Innokin MVP5 Ajax Kit Review – The Swiss Army of Vape Mods

After reviewing the very basic (but flavourful!) Innokin GoMax Tube, I was a little daunted to be presented with the Innokin MVP5 Ajax kit, it’s a bruiser.

It’s packed full of features and probably more suited to a Bear Grylls type.

What Can We Expect From The MVP5 and Ajax kit by Innokin?

Innokin are one of the best known companies in vaping, and their MVP range of mods are one of the oldest around, I know at least a couple of vapers who credit it with getting them off the smokes.

The MVP5 mod comes with a whole host of added extras, this is not just a vape mod, this is for someone that like to go mountaineering, or orienteering, or other things end in “-eering”.

It’s got a compass, thermometer, barometer and altimeter! However Innokin have earned a reputation for producing quality kit over the years, so it would be foolish to write this off as just a gimmick, overloaded with bells and whistles.

I tend to view the outdoors as something that happens to other people, so I’m not going to spend too much time talking about the sensors. There’s a lot going on here even so, and whilst the other tricks this has are interesting, this is a vaping site!

So buckle up, clip on your carabiners, and let’s dive into the review.

This was sent over free of charge for the purposes of this review (thank you). As always, my thoughts are my own, and I am not influenced by freebies.

In The Box

• MPV5 Mod
• Ajax Tank
• 0.16Ω Coil (preinstalled)
• 0.35Ω Coil
• Spare Glass Tube
• Spare O-Ring Set
• Lanyard Charging Cable
• Quick Start Guide
• Warning Booklet

Specs

• Dimensions – 141mm x 53mm x 27mm
• Weight – 306g
• Power Output – 6-120W
• Battery Capacity – 5200mAh
• Capacity – 2ml (TPD) / 5ml Rest of the world
• Torch – Max, Mid, Min, SOS, Beacon, Strobe
• Sensors: Compass, Barometer, Altimeter, Thermometer
• USB Charge Out

Design and Build Quality

The kit is available in 5 different colour ways, I received the Sand colour which has gold and purple resin accents. It’s also available in Grey, Black, White and Forest with different coloured resin flashes and metals.

Body

It’s a big rectangular mod, similar in appearance to a dual battery box mod.

The top plate is made of a highly polished metal, mine is finished in a gold colour. The top plate isn’t quite as thick as the rest of the mod though, restricting the size of tank you can fit without overhang.

510 Connection / Torch

Here you have your 510 connector on one side, that will fit up to a 25mm atomiser, on the other side you have your LED torch, more about this later!

Finally next to the torch, you have your lanyard hole.

Moving down the body the two big sides have “Innokin” moulded into them at the top.

Directly below this you have a coloured flash of resin that is matched to the resin on the tank, in an upside down triangle bordered by the same shiny metal as the top. The bulk of the larger sides is simple with vertical ribbing that makes it easier to hold.

On the thinner edges of the mod, one side houses nothing apart from the USB-C connector under a rubber plug (yay for USB C!). Whilst the other has your controls and screen.

You have an octagonal fire button at the top, above a nice full colour screen. The screen looks a lot bigger than it actually is, with the black surround measuring 48mm diagonally. When switched on, the panel is actually only 28mm diagonally.

Below the screen are your adjustments buttons, up, down and a central confirmation button. All of the buttons are finished the same as the top and bottom plates, so there’s nice consistency, even if I found the gold colourway a little bit “bling”.

Base of the mod and you have another rubber seal covering your USB A charge out port, and a nice clicky button to switch on/off the torch.

The Ajax Tank

The tank I was sent over was the TPD variant with a 2ml e-liquid capacity, in the rest of the world there is a bubble glass with a 5ml capacity.

Starting at the top of the tank the drip tip is a very thin walled, wide bore drip tip. The colour is matched to the resin flashes on the sides of the mod and the AFC ring at the bottom of the tank.

Despite being a Direct to Lung (DTL) tank, the drip tip is actually a 510 connection with a wide bore at the top. It’s held in place by double o-rings, but I found in use these o-rings were nowhere near tight enough, and the drip tip would often pull out on one side when I was vaping.

• Read more about DTL and MTL vaping here.

Slide to Fill

The top cap is a slide-to-refill system, just look for the arrow on the top next to the drip tip, and push it across. There’s no funky locking mechanism, and whilst it may be possible to have this slide open accidentally if it’s in your pocket, I found that the amount of pressure required to open it kept it closed on it’s own just fine.

The fill hole is a nice big kidney shaped hole, with plenty of space for larger bottles. It has a silicon edge to it, but unlike some other tanks it doesn’t form a seal to cover the hole.

Working our way down you have the glass tube. This has a lip at the top and the bottom for the o-rings to sit in, and it means that there’s always a really great seal.

However due to the TPD regulations, they had to make the tank quite small and they achieved this by having a very thick inner wall. I measured the glass to be 3mm thick after the top and bottom lips.

Finally the base of the tank has the single hole cyclops-style airflow control ring in colour matched resin. This locks at fully open and closed, and you unscrew the this section to remove the base and access your coil.

How To Fill The Innokin Ajax Tank

1. Locate the arrow on the top cap
2. Slide the top across to expose your fill hole
3. Close the tank and leave to sit for 5 minutes to fully saturate

How To Change The Innokin Ajax Coil

1. Unscrew the tank from the mod
2. Unscrew the resin AFC/Base
3. Pull the coil out of the tank
4. Push new coil into tank
5. Reassemble the base onto the tank

Lanyard (A trick up its sleeve)

I’m not usually a big fan of lanyards, usually consigning them to my spares box, but I’m glad I held onto this one! It’s a small wrist loop style of lanyard with a nice fabric finish.

“Go Farther” is printed on one side, with “Innokin” on the other. As well as having a nice quick release mechanism for if you don’t want it permanently attached to your mod, it has another trick up its sleeve.

If you squeeze the two buttons on either side of the main plastic clip, the lanyard unclips and reveals that it is actually a 30cm charge cable.

USB A on one side, and USB C on the other. So not only can you charge the mod with this, but if you have a USB C powered device, you can also put it into the USB A charge port on the bottom, and power that with the generous 5200mAh battery.

Now that’s a clever trick!

Screen and Controls

You’ve got a lovely bright screen, that as I noted earlier is a little bit smaller than it first appears. When you put a new tank on, you’ll be asked if it’s the same or different to what was on before.

You have the options of:

• Same
• Wattage
• Temp Control

Pressing the central button three times will bring you into the menu, pressing the fire button three times will power on and off the mod.

Wattage

With Wattage your options are:

• Normal
• Boost (starts at +20% wattage and decreases over 2 seconds to set wattage)
• Soft (starts at -20% wattage and increases over 2 seconds to set wattage)
• Ajax
• Z-Coil
• Curve (4 selections for setting your preferred wattage in 0.5 second increments over 6 seconds)

With Ajax or Z-Coil, the mod will detect the resistance of the coil, and set your wattage appropriately for the type of stock coil it is, you just choose the tank. Either Ajax, that it comes in the kit with, or the Zenith / Zlide MTL tanks.

I found while testing this out that it managed fine on the 0.16Ω Coil, setting my wattage to 50W and restricting it to 50-80W, but with the 0.35Ω (that is rated at 35-50W) it set 50-80W again.

It’s not a major issue as you can just switch to normal wattage mode, but it’s something that they will hopefully fix in firmware.

One interesting thing that I quite liked about the Innokin MVP5 is that to change your wattage you have to press the adjustment button once, and then press it again to actually change anything.

This certainly prevents any unintended changes, but it might confuse you when you first get it.

Wattage runs from 6-120W in 0.5W increments, and scrolls plenty fast, pausing at the min/max, and then doing a round robin if you press it again.

Temp Control

Going into Temp Control mode your options are:

• SS316L
• Titanium
• Ni200
• TCR
• C/F (to change to your preferred format)

Setting any of the temp control types will make the mod pause for a second whilst it shows “Calibrating”.

Presumably this is locking in the resistance, but I don’t know whether it’s smart enough to adjust this based on ambient temperature (it does have a thermometer after all…).

Aside from some quick tests to confirm that TC works as expected (if a little conservative on when it cuts off) I haven’t explored this any further, but if you would like me to do some tests involving changing the ambient temperature and using TC, then let me know in the comments and I will revisit it! (Possibly involving a freezer and/or a space heater)

Torch

I didn’t think I needed a torch on a mod, but I have to say this has become one of my favourite features as the nights draw in.

Having a dedicated power button to save you going into the menus is especially welcome.

The torch has various different settings:

• Max
• Mid
• Min
• SOS
• Beacon
• Strobe

It is REALLY bright and I don’t recommend looking straight at it (I was seeing spots for ages).

The screen helpfully shows how much battery life you have remaining, and on a full charge it was reporting almost 10 hours on maximum brightness. Sensibly the torch switches off when you press the fire button.

Innokin MVP5 Sensors

If you find yourself in the wilderness, and you haven’t packed all your gear, don’t worry, you have your Swiss Army vape in the Innokin MVP5!

On the main mode selection, you can go down and select “Sensors”.

You get a little animation telling you to wave your mod in a figure 8 fashion to calibrate the compass, once done you get your readouts. These are:

• Compass
• Temperature
• Elevation
• Barometric Pressure

I’m afraid I don’t have a barometer (or compass, altimeter, thermometer) to hand to test these functions. But based on my incredibly unscientific testing comparing the results to various apps, weather reports and so on I’m pretty happy that these seem to report accurately.

If you want me to dive any further in to any of these, then let me know in the comments and I’ll get back to you.

How Does the Innokin MVP5 Ajax Kit Perform?

So after all of the extras that this comes with, can it actually vape?

I’ve given this kit a really thorough testing using a range of e-liquids (Hypo by HKD, Churronimo by FJ’s E-Liquid, and Aruba by Forbidden Island).

0.16Ω Coil – Airflow and Cloud Production

You get a huge range of airflow, from really open, to a VERY restrictive DTL hit.

Unfortunately with the very thin walled 510 drip tip and such a wide bore, this is a noisy tank!

Cloud production was impressive for a stock coil, not as big as some multi core mesh tanks that I’ve seen, but still enough that I had to open a window even running it at 60W (it’s rated 50-80W).

0.16Ω Coil – Flavour

Absolutely no complaints about the flavour here, pretty much spot on with both my favoured fruit/coolada mixes, and with creamier desert style vapes.

I’d say that I found my sweet spot at about 60-65W, running it up 80W was ok, but with such a thin drip tip there’s not much insulation so it can heat up a bit quickly, especially if you chain vape on it.

0.35Ω Coil – Airflow and Cloud Production

There’s less airflow on the 0.35Ω Coil, and less cloud production as well, you can still manage a pretty loose DTL vape, but as you start to close the AFC the restriction kicks in a lot quicker due to the thinner bore of the coil.

Cloud production was adequate, but not anything I’d write home about. If anything this felt like I was vaping a much older stock coil tank.

0.35Ω Coil – Flavour

Oh dear, the 0.35Ω isn’t getting much love I’m afraid. I tried to coax as much as I could out of it, varying the airflow, varying the power, but it just can’t hold a candle to the other coil it comes with.

Flavour is pretty muted, and even some e-liquids with really strong flavours felt like they were underpowered with this coil.

It may well have been a dud, especially compared to the lovely vape I got from the other coil, so unless you really need to eke out the most battery from a DTL tank, I’d stick with the 0.16Ω.

Battery / Power Bank

There’s a huge battery in this thing, and even vaping at 80W you’ll manage a couple of days of vaping quite happily. If you prefer the mouth to lung side of things and vape at lower wattages, you can get away with not having to recharge for a week or more!

Special mention goes to the information you get on the screen, it will show you the amps it’s currently charging at, as well as the time it will take to reach 90% capacity, useful indeed.

It will also charge at up to 2 amps, so decently speedy, though you will still be measuring in hours if you drain it flat.

Not only can you charge up the mod, you can also charge another device from the mod using it as a power bank.

The USB A port on the bottom allows you to plug a USB cable and juice up your phone, or whatever else you need. The screen will once again show the charging rate in amps, as well as the time you will be able to continue to charge and the mAh that it has charged in that session.

You could even charge another vape off it, vape inception!

Pros

MVP5 Mod

• Enormous Battery
• Loads of options
• Useful torch!
• Charge another device by using as a power bank

Ajax Tank

• Great Flavour (0.16Ω coil)
• Easy Refilling

Cons

MVP5 Mod

• Could fit a larger tank if the top plate was extended to match the mod
• Fussy styling on the buttons (subjective)

Ajax Tank

• Disappointing drip tip
• Noisy, turbulent airflow
• Subpar flavour (0.35Ω coil)

Final Review Verdict

Phew! That was a long review, but there’s a lot that goes into the Innokin MVP5 kit.

There’s various options that I didn’t even touch on, the ability to change the colour and brightness of the screen, set different time outs for it, limit the length of a continuous fire, and even add a passcode!

This is a fully featured kit, with a decent tank on top. Flavour from the 0.16Ω coil was great, and it’s super easy to get on with.

Unfortunately in TPD countries you feel a little crippled by a 2ml capacity on a DTL tank (especially if you’re going off the grid), but I certainly can’t knock any points off for something beyond Innokin’s control.

Although I wasn’t keen on the colour way I received (gold and purple is a bit much!) the more subdued colours feel like they could be sitting in an outdoors shop.

Innokin doesn’t market this as a ruggedised kit, but I’ve found that the finish holds up to being chucked around a little, and the seals on the various ports certainly help make me feel secure about using this out and about.

As a kit, I’m not sure I’d go with the Ajax tank, but the mod is one of the best inbuilt battery mods I’ve had the pleasure to use.

It will run for days, fires quickly, and has some genuinely useful tricks like the torch or being able to use it as a power bank.

Did you or would you buy the Innokin MVP5 Ajax kit? If you have used it or have any questions please leave them in the comments below!