Mod Reviews

Smok Rigel Kit

Sourcemore sent Antony the latest kit from SMOK, the Rigel kit. Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion which is expected to end its life as a supernova, so is this going to be a shining star or is it all going to end in a big bang?

by Antony Lord
Nov 16, 2020

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Smok Rigel Kit

Our friends over at Sourcemore have sent over the latest kit from SMOK, the Rigel kit. Rigel is a blue supergiant star in the constellation of Orion which is expected to end its life as a supernova, so is this going to be a shining star or is it all going to end in a big bang?

The Rigel kit comes in an outer sleeve with a photo of the kit in your chosen colour on the front, and a list of contents and a scratch ‘n’ sniff code on the sides. Inside the main box, the kit is neatly laid out in a single layer along with a user manual and battery safety cards etc. The kit contains the Rigel mod, the TFV9 tank along with two coils, spare glass and o-rings, and a usb-C cable. The mod and the tank are also available separately as well.

Smok Rigel Kit packaging and contents

Rigel mod Specifications

Size 44 x 28.8 x 88 mm
103.5 grams
Dual 18650 mod
Output 1~230 watts / 1.0~8.2 volts
Resistance range 0.1~2.5 Ohms
Usb-c charging up to 2.0 amps

The Rigel mod is a very compact dual 18650 mod, it’s also fairly light due to its largely plastic construction, but despite this it doesn’t feel cheap like some other plastic mods do. In fact I was pleasantly surprised by the apparent build quality here which is aided by its outer rubber coating which is covered in dimples like a golf ball making it comfortable to hold and giving you a decent amount of grip so there shouldn’t be any worries about this slipping out of your hand.

The battery compartment is revealed by lifting off the back panel which is held in place with two large magnets. This is neatly laid out with spring loaded contacts on the bottom and a large ribbon cable. It’s nice to see a large battery warning label on the inside of the battery cover. The magnets do a good job in holding the panel in place, and the fit is perfect with zero movement in any direction, SMOK really got their tolerances spot on here. There are few holes on the underside of the mod for emergency battery venting as well.

Up top, there’s a spring loaded 510 which is slightly offset to the front of the mod, this is raised ever so slightly from the surface so you shouldn’t have any issues with “atty rash” ripping the rubber coating off the top over time. Whilst 25mm atomizers fit quite comfortably here, and you might get away with 26mm at a push, the off set 510 means that anything larger is going to overhang.

The front panel is neatly laid out with decorative “carbon fibre” stickers framing the 0.96 inch colour screen. The screen is fairly bright and I’ve had no issues reading it outside and, whilst most of the information is clear and easy to see, the battery reading isn’t! There are indicators for both batteries with percentage capacity displayed for each, but this is tiny and I had no hope of seeing this without my glasses and there are no other visual clues for the battery status, a minor niggle but one worth pointing out. All the buttons have a reassuring click with zero button rattle. I’ve found the position of the fire button to be perfect for thumb firing as well.

This is a super simple board in here so your only option besides wattage is choosing the colour theme on the screen, no temperature control or curves in sight here! This is both a blessing and a curse as it makes it simple to use but will probably put some off straight away. Power is adjustable from 1 to 230 watts in 1 watt increments with a decent scroll and a round-robin feature. Performance seems good with a claimed response time of 0.001 seconds, there’s no delay and there are all the modern safety features you would otherwise expect. It’s nice to see that SMOK has moved over to a usb-C charging port here as well and although I’d still recommend using an external charger where possible, it charged the batteries at around 1.4 amps in my tests.

Smok Rigel Kit close up

TFV9 Tank Specifications

28 x 56 mm
62 grams
6.5ml capacity

The TFV9 tank is basically an evolution of the ancient baby beast tank, in fact it’s compatible with V8 baby beast coils. It features the usual swing open top fill system but you now need to lift the upper section of the top fill before you can open it so there is little chance of this coming open in your pocket this time around.

SMOK quotes a 28mm diameter but this is at the included 6.5ml capacity bubble glass, it’s actually closer to 24mm at the base. It’s also only 41mm tall if you exclude the 510 and drip tip.

The airflow has a divider half way across the middle, presumably to try and smooth out the airflow. There is way more air than is actually needed fully open, half way open is far more realistic.

Both the included coils are the new Kanthal 0.15Ohm V9 meshed coil rated for 40 to 90 watts. In use I found this performed best at 60 to 70 watts, but even at this the flavour was merely “OK”, falling way behind many other modern mesh coils.

Smok Rigel Kit TFV9 Tank

Pros

Compact dual 18650 mod
Rigel is lightweight and seems well built
Fast performance

Cons

TFV9 tank is disappointing

Conclusion

I’m quite taken by the Rigel mod especially as I have smaller hands and it’s compact and comfortable in use. I especially like the grippy finish. Some might find the lack of features disappointing, but as most people only use wattage mode anyway this probably won't bother most users. The TFV9 tank is easily the weak link in the kit, I really struggled to get decent flavour from the coils, and it’s starting to feel like SMOK is flogging a dead horse with the TFV/Baby beast series of tanks.

Many thanks to Sourcemore for sending the SMOK Rigel kit out for review, and as always they’ve given me a discount code for you to use: $29.99 SMOK Rigel Kit code: GELK

Smok Rigel Kit colours

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.