Why did I buy the Kick?
The Kick is an adjustable wattage, drop in module for many 18650 and 18500 battery equipped personal vaporizers, and provides a userjh adjustable wattage range from 5 watts to 10 watts. The unit is specified as working best with atomises and cartomisers rated between 1.3 to 3.0 ohms. Apparently, you can use higher rated resistance atomisers/cartomisers but the Kick will not regulate well at the highest power levels if resistance is above 3 ohms.
The Evolv site says: Unlike Variable voltage devices, the Kick does not need frequent adjustments. Once you find your preferred Power level, there is no need to constantly adjust it because the Kick will maintain that Power level even if you change attys/cartos and/or resistance.. This is what attracted me to the Kick. I use mechanical non-regulated "3.7v" devices with mainly 1.5ohm 306 and 1.5 or 1.7ohm 901 atomisers. That's what I like nowadays and it means I'm vaping at between 8 and 9 watts normally. I have a huge number of assorted atomisers and cartomisers going back over the last three years or so and the idea of being able to have a device which is set to my preferred power that I don't have to fiddle with, and that I can just screw the things onto and use, was attractive.
Courtesy of ......... I managed to get one (more by luck than persistence) and I have a second Kick on back-order with Cloud 9 so I will have a spare Kick as well.
Why the Precise Plus 18500?
I don't like big devices - I prefer a smaller device and a spare battery to something like an 18650 size device. The Kick will work in 18500 devices in combination with 18350 batteries - I have several 18350 devices - including a Precise Plus 18350 which is excellent - so a Precise Plus 18500 would be a device of known quality that would not involve me in buying batteries of yet another size.
Unpacking and Installing the Kick
The Kick comes in a small plastic box:
Akron - didn't Devo come from Akron?
There are instructions included but there is a very clear pointer to where to find them:
Out of the box, the Kick looks like this:
Note the clear wrapper around the outside - important to protect the Kick...
The base is a simple brass plate with a raised connector:
Here is the important bit of the Kick - the adjuster. The scale on the actual adjuster appears to go from 1 to 3 - the range 5 to 10 is loosely marked (certainly not a precise scale
) on the surrounding circuit board:
Not the cross-headed adjuster has no markings/arrows - to find "minimum" and "maximum" you have to fully turn the adjuster in each direction...
Here is the all-important spring which makes the other half of the Kicks connection by touching the side of the e-cig body. (The Precise Plus doesn't have an adonised internal surface so no problem there):
Another shot showing the branding:
Evolv insist that the Kick be used with IMR batteries - failure to do this will invalidate the warranty. So, I dutifully got three brand new AW IMR 18350s and, having charged them up, dropped one into the P+ 18500 with its +ve terminal upwards. You can see it leaves plenty of room:
I then carefully inserted the Kick with the same orientation. I found it went in pretty easily:
I next used a small flat-head precision screwdriver to set the Kick's adjuster to somewhere to around 8 or so watts (pretty much a guess of course). I was pleased to find my P+ would do up all the way with the Kick in it (some have found it didn't). Here is my P+ 18500 with my P+ 18350 in front of it to show the difference in size:
Unlike my P+ 18350, my P+ 18500 has a polished switch locking piece:
I have a large number of unused standard resistance RN4075 and DSE901 atomisers from the "pre-LR" days, so I got an RN4075 (from TECC I think), and fitted it to the P+ with a 510-901 adapter and and Empire Drip-Shield and Super T whistle tip dip-tip:
Now, these atomisers are over 3ohms (see Evolv's comments about that) so I was ready for problems - the RN4075 worked fine for about 15mins then expired/burnt out. Ah well, I was warned - I turned the Kick down just a bit and tried again - thus time I got 30 minutes! Third time lucky? Yes, I turned the Kick down to a bit less than 8 watts (guess) and this time all was well. The RN4075 gave me a very similar vape to a modern 1.7ohm LR DSE901.
Although the P+18500 is a bit bigger than I prefer, it isn't so much bigger as to be a pain (shown here alongside the P+ 18350 with a DCA306 fitted to it)
With the same setting, I tried the P+ and Kick with my Siam Mods tank using a DC cartomiser:
I must say it was much improved over using the same thing at an unregulated 3.7v.
Conclusion?
Well the Kick appears to do "what it says on the tin". I'm still perfectly happy with my LR 306s and LR901s in my normal "unkicked" mods, but the Kick will allow me to get the same power levels through other atomisers and cartos and will help reduce my ridiculously large stock of atomisers (with luck and willpower - no it's not going to happen is it...). Battery life using an AW IMR 18350 with the Kick isn't great - I've been getting about three hours regular vaping - but I'm using this combo at home, so no big deal...
The Kick is an adjustable wattage, drop in module for many 18650 and 18500 battery equipped personal vaporizers, and provides a userjh adjustable wattage range from 5 watts to 10 watts. The unit is specified as working best with atomises and cartomisers rated between 1.3 to 3.0 ohms. Apparently, you can use higher rated resistance atomisers/cartomisers but the Kick will not regulate well at the highest power levels if resistance is above 3 ohms.
The Evolv site says: Unlike Variable voltage devices, the Kick does not need frequent adjustments. Once you find your preferred Power level, there is no need to constantly adjust it because the Kick will maintain that Power level even if you change attys/cartos and/or resistance.. This is what attracted me to the Kick. I use mechanical non-regulated "3.7v" devices with mainly 1.5ohm 306 and 1.5 or 1.7ohm 901 atomisers. That's what I like nowadays and it means I'm vaping at between 8 and 9 watts normally. I have a huge number of assorted atomisers and cartomisers going back over the last three years or so and the idea of being able to have a device which is set to my preferred power that I don't have to fiddle with, and that I can just screw the things onto and use, was attractive.
Courtesy of ......... I managed to get one (more by luck than persistence) and I have a second Kick on back-order with Cloud 9 so I will have a spare Kick as well.
Why the Precise Plus 18500?
I don't like big devices - I prefer a smaller device and a spare battery to something like an 18650 size device. The Kick will work in 18500 devices in combination with 18350 batteries - I have several 18350 devices - including a Precise Plus 18350 which is excellent - so a Precise Plus 18500 would be a device of known quality that would not involve me in buying batteries of yet another size.
Unpacking and Installing the Kick
The Kick comes in a small plastic box:
Akron - didn't Devo come from Akron?
There are instructions included but there is a very clear pointer to where to find them:
Out of the box, the Kick looks like this:
Note the clear wrapper around the outside - important to protect the Kick...
The base is a simple brass plate with a raised connector:
Here is the important bit of the Kick - the adjuster. The scale on the actual adjuster appears to go from 1 to 3 - the range 5 to 10 is loosely marked (certainly not a precise scale
) on the surrounding circuit board:
Not the cross-headed adjuster has no markings/arrows - to find "minimum" and "maximum" you have to fully turn the adjuster in each direction...
Here is the all-important spring which makes the other half of the Kicks connection by touching the side of the e-cig body. (The Precise Plus doesn't have an adonised internal surface so no problem there):
Another shot showing the branding:
Evolv insist that the Kick be used with IMR batteries - failure to do this will invalidate the warranty. So, I dutifully got three brand new AW IMR 18350s and, having charged them up, dropped one into the P+ 18500 with its +ve terminal upwards. You can see it leaves plenty of room:
I then carefully inserted the Kick with the same orientation. I found it went in pretty easily:
I next used a small flat-head precision screwdriver to set the Kick's adjuster to somewhere to around 8 or so watts (pretty much a guess of course). I was pleased to find my P+ would do up all the way with the Kick in it (some have found it didn't). Here is my P+ 18500 with my P+ 18350 in front of it to show the difference in size:
Unlike my P+ 18350, my P+ 18500 has a polished switch locking piece:
I have a large number of unused standard resistance RN4075 and DSE901 atomisers from the "pre-LR" days, so I got an RN4075 (from TECC I think), and fitted it to the P+ with a 510-901 adapter and and Empire Drip-Shield and Super T whistle tip dip-tip:
Now, these atomisers are over 3ohms (see Evolv's comments about that) so I was ready for problems - the RN4075 worked fine for about 15mins then expired/burnt out. Ah well, I was warned - I turned the Kick down just a bit and tried again - thus time I got 30 minutes! Third time lucky? Yes, I turned the Kick down to a bit less than 8 watts (guess) and this time all was well. The RN4075 gave me a very similar vape to a modern 1.7ohm LR DSE901.
Although the P+18500 is a bit bigger than I prefer, it isn't so much bigger as to be a pain (shown here alongside the P+ 18350 with a DCA306 fitted to it)
With the same setting, I tried the P+ and Kick with my Siam Mods tank using a DC cartomiser:
I must say it was much improved over using the same thing at an unregulated 3.7v.
Conclusion?
Well the Kick appears to do "what it says on the tin". I'm still perfectly happy with my LR 306s and LR901s in my normal "unkicked" mods, but the Kick will allow me to get the same power levels through other atomisers and cartos and will help reduce my ridiculously large stock of atomisers (with luck and willpower - no it's not going to happen is it...). Battery life using an AW IMR 18350 with the Kick isn't great - I've been getting about three hours regular vaping - but I'm using this combo at home, so no big deal...
