ways to mitigate this that I will go over when I speak about building it.
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Interchangeable Chimney/Glass
For non-TPD countries, you have the option of either a 2ml capacity which is how it comes, or a 3.5ml extension.
Often when a tank has an option for an enlarged capacity, you have the option to replace the glass with a “bubble” glass. The downside of this is it increases the diameter of the tank.
The other alternative is to lengthen the tank, and keep the diameter the same.
Hellvape has gone down this second route. To allow you to use a longer glass, it comes with a replacement evaporation chamber and longer chimney section.
To replace this you need to take your tank to pieces and take off the top cap.
You can use the little tool that comes in the packaging, or a wide bladed flat head screwdriver. One thing that’s important to note is that this is reverse threaded, so to unscrew it, you have to turn clockwise.
As a nice touch they put an arrow on the top of this screw, showing you the correct direction to open.
This removes a little retaining screw, and you can then replace the chamber and chimney with the longer one.
Put the screw back, and tighten it up anti-clockwise. You can now use the longer glass section to expand your capacity to 3ml.
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Deck
Looking at your deck it’s a relatively standard 2 post deck, with flat headed grub screws.
The interesting bit is the little Turntable that sits underneath your coil. This is held in place by an o-ring so you can easily remove it.
However it is designed with 3 little notches in the side.
This allows you to use a tool (like the head of a screwdriver, or tweezers) or your fingernail if you’re nimble, to adjust it.
One nice thing is that you can do this when you have a build in place – so a thumbs up for that!
I’m a big proponent of a mouth to lung tank having the ability to adjust your airflow under your coil, as it can provide much better fine tuning to your airflow and flavour.
You have 3 options with this disc:
- 0.8mm Diamater
- 3x 0.8mm
- 1mm x 3.2mm
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA External Airflow Control
As well as the 3 airflow options you have under your deck, there is also an external airflow control.
This is a knurled ring around the base of your tank.
It’s worth pointing out that this is really low on the tank, so if you’re putting this on a mod with a raised lip or cup for your atomiser, it might be a little tough to access.
The external airflow control has 1 single cyclops hole measuring 1.7 x 5.8mm, and you can line this up with one of the 6 different holes on the base:
- 0.8mm
- 1.0mm
- 1.2mm
- 1.4mm
- 1.6mm
- 1.7mm x 5.8mm (not visible in photo, same size as external cyclops hole)
So you have a nice range of options, from what should be a very restrictive mouth to lung, to a restricted direct lung.
How To Build The Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA
- Unscrew your post screws
- Insert your coil, and screw the post screws back down
- Use a coiling rod or screwdriver to centre your coil, make sure it’s not touching the Turntable
- Snip your coil legs close to the posts
- Glow the coil and strum with ceramic tweezers to remove any hot spots and get it glowing evenly
- Feed your cotton through the coil
- Trim your cotton so that it’s long enough to reach into the wick ports, remember you can always shorten it later if you cut it too long
- Rake out your cotton a little using tweezers to remove any lose threads
- Place your cotton tails into the wick ports, you shouldn’t have to force it in, if you do consider thinning it out a little more. The cotton should sit inside the ports but not be reaching all the way to the base
- Prime your coil with e-liquid to get the wick saturated
- Reattach the tank section and check your resistance is still the same. Make sure you tighten the tank and the deck section, to prevent accidentally unscrewing the deck when you fill up later
How To Fill The Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA
- Hold the glass and the base of the tank in one hand and unscrew the top section
- Fill with your preferred liquid through one of the two kidney shaped fill holes
- Reattach the top section, do not over tighten!
Nice and easy, but as I say the first couple of times you do it watch out that you’re not accidentally unscrewing your deck!
How Does the Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Perform?
I’ve been using this for a few weeks now with different builds, both simple round wire, and more complex mouth to lung coils.
For e-liquid I’ve used 50/50 Berry Ice by SVC Labs, as well as Pomegranate Lemonade by Fizzle at 70/30 VG/PG.
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Airflow and Cloud Production
With 3 different airflow options on the deck, and 6 different external airflow holes, you have a choice of 18 different airflow configurations for this tank.
However the maximum airflow is always going to be limited by what is sitting underneath your coil.
Because of this, if you are purely looking at how much air can travel through the tank your options are.
- 0.8mm Turntable
- 3 x 0.8mm Turntable – 1mm External AFC
- 3 x 0.8mm Turntable – 1.2mm External AFC
- 3 x 0.8mm Turntable – 1.4mm External AFC
- 1mm x 3.2mm Turntable – 1.4mm External AFC (almost identical to previous)
- 1mm x 3.2mm Turntable – 1.6mm External AFC
- 1mm x 3.2mm Turntable – 1.7mm x 5.8mm External AFC
So really you have 7 options, or 6 if you ignore the duplicated 1.4mm.
Obviously shaping the air in different way directly under the coil will also have an impact on flavour, which I will discuss in a bit.
If you want to ignore the next section on the various different configurations, the TLDR version is that this manages a really nice and tight MTL vape, up to a pretty restrictive Direct Lung.
Cloud production is something I tend not to go into with mouth to lung tanks, as it’s not what they are aimed at. It is all about the flavour.
Having said that, with the airflow fully open you can produce some nice smaller clouds.
Airflow is very smooth throughout the range, and even when you mismatch the external AFC and the turntable, for example the widest external and smallest turntable, it’s still a very smooth vape with no unpleasant whistling.
0.8mm Turntable
This give you what I would describe as a “proper” mouth to lung.
It’s pretty tight, about as tight as you get on a modern mainstream RTA. On a 1-10 scale where 10 is fully unrestricted and 10 is like sucking a golf ball through a garden hose, this is a 2.
Because the airflow is limited to 0.8mm coming up under your coil, changing the external AFC shouldn’t really make any great difference.
Indeed, opening up to it’s widest it remained more or less the same, with maybe a touch more turbulence.
If you notice that your airflow is changing a lot when you’re using the 0.8mm on the turntable, it is likely because the disc is not seated properly and so air is escaping up the sides of it.
Take the deck out, and make sure the disc is pressed down into place.
3x 0.8mm Turntable
The airflow on this disc is equivalent to a tiny bit less than a 1.4mm single airflow hole. So your different options are really the 1.0, 1.2 and 1.4mm external airflow.
At 1mm external, it’s a little bit looser than using the 0.8mm. Around 2.5 on the 1-10 scale.
1.2 and 1.4 open that up a little further each time, going up by about half a point on our 1-10 scale. So a 3 and a 3.5.
Anything beyond that is pretty much identical.
1mm x 3.2mm Turntable
As the largest airflow option this opens up the use of the larger airflow holes on the external AFC. So the 1.4, 1.6 and 1.7×5.8mm.
The 1.4mm external airflow lets a very similar amount of air through to using the 3×0.8mm Turntable with this.
However it feels like a slightly looser airier vape.
Opening up to the 1.6mm and whilst we are still definitely in the realms of mouth to lung vaping, it’s a far more relaxed mouth to lung. About a 4 on the 1-10 scale.
Moving over to the the final airflow hole seems like a massive leap on paper, 1.7mm x 5.8mm is a lot bigger than any of the other options.
However the amount of air is still being throttled by the 1mm x 3.22mm Turntable.
At it’s widest you can manage a restrictive direct lung inhale. 5.5 on the airflow scale.
Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA Flavour
As I said at the top of the review, the quality of a mouth to lung vape is all about flavour.
Though the Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA uses a really clever way to control the air coming up under the coil, the flavour is not quite as good as I would hope for.
It’s a solid performer definitely, but nothing game changing in the world of mouth to lung tanks.
The best flavour for me, was ironically on the widest airflow setting. Using a coil around 0.6Ω, it gives a really nice restricted lung vape, or loose mouth to lung, in the 20-25W range.
Closing it down to the 0.8mm hole on the turntable and the feel of the mouth to lung draw was impeccable. Exactly the sort of resistance I like, however I just didn’t find that it was able to stack up as much as I wanted in terms of flavour.
Don’t get me wrong, if you go out and get this you’re not going to think it’s bad. It’s just not as good as I would have liked.
As for whether you get worse flavour using the extended option?
I found that it was pretty much identical between short and long modes.
Any problems with the Turntable?
One thing I was worried about was the possibility of the turntable coming out and potentially causing a short. Obviously this would fall into the category of “Not a good thing“.
Happily I’ve had very little problem with the turntable, I’ve shaken it around and banged it about, and it’s never once popped out.
I did have an issue where it wasn’t pushed in all the way, letting air up the outsides, but this was operator error and happened because when I was adjusting it I pulled it up slightly as well.
Anything I would change?
I’ve got one major complaint with the construction of the tank, which is how the top section acts live a sleeve, and gives you nothing to hold onto when you’re unscrewing it except the base.
Because the base is also threaded, there’s always the risk you unscrew that rather than the top section.
This wouldn’t be such a pain, but as some of your airflow control is on the deck, you will occasionally want to take the base out to adjust it. So you can’t get away with just over tightening it.
I’d much prefer if the decoration line on the top section was actually two parts, the top section of the tank below, and a fill cap to unscrew above.
Other than that the only thing I would change personally is to get rid of the largest Turntable hole and have something like a 2 x 0.8mm option.
Honestly that’s just a personal preference and would definitely make it a less flexible tank in exchange for having more fine tuning on the mouth to lung side of things.
Pros
- Easily adjustable under coil airflow
- Flexibility from tight mouth to lung to restricted direct lung
- Easy to build on
Cons
- Top section is all one piece, so you can accidentally unscrew the deck
- Flavour was not as expected
Final Review Verdict
So that was the Hellvape Vertex MTL RTA!
And I know I wrote a lot about the airflow on this tank. But to be honest airflow is one of the most interesting areas where we’re still seeing manufacturers experiment and try new things.
Sometimes they work (so everyone ends up copying them) and sometimes they don’t.
I definitely think that the turntable style is a clever way of solving a perennial problem with mouth to lung tanks. How can you control not just the amount of air coming in, but exactly how it hits your coil.
Unfortunately for me the flavour just didn’t pop as much as I hoped.
This just goes to prove that you can have a tank that seems to tick all the boxes, but until you start testing it you have no idea what it will vape like.
Great review, really helpfull. Thanks.