The Vandy Vape Pyro V3 RDTA sits in a tank category that has somewhat dropped off the radar a bit recently, but they used to be quite a popular style of vape.
With an RDTA, you essentially have the deck of an RDA, and instead of placing your wicks on the deck, they drop down into a tank to keep your coils fed. The idea being that you get the flavour of a dripper, with the capacity of a tank. Sounds good!
What Can We Expect From The Pyro V3 RDTA by Vandy Vape?
As the name implies, this is the third iteration of the Pyro RDTA. The original Pyro came out in 2017, with the second a year later in 2018. I’m afraid I’ve had no hands on experience with either of those, so this will be a stand alone review rather than looking at how the line has evolved.
Vandy Vape have a long history of making rebuildables, they were founded in 2016 and have earned plenty of love for their Berserker line. They’re also happy to try new things like their dual vertical Mutant RDA.
The Pyro V3 can be either dual coiled or run with a single coil. It’s also squonkable, so you can keep your tank topped up when you’re on the go.
Have Vandy Vape dome enough to bring about an RDTA renaissance? Let’s dive in to find out!
As usual this was sent over free of charge for the purposes of this review (thank you). I shall report back honestly on what I find.
In the Box
- Pyro V3 RDTA
- Spare Parts Bag
- Squonk Pin
- Spare Glass
- Coil Trimming Tool
- 2x Fused Clapton Coils 0.33Ω
- User Manual
Specs
- Dimensions – 37mm x 24mm
- Weight – 147g
- Capacity – 2ml
- Ariflow – Side and Bottom
- Postless Build Deck
- Single or Dual Coil
- Squonkable RDTA
Design and Build Quality
Build quality is top notch, all the o-rings have just the right amount of tolerance, and the RDTA fits together perfectly. I received the black Pyro, which has a lovely matte finish. It’s also available in Silver, Blue, Gunmetal and Rainbow.
Drip Tip
The drip tip in the package is resin and the colour you get will depend on the colourway of the RDTA. I found the drip tip to be comfortable. It’s a slightly taller drip tip than the stubbies that seem popular at the moment.
If you don’t like it though, the internal single o-ring will happily fit any of your 810 Goon style drip tips.
Top Cap
The Vandy Vape Pyro 3 has quite a complex top cap, as it has a lot of work to do!
You have two posts that lock the internal section of the top cap in place, and also block off the fill ports. Then the whole of the outer section can be twisted round to adjust your airflow.
So this is a two piece design but they do not come apart. On the inner section, the cut outs for the side airflow also angle the air down towards your coils, rather than being straight on from the side.
Airflow
Speaking of the airflow, some of you may be thinking that the external airflow, in a ‘T’ shaped honeycomb, looks familiar to another RDA on the market. This is surface level only, as the implementation is quite different.
The top horizontal rows of holes are side airflow, angled down by the inner chamber.
But the vertical two rows slot into the deck, and feed airflow into two channels that sends it straight up and under your coil. It has a honeycomb design where the air comes up, and is angled on either end to push air directly towards your coils.
Build Deck
This is a really easy deck to build on, it’s a postless deck and the screws are the combination flat head/Phillips type.
You mount your coils so that they are cradled by the bottom honeycomb airflow, and you can put either two coils in here, or one really large one.
Base/Tank
The capacity of the tank will vary a little depending on how much wick you put on. It’s listed as 2ml. It’s a fairly short tank, but don’t feel like you need to drop your wicks all the way to bottom.
This will stop it wicking as effectively and reduce the amount of eliquid your tank holds.
The action of tilting the tank when you go to vape will keep your wicks fed with e-liquid with only a couple of tufts sticking into the tank.
How Does The Vandy Vape Pyro V3 RDTA Perform?
Building on the Pyro V3 RDTA
- Trim you coil legs to 6mm, I’m using the coily tool here, but Vandy Vape do provide you a little tool in the box
- Unscrew the deck screws and drop your coils in
- Gently holding your coils in place, tighten up the screws
- Use a jig to align your coils and pull them into place
- Make sure you coils are even and not touching the airflow that comes up at the sides
- Pulse the coils and strum them with ceramic tweezers to remove any hot spots until they’re glowing evenly
- Feed a decent length of wick through each coil
- Cut your wick quite long to start to with. Remember you can always cut off more, but you can’t add any
- Rake out your wicks quite heavily, when they go into the tank, you don’t want to block of the wick channels as air needs to get in to replace the eliquid your drawing up through the cotton. Then trim this excess off.
- Tuck down your cotton into one side
- Check the length, it doesn’t matter too much how far you drop your wicks down, but you don’t want them touching the base of the tank
- Tuck in the other side and make sure they’re even, you can move them back and forth a bit here to level it out
- Drip some e liquid onto the top of your coils and wick to saturate them
- Fill the tank with the fill hole on the deck
- Then put your top cap on and you’re ready to go!
How Does the Pyro V3 Vape?
One thing to be aware of with any RDTA is that they don’t like being sideways. Although with the top cap on you will be blocking off the two fill ports, you will still have some e-liquid escaping if you leave it tipped on its side for too long.
Not a criticism, just the nature of the beast!
For these tests I’ve tried a variety of different e-liquids, but I vaped mostly Aruba by Forbidden Island at 70/30 and Psycho Yeti by Psycho eLiquids at 80/20.
I have used it both with and without the squonk pin installed, but I found that I got through the 2ml tank capacity really quickly, resulting in a lot of filling up!
Flavour
Wow… the flavour I’ve gotten from this RDTA is happily keeping pace with my RDA’s.
Pump up the wattage and you can get a lovely crackly vape. I don’t have a bad word to say about the flavour, good separation of the tastes means you get a really accurate vape and can taste all the elements of whatever e-liquid you are vaping on.
The combination of the double top cap giving some reduction, and the well directed airflow, gives you flavour for days!
Airflow
One of the problems that RDTA’s had in the past was that they were just too airy. They let in lots of air and didn’t concentrate it very well, so your flavour became quite washed out.
I’m really pleased to see that Vandy Vape has obviously addressed this with the Pyro. Fully open and this has just the slightest of restriction.
I found that the flavour improved a little more if you closed it off a bit further, but I never felt I needed to close it off more than 1 or 2 vertical lines of holes.
One thing to be aware of, is that if you do close it off a lot, you are going to have lopsided airflow. That is, where the side airflow is hitting only one side of your coils.
It’s not a major issue though, and there’s little they could do to avoid it with the airflow design they have.
Cloud production is also really impressive, even with just a couple of fused claptons, I was quickly clouding out my room. And it tasted so good I kept going!
Squonking
Although you can use this as a straight RDTA, you’ll find that due to the 2ml tank limit, you will have to refill pretty often. Squonking fixes that problem as it allows you to top up the tank when it’s running empty, without the risk of over squonking like you might have on an RDA.
Installing the included squonk pin is easy. Using the Allen key that comes in the box, you unscrew the 510 and replace it with the squonk pin. Be aware that as you do this you’ll also be dissembling the tank, as the squonk pin is what is holding the deck onto the tank below it.
The squonking action is well designed, and your e liquid enters at the top of the tank section, giving immediate saturation to the cotton if you have vaped it dry.
Pros
- Flavour for days
- Easy to build
- Versatile with Single or Dual builds and a squonk option
- Great build quality
Cons
- Leaks if left on it’s side (not really a con, as true of all RDTA’s)
Final Review Verdict
You can probably tell that I have been really impressed with the Vandy Vape Pyro V3 RDTA. Flavour is my top criteria when I’m reviewing a rebuildable, and this one has definitely ticked the right boxes.
It’s also really easy to build on, it seems considerably more forgiving of your wicking not being perfect than older RDTA’s I’ve used. I’d be quite happy to recommend this to anyone who has even a modicum of building experience.
The other thing that I look at with any vape I review, is how happy I would be if I didn’t have anything else and I was left with just this to vape.
On top of a single battery squonker, the Pyro V3 does an absolutely cracking job of being an all day vape. The tank in action feels similar to using an RDA with a really large juice well. The advantage being that you can see the liquid level easily.
As it starts to drop a bit, just squonk some more eliquid in, and you’re good to go again!
All in all I have been really impressed with what Vandy Vape have done here. It definitely shows that there’s still some life in older concepts like RDTA’s, and I’ll be curious to see if we see any more of them popping up!
Did you buy the Vandy Vape Pyro V3? Let us know what you thought in the comments below!
