Pod System Reviews

OhmAio by Ohm Vape

Fascinated by the DotAio or Billet Box but don’t fancy the high price tag? What if I said there there was a more affordable alternative, let me introduce you to the OhmAio from Ohm Vape

by Antony Lord
Mar 23, 2020

Share on:

OhmAio by Ohm Vape

Fascinated by the DotAio or Billet Box but don’t fancy the high price tag? What if I said there there was a more affordable alternative! Let me introduce you to the OhmAio from Ohm Vape.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape unboxing

The kit comes in an outer sleeve with a line drawing of the kit on the front and a list of contents on the rear. The main box has the ohm vape logo on the top and sides along with a sticker showing your chosen colour. I selected a red kit, but there are plenty of other colours to choose from, including versions with a deeply engraved pattern on the chassis for a few dollars more. Lifting the lid reveals the OhmAio, two included stock coils and a PCTG tank with airflow ring. The included tank comes in the same colour as the OhmAio. Fortunately I ordered an rba kit which came with a clear tank at the same time so that is what I’ve used in the photos. Finally, under this layer you will find a user manual, usb-c charge cable, spare o-rings and a shortfill bottle tool.

Specifications

Size: 80x45.5x22.6mm
Weight: 242 grams
Material: Aluminum Alloy
Color: Gold,Red,Green,Blue,Black,Pink,Purple
Battery: single 18650
Wattage: 4W-45W
Tank: 2ml PCTG

The OhmAio looks virtually identical to the DotAio externally, right down to the included gold drip tip, save from a few minor differences. The eliquid viewing window has been moved from the side panel to the front of the chassis and has been given a distinctive lightning bolt shape. The power selection is now controlled by a dial similar to that found on PWM style mods and has also been placed on the front of the chassis rather than being concealed under the battery door. The USB-C charge port is on the bottom.

On first removing the device from the box, it feels surprisingly heavy for its size due to the aluminum alloy construction weighing in at 242 grams vs the 91 grams for the DotAio. It’s still very pocketable though, thanks to the small size. The two side panels have a beveled edge exposing the bare metal beneath which frames the outline of the mod in a very aesthetically pleasing manner, and both panels are removable. The one with the large ohm vape logo (which looks uncomfortably close to the hexohm logo) reveals the recess for the tank, whilst the other side hides the 18650 battery compartment. Each panel is held in place by three fairly strong magnets and, whilst there’s absolutely no movement on the panel concealing the tank, the battery door panel has a small amount of play but nothing too dramatic.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape body

Looking into the battery compartment, the upper negative contact is spring loaded and inserting and removing batteries with the included battery ribbon is a doddle. Full marks to ohm vape for clearly marking the battery orientation in white inside the chassis as well, the battery door also has a channel cut into it to accommodate your battery whilst allowing the overall thickness of the chassis to remain as thin as possible. In use, I found the OhmAio low battery cutoff was around 3.3volts. Charging via the USB-c port only reached 0.54 amps though so internal charging is slow, but it did charge the battery back up to the full 4.2volts.

Turning the OhmAio over and lifting the other panel reveals the tank recess. This is identical to the DotAio to the point where I believe the tanks/coils are actually interchangeable so for all you DotAio fans out there, this might be a valuable resource for spare tanks etc. as they are a fraction of the price especially if you order from China. The gold plated contact pin even looks and operates in the same way as the DotAio and has a nice firm spring action which means the tank is held securely in place and there’s an o-ring up top to provide a seal against the top of the tank. Even so, I did experience a fair bit of condensation behind the pod in use which is common with these type of devices and is something you should definitely keep an eye on. The door on this side has a large slot cut into it to bring airflow from the bottom of the device to your coil. In practice though, I found that the large lightning shaped eliquid viewing window contributed around half of the available air.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape pod

The OhmAio uses a standard 510 drip tip, and comes supplied with a gold plated drip tip identical to the one found on the DotAio. I quickly decided to ditch this as, although it was comfortable, I hate metal drip tips and I also noticed the plating had already started flaking on the inside which is something I didn’t want to be potentially inhaling! The drip tip catch cup seems a little shallow so not all tips will sit flush and it seems to also need fairly chunky o-rings which meant I found a lot of drip tips were also too loose so I eventually had to fit different o-rings on my drip tip for it to seat properly (the replacement o-rings were from a used uwell nunchaku coil in case anyone finds that information useful). I think the black delrin tip I’ve chosen better matches the rest of the chassis with the silver lines in its deeply cut aluminum frame and the black potentiometer dial.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape battery

Pop in an 18650 battery and the LED ring will flash red/blue/green. This also lights up when you press to vape and the colour will show approximate battery percentage (green > 61%, blue 21 to 60%, red < 20%) or any other error codes like an atomizer short (codes can be found in the manual). There’s also the customary five clicks on/off function. I found the button placement to be perfect for thumb firing in either hand, and moving the eliquid viewing window from the side panel on the DotAio to the front of the chassis on the OhmAio means that you needn’t worry about blocking off half the airflow with your fingers, genius!

Output power is adjusted with the potentiometer dial on the front of the OhmAio and is determined by the coil resistance. Luckily there’s a handy table showing how the resistance changes the available power in the clearly written manual pictured below.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape settings

Two stock coils are included in the kit, a 0.3Ω 316L mesh coil for direct lung vaping and a 1.5Ω ceramic coil for mouth to lung vaping and, as noted earlier, these are identical to the DotAio coils so you should also be able to use those in here as well if you are unable to source any OhmAio coils easily. I haven’t tried this myself, but have seen this done on a couple of YouTube videos. This, of course, also means you should be able to use Aspire Nautilus coils, however Ohm Vape haven’t placed the required adapter in the packaging which is a big shame, however if this is a feature you want to use, I believe the replacement DotAio tanks come with an adapter so all is not lost. Coils are screwed into the supplied airflow ring. Keep an eye on the small silicone seal in the bottom of the afc when changing coils as there’s no spare in the box, and the whole coil assembly is then simply press fitted into the tank.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape coils

Filling is easy with the generous sized port, but I did find that it was generally easier to remove the tank to do this as the fill bung can be quite fiddly to remove and with repeated use I soon discovered that it’s fairly fragile with pieces regularly coming off the skirt making it increasingly difficult to remove. It also increases the chance that the bung will simply fall inside the tank (mine has done this several times already). Only one spare is included in the box, and no spare came with the rba kit. More worryingly, the only way to get a replacement seems to be to buy a replacement tank which I suspect also doesn’t include any extra bungs. Given that my first bung is virtually useless after about a week and a half of use, Ohm vape seriously needs to either make the skirt on the bungs larger and more robust to aid in removing the bung whilst reducing the chance of damage, or make packs of bungs available as a spares package.

The 0.3Ω mesh coil gave decent but not outstanding flavour reproduction with a fairly restricted direct lung hit and was best with the power set to “IV”. Vaping with the door off soon revealed that much of the restriction actually comes from the chassis, making the airflow ring slightly redundant. There doesn’t appear to be any dry burn protection present either even though it’s mentioned in the manual (it looks rather like ohm vape have copied the dotmod manual and edited it to suit their product).

The 1.5Ω coil has a much more restricted draw and, in this case, I did find closing the afc down and using a mtl style drip tip helpful. Flavour was good with the power set to IV or V (12 to 15 watts) although not as good as a 0.6Ω smok Nord coil, but most mtl vapers would say that’s not strictly mtl in any case. This isn’t my preferred mode of vaping, but of course with an 18650 battery you’re going to get multiple days use out of this.

I also ordered the optional RBA kit with the OhmAio. This is again almost identical to the DotAio rba and operates in the same way. It comes in a plastic jewel case with the tank/rba clearly visible (sorry for the scratches on the front of the case, those appear to have happened in transit even though 3fvape taped this up in bubble wrap during shipping). Under this you’ll find a small bag containing two small Allen keys, spare grub screws and o-rings, a 510 adapter and a pre made coil.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape RBA

The airflow control screws off the bottom allowing you to fit the supplied 510 adapter which aids in coil installation and later allows you to dry burn and clean your coils. This is a postless design deck and you’ll need those Allen keys as the grub screws are tiny. They’re also a little soft and I’ve managed to strip the head on one already. The position of the posts means that you will need to wind your coils anti clockwise (towards yourself) for proper orientation of your coil legs, and I found that the optimal length to cut the legs was 3.5mm on a coily style tool.

OhmAio by Ohm Vape coil builds

For my first build I used a 2.5mm ID round wire 0.38 ss316l coil which came out to 0.78Ω. I found this performed best at the “IV” power setting with 2 or 3 holes open on the airflow. You can tighten it right down but it didn’t give a great mtl experience or flavour due to the relatively large airflow slot under the coil resulting in a loss of pressure.

Onto the second build, and this time I tried a micro fused Clapton. (316L 0.25mmx2 / 0.14mm wrap) which came out to 0.6Ω. This gave a more restricted direct lung experience, flavour was a bit better but the vape was a little cool.

Referring back to the manual I realised at this point that the OhmAio sets its output power based on coil resistance meaning both the above builds would fall into the “0.7Ω” range (0.49 to 0.99Ω) with a resulting power output from 7 to 20 watts. If I wanted something more rowdy, I’d need to go below 0.49Ω to hit the 15 to 42 watt power output. (see picture above)

The deck is pretty small so I didn’t think I’d manage one of my 0.37Ω fused Clapton builds in here so I settled on a simple 0.4Ω clapton… much better, but now it again becomes much more obvious that the airflow is restricted more by the chassis than the airflow ring and condensation also becomes more of a problem. Having said that, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed this and have used it as my main device for a week solid in this configuration.

Wicking was simple with all the builds, don’t pack it with too much cotton and keep it clear of the treads and it wicks like a charm.

Whilst the rba head has performed well as a restricted direct lung vape, I believe mouth to lung users will find this a disappointing experience. The atmizoo DotShell would provide much more flexibility in either DL or MTL modes, but who’s going to buy a rba system that’s nearly three times the cost of the main device. There’s always the inevitable clones of course, and I’ll be getting one of those to try at the first opportunity (pictures of an ulton clone have already surfaced at the time of writing)

Pros

Feels well built
Removable 18650 battery
Cross compatible with DotAio coils/tanks
Good restricted direct lung performance from the rba
A fraction of the price of the DotAio

Cons

Quite heavy
No Aspire Nautilus coil adapter included
Fill bungs are fragile and obtaining spares might be difficult
Rba section is poor at mtl

Conclusion

I purchased my OhmAio from 3fvape for $24.99 for the kit and the optional rba kit was $10.99, and with free shipping on orders over $15 this meant a final price of just $35.98 or just a fraction under £29 depending on the exchange rate at the time. If you’re nervous about ordering from abroad, then it’s also available from ecigOne here in the U.K. for just £27.99 for the kit and £11.99 for the rba.

When you consider the official DotAio rba kit alone is around the £35 mark, this represents excellent value for money so if you’ve been wondering what all the fuss around the DotAio or billet boxes is about, this is a great alternative if you want to dip your toes into those waters without breaking the bank. Highly recommended.

Antony Lord

Reviewer at POTV

View Articles

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.