Innokin Ares Finale RTA Tank - RDL & MTL | Reviews by Z-Lee

[Z-Lee]

innokin Ares Finale rta tank
Designed by Phil Busardo & Dimitri the "VapingGreek"

Hiya peeps! We got another review here for ya. Today we'll be taking a closer look at Innokin's newest RTA, the Ares Finale. This rebuildable looks to be the final chapter of the Ares series based on the name, but with its success over the years, will be sorely missed if that is the case. Like with previous iterations of the Ares series, this RTA champions an MTL draw while also catering to RDL vapers like myself, and does a very fine job at that. We also get to see a bit of innovation in the Finale with the design of their airflow system which is proving to work excellently. From start to finish (excluding the time I took for pictures), I was able to build this simple deck in about 7-8 minutes which would be even faster if you have your own pre-cut cotton. The kit comes with everything you'll need with a few additional tools that will conveniently be going in my build kit. =)

I will include a quick build tutorial with pictures in the next day or two, to show you what has worked well for me. Or, you can access the PDF User Manual with this link that also has its own build tutorial posted in it.

I want to thank @Innokin_timmy/@Innokin_Alisa and the Innokin team for arranging the delivery of the Ares Finales and their continued patience. As always, this review will be conducted in a fair and honest manner.

I will first show a brief overview of what Innokin has up on there site here, and then will dive into the review with my own observations and experiences with the Ares Finale.


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⇒ INNOKIN SITE OVERVIEW ⇐


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Features:

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Package & Specs:

⇒ TEST RESULTS & OBSERVATIONS ⇐​

Intro:

When opening the package, you will immediately be greeted by the faces of Phil Busardo and Dimitri the "Vaping Greek" on the purple accessories box. Underneath this box, you'll find the Ares Finale RTA pre-installed with a clear glass tank and beside it, a spare tinted glass.

At first glance, the Ares Finale package contents seems rather minimalistic. In fact, I was trying to pull the box apart even further, thinking there was a hidden pocket somewhere with the rest of the items. However, upon opening purple accessories box, in it are 3 baggies of accessories with more tools than I've probably seen in any other rebuildable package.

In the middle left two photos, most of this you can expect in a rebuildable kit - organic cotton with spare O-rings and grub screws. There's even a spare MTL drip tip to better contour your lips for a nice MTL seal.

The right photo in the middle is where things get a little nutty, but in a fantastic way. From top down and left to right, there's a double-sided flat-head and phillips driver, Dimi's Tool which allows you to wind spaced coils clockwise and counter-clockwise (shown bottom right) with a 3.0 mm inner-diameter, Phil's Tool which is another coil winding and adjustment tool for both 2.5 and 3.0 mm inner-diameter coils, a withdrawal tool to remove the Capacity Extender for cleaning (bottom left photo), 2x 1.0 ohm pre-wound spaced coils, and a meter of spare coil wire in the same gauge. This is very generous with enough to get you started and more than enough to allow you to rebuild 3-4 times before needing to buy additional wire and cotton. Now this is a starter kit!


Furthermore, Dimi Tool is a very simplistic way to make new coils without having to use a rod winder which is fairly difficult to understand and to get to work properly. The double-sided driver and both tools have made their way into my build kit.



The Ares Finale RTA:

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The Ares Finale RTA disassembles into 7 separate components. The top photo was taken before I realized the Capacity Extender came pre-installed which is the top portion of the bell chamber that's situated in the middle of the photo. The withdrawal tool mentioned in the accessories above removes the screw at the top of the chimney allowing the extender to detach from the bell chamber - I assume this is for cleaning purposes. For a moment, I thought I could remove the Capacity Extender to make a lower profile tank, but there isn't a shorter Connecting Screw provided to keep the tank intact, unfortunately. Maybe this will be something that becomes available in the future for those that like a lower profile tank. With the Capacity Extender, the glass and extender hold 4.5 mL of e-liquid which is huge for an MTL/RDL tank. Also, with a width/diameter of 24.5 mm, the Ares Finale should fit in or on almost any mod or side-by-side.

The tank comes in stainless steel and black, with both kits providing a tinted spare glass. There's knurling around the top cap which is a quarter-turn release, as well as, along the bottom where you see the airflow inlet. Admittedly, the top cap is fairly tight to turn, but I'm going to guess that this should ease up over time with more use. I'd rather the top cap be a bit too tight than too loose, so this isn't a bad thing. The knurling really helps to make this easier. The airflow control ring along the bottom is quite easy to turn, but tight enough that there shouldn't be much concern of it making its own adjustments.

The underside of the bell chamber has a grooved vortex pattern which in theory helps to streamline the airflow. You can tell how solid the machining is here. How effective this is vortex pattern is, I do not know, but I will say that for a single gauge non-clapton coil RTA, this is a banger. Under the top cap is where you can find Phil and Dimitri sitting in a tree which is a cute little easter egg. And there are two refill ports - you can use either to refill, while the other serves as an air exchange to prevent e-liquid backfire which often happens with tanks that do not have this feature. Both of these refill ports are large enough to fit a 100/120 mL Gorilla Bottle nozzle with ease. Very nice and thoughtful work all around, here.​

Innovative 2-Stage Airflow:

The deck itself is a basic vertical two-post platform. The provided flat-head driver can access the grub screws located at the top of each post. The deck measures at 16 mm in width, so there isn't much room to make exotic double-coil builds or use a large complex coil. 3 mm inner-diameter coils is what Innokin has provided, and I can't see there being much room to go bigger than that - maybe a single 3.5 mm ID coil with less than 7 wraps.

A closer look at the first stage of airflow being the airflow control ring shows there being 7 different settings allowing a true MTL draw with a single pinhole (like that of a packed cigarette), and ranging up to a tight RDL (restricted direct lung) draw using an open slot. I am more of an open RDL vaper myself, but find this tight RDL to be just enough to be a solidly enjoyable vape. ​

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The second stage of airflow is where the real innovation comes in, and that's on the deck itself. There have been several different iterations of MTL tanks that have 3-7 airflow inserts that you can change out on the deck, and while this is great for customization, has been noted to be tedious in both reviews and word of mouth. What Phil and Dimitri have devised here, is an adjustable airflow system that's built into the deck, and can be adjusted by simply turning a flanged plate to go from a larger slotted opening to a fairly restricted square. I absolutely love this and can see this being mimicked by other companies in the near future. Innovation is what keeps me interested in vaping, and Innokin continues to press forward with this. Bravo P+D!​

⇒ CONCLUSION ⇐​

The Innokin Ares Finale RTA caters to MTL and tight RDL vapers, and has accomplished that very well with useful innovation. The build deck and airflow customizations have been made simpler than ever, and the kit provides enough for the initial build and 3-4 additional builds which is really impressive to see coming from a single RTA kit. Additionally, there are tools in this kit that will be useful in the future for rookie and veteran rebuilders alike. There's really nothing negative to say about the Ares Finale RTA kit - as of the date of this posting, this is the RTA I would suggest to those looking for a solid MTL to tight RDL rebuildable. This is really as easy as it gets.

An additional pro of going with a higher resistance coil, is battery life and juice conservation. A full 4.5 mL tank got me around 250 puffs using RDL airflow, and you can expect about 1.5 to 2 tanks with a single 21700 before needing to recharge it. 500 puffs on a single battery? G'luck getting that with a low resistance open DL pod or atomizer.

With that being said, there are a few things I want to mention. These are not cons of any sort, but things to be made aware of. Being that this kit and deck are very easy to build with and is a great starting point for rebuilders, for those using a DL (direct lung) or airy RDL vape, you cannot expect the same flavor output. MTL and tight RDL vapes are ideally meant to be used with higher concentrations of nicotine in salt nics and freebase e-liquids for more nic and/or throat-hit. I have been using 70/30 VG/PG 3 mg/ML Vapetasia Killer Fruits Pango and it took 25-30 puffs to break in the provided organic cotton before the flavor started to bloom. I will say that flat out, it does not compete in flavor against some of my more open RDL's, but for a tight RDL single coil rebuildable, the Ares Finale RTA is pretty bomb. This is a solid travel companion enabling me to not cloud my view of the road.

The specs say "5-40W". I would not go over 25W or maybe 30W daringly with a 1.0 ohm coil. If you wind your own coils and drop a few wraps from 7.5 (the included pre-wrapped coils are 7.5 wraps) to get the resistance down to say 0.6 or 0.7 ohms, then maybe try 40W.

Also, there's an O-ring at the top of the tank glass (bottom side of the Capacity Extender) that liked to pop out on me. I am providing this photo as a reference point for the proper orientation of the O-ring when reseating it.

PROS:​

> One of the most well-rounded kits I've ever opened
> Accessories galore - tools, drip tips, tinted glass, backup supplies
> Great range of airflow from true MTL to tight RDL
> Innovative airflow customizations w/out several inserts
> 4.5 mL tank capacity
> Machined well
> Extremely simple and easy build deck
> 24.5 mm diameter should fit almost any side-by-side
> If built properly, no leaking

CONS:
> None

CONSIDERATIONS:​

> Not for airy vapers
> For higher nic concentrations and throat-hit chasers
> Insane battery life and juice conservation

And that's all I got for ya. I'll include a quick build tutorial with pictures below in the coming days that's worked well for me. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to reply to this post while it's still open, or PM me. To see the full display on Innokin's website, you can find that here. Also, an online PDF link to the User Manual can be found here. As of right now, innokinstore.com is still under construction, so I do not have a direct purchase link from Innokin. You can however find the Ares Finale RTA kit at participating vendors.

I appreciate you taking the time to read through this review, and I hoped it helped you in some way.

Thanks again, and happy vape hoarding!
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[Z-Lee]

⇒ QUICK BUILD TUTORIAL ⇐​

Coil Positioning:

Screw the base of the atomizer into a building block or mod. If you use a mod, be sure to set the mod to 10 or so watts, and then turn it off so you don't accidentally burn yourself.

Insert a coil leg into each post. Center the coil directly over the slotted airflow built into the deck just underneath it. Once it's somewhat where you want it, use the flat-head driver to screw in one leg at a time, doing your best to keep the coil situated properly. Once the screws are tightened down, insert the 3.0 mm ID side of Phil's coil rod tool through the coil (some spinning may be needed to get the rod all the way through), and then twist the coil so that it sits horizontally and is positioned vertically as low as you can get it to the slotted airflow vent on the deck as seen above. The tools have been labeled and can be seen below.

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Dry-burn the Coil:

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Screw the deck into a mod if it isn't already. The coil resistance should read around 1.0 ohm (1.04 ohms in this case). If you didn't do it before, set the mod to around 10W and pulse it in 1-2 second increments until the most of the coil is lit up. The outer-most wraps may not entirely light up and that's okay. You don't want the entire coil to be bright orange, being that the coil isn't meant to get that hot. This is just to clean/burn off any oil or debris that may be on the coil.

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Wicking:

The included organic cotton comes in layered sheets. Pull one of the outer-most layers off and discard it - you want the fluffiest portion which is on the inside. Once an outer layer is discarded, peel off a thin layer and roll it loosely into the shape of a cylinder as seen above. To conserve cotton, you don't need to pull this all the way to the center, being that you can cut this in half, and use the other side for your next wick. You can see that I only pulled it through about a quarter of the way, and then cut it down the middle.

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Use Swiss or ceramic tweezers (or a fork if you want) to thin/comb out the ends, making sure the cotton is as fluffy as it can be.

Cut off the wick ends at the outer edge of the atomizer base. This will leave you with more than enough to drape down into the wick reservoirs built into the deck.

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Saturate the wick with e-liquid and then use your tweezers to mold the cotton so that they fit into the wick reservoirs. Be gentle while doing this - you do NOT want to mash or compress the wick being that it would negate the whole reason you fluffed the cotton to begin with. The wick reservoirs can be seen in the top down view of the deck seen in the original review if you're not sure what I'm talking about.

Once the wick is situated nicely, slide the tank glass down onto the atomizer base, and then screw the bell chamber onto the deck. You can see the threads on the build deck above, where the bell chamber screws onto.



Eureka:


And that's it! Set the mod to around 20W and give the organic cotton about 25-30 puffs to get that flavor rolling. Enjoy the lovely MTL or tight RDL vape!

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