Lost Vape E Plus RBA

Antony follow up on his Lost Vape Thelema Elite 40 kit review with his thoughts on the E Plus RBA kit

by Antony Lord
Sep 10, 2024

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Our friends over at Sourcemore were kind enough to send the E-Plus RBA over for review with the Thelema Elite 40 kit but I thought this deserved its own review in part because Lost Vape are releasing several other pod kits based around this platform.

Specifications

3ml capacity (2ml for TPD regions)
4 airflow pins included
Postless build deck
Build adapter - build directly on device

The E-Plus RBA is supplied in a snazzy box with the rba and build adapter contained in their own sealed containers along with four airflow pins, a coiling rod, tools, spare O-rings and a brief user guide.

The only thing missing here are some coils and cotton, a couple of basic micro coils would have really rounded this kit out nicely for anyone who was considering this as their first foray into rebuildables.

Physically this is exactly the same size as the stock coil E-Plus pods. I was sent the international version for review so I have access to the full 3ml capacity and I’m not exactly sure how the 2ml capacity is achieved for TPD regions like the U.K.

The E-Plus RBA is a three part system and the build deck is removed from the pod by pushing the two tabs at the bottom in and then pulling the build deck away from the pod section, this can be a bit fiddly to remove but does hold the deck firmly in place once seated. The chimney section can also be removed for deep cleaning and checking your build for shorts before you put everything back together.

Pro Tip:

The tank section is exactly the same size as the stock coil pods. I was able to remove the coil assembly from one of the used E-Plus pods by carefully snipping around one of the airflow inlets at the base with wire cutters (being careful not to damage the tank section) and I was able to then prize the stock coil assembly free. I now have a spare tank section for my E-Plus RBA.

Four airflow pins are included in the kit ranging from a very tight 1.0mm mouth to lung to a 2.2mm restricted direct lung (1.0, 1.5, 2.0 and 2.2 mm). Out of the box the largest 2.2mm pin is fitted, the pins aren’t marked in any way, so you’ll need to line them up and eyeball it to select the one you want. The base of the airflow pin is quite recessed into the bottom of the build deck so you’ll need to use the supplied tool for removal and to tighten the pin back in place, keep a thumb or finger on the positive post whilst you’re doing this as the pin also holds that in place. I swapped out the default 2.2 mm pin for the 1.5 mm pin as that’s my preference for a loose mouth to lung vape.

The build deck is fairly small as you might imagine and features a simple postless deck design. To insert a coil simply loosen the two screws at the sides to reveal two teeny little coil clamping areas. Sadly no guidance is given on a recommended coil leg length, so I started with a simple round wire build with the legs cut at 5mm…. This worked but looked way too high.

Snip: 4mm maybe?… nope still too high.

Snip: 3mm? Yes that seems about right so that’s what I’m going with!

Lost Vape has even included the world's smallest coiling rod in the box which I then used to straighten the coil out.

You can now fit the supplied build deck adapter to your E-Plus device and use this to work out any hotspots on your coil before wicking. I’d take the opportunity here to test fit the chimney section and check for any shorts and adjust your coil if needed.

With a suitable amount of cotton pulled through the coil, I then fit the chimney section over the cotton and snipped away the excess much like you would do on a Boro bridge.

I could have left the wicking at that point, but I decided to go a little more aggressive, thinning the wick out and giving it a further trim. With the wick saturated and the chimney section fitted, my cotton now just barely covered the wicking ports and at this point I could fit the tank section ready to use the RBA.

With everything set up, the first thing I discovered was that the auto draw system on the Thelema Elite 40 simply didn’t work with the E-Plus RBA. There’s more play here compared to the stock coil pods, probably due to the lack of any magnets at the base of the RBA, and I suspect that there’s not as tight a seal resulting in a drop in pressure, luckily there’s a power button so I had to fall back on that!

This produced decent but not mind blowing flavour, but this was more down to the Thelema Elite 40’s “smart” wattage system limiting me to just 17 watts on a 0.8ohm build, I felt like an extra watt or two would have pushed this over the edge and the flavour did improve a little as the cotton bedded in. I felt like the airflow was more restricted by the airflow pin in the RBA than the Thelema airflow itself as adjusting that didn’t really seem to make much if any difference. On the plus side, this was wicking like a champ and there was no leaking despite my over aggressive trimming earlier.

With this in mind, I moved onto my second build with a micro fused clapton coil, I cut the legs at the same 3mm and followed all the same steps from above including the aggressive wicking technique as that seemed to be working well.

This build came out to 0.6ohms and unlocked the power on the Thelema Elite 40 which now deemed that I could have a whole 21 watts to play with and a suggested “smart” wattage of 16 watts. This still felt a bit weedy, but bumping the wattage up to 18.5 watts proved to be the sweet spot and the flavour was now excellent, I even had a little more headroom in reserve if I needed it.

For my next experiment, I kept the same 0.6ohm micro fused clapton in place and swapped the 1.5 mm air pin back over to the 2.2 mm one to see how this would fare as a restricted direct lung setup. The auto draw system on the Thelema Elite 40 now showed some signs of life but was still a bit intermittent so it’s back to the power button again for reliable operation. Unfortunately, even at the maximum 21 watts that the device was willing to give me, this was a slightly disappointing vape again.

Things improved if I chain vaped slightly and got the coil warmed up a bit first so I’m pretty sure putting a slightly lower ohm build in here, unlocking a bit more power from the Thelema Elite 40, would remedy this as the flavour is clearly there but I’m being hampered by the not so “smart” wattage feature on the device. I was pretty happy with the 1.5mm airflow with this build though so I decided to leave it there for now and revert back to that.

Conclusion

From my experimentation here, you can get a really good mouth to lung or restricted direct lung vape from this versatile little RBA kit BUT you will need to experiment with your coils…building a little lower than you normally would to unlock a little more power out of the E-Plus based kits seems to be the trick here. The E-Plus RBA comes as an optional extra but is relatively inexpensive making it an ideal companion to any of the upcoming Lost Vape kits based around the new E-Plus pod system.

Many thanks to Sourcemore for sending the E-Plus RBA over for review.

Pros

Building and wicking fairly easy
Leak free experience
Spare tank sections can be salvaged from used stock coil pods

Cons

Airflow pins aren’t marked
Can be hampered by the “smart” power settings on the E-Plus kits

Antony Lord

Reviewer at POTV

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I was a twenty a day smoker for 25 years and like most smokers I was always going to quit "next week". Having hit my mid forties and having the usual smokers cough and difficulty with anything more than moderate exercise it was obviously time to give up the cancer sticks. I bought my first e-cigarette in 2013 when they were expensive, difficult to find and quite frankly... crap. I used it for about a week then went back to the roll ups, mark up another failed quit attempt. The fact that I had just changed jobs and was under quite a lot of stress probably didn't help. Move on to 2016 and whilst I was browsing eBay I noticed that one of the suggested items that would occasionally pop up was for a cheap e-cigarette. It looked similar to the one I'd bought 3 years earlier but it was only £5 (about 8 times cheaper than before) so I decided to give it another go on a whim. Once the kit arrived I managed to gradually replace the cigarettes with my new kit over a two month period and got into watching YouTube reviews for newer kit. My cheap and cheerful kit was replaced by a more upmarket affair, and being a noob I made a mistake once it arrived... I put in the supplied direct lung coil, this was of course a complete revelation and I haven't touched a cigarette since. Oh and I no longer spend the first five minutes of every day having a coughing fit either.