RBA Reviews

Augvape Druga RTA

When Augvape asked if we’d be interested in taking a look at their new Druga RTA in a year that has been largely dominated by stock coil pod mods, let’s just say we virtually ripped their hands off!

by Antony Lord
Nov 20, 2020

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Augvape Druga RTA

When Augvape asked if I’d be interested in taking a look at their latest rebuildable tank atomizers (RTA), in a year largely dominated by stock coil pod mods, let’s just say I virtually ripped their hands off! First up is the Augvape Druga RTA as the airflow looked interesting and I’m a bit of a sucker for short single coil RTAs anyway, so let’s dive down and take a closer look at the Augvape Druga RTA.

The Augvape Druga RTA comes in a small cardboard box with a list of contents and a scratch ‘n’ sniff code on the back. Colour is denoted by a small sticker on the front of the box, mine came in the gumetal option but it’s also available in stainless steel and matt black versions. Inside there’s the RTA itself, a bubble glass, bag of spare screws and o-rings, a small information leaflet and warranty card.

Augvape Druga RTA box and contents

Specifications

24mm diameter
42 grams
Low profile (30mm excluding drip tip and 510)
Flavour chasing “3D” airflow
2.4ml straight glass, 3.5ml bubble glass

Augvape Druga RTA details

The Augvape Druga RTA splits down into six parts for cleaning, as shown above, and comes with two glasses included, a straight glass with a 2.4ml capacity and a bubble glass with a 3.5ml capacity. It looks quite smart in either configuration so I decided to use the bubble glass for the increased capacity. I like the simple, clean lines of the Druga RTA, even the large Druga logo engraved in the chimney is nicely understated.

The included stubby drip tip looks great but I found it a little too short for comfort in use. The 810 catch cup has an integrated o-ring but the catch cup is a little shallow which meant not all my 810 drip tips sat flush, I did eventually find one that did and this was a couple of millimetres taller which I found much more to my liking. Your mileage may vary though and you may be happy with the included drip tip.

The top cap has some light knurling for improved grip and needs just a half turn to remove. This reveals two ample sized kidney shaped fill ports and it’s all sealed with a large silicone gasket inside the top cap. Sadly there’s no spare in the box so let’s hope it proves to be durable with long term use.

The inside of the chimney is slightly domed for improved flavour, but I’ll move onto the rest of the build deck shortly.

There are two 10x2mm cyclops airflow slots on the bottom with hard stops at either end of the adjustment, and the airflow ring can be removed for easy cleaning. The AFC ring is quite skinny but I’ve had no difficulty adjusting it on mod, those of you with larger hands might find it a little difficult though especially with the bubble glass installed.

The Druga RTA has “by Vapeshouse and Augvape” along with a serial number engraved on the base so it looks like they’ve teamed up with Mike “Vapeshouse”, a coil builder from Indonesia, for the design (I believe he’s had a hand in the previous Druga products as well). The positive pin does protrude a little from the 510 pin so I would say that this is probably hybrid safe for those of you who like to use mechs.

Augvape Druga RTA build deck

Now onto the interesting bit of the Druga RTA, the build deck. This has what Augvape describes as a “flavour chasing 3D airflow”, each side of the deck has three holes coming up at an angle from the bottom along with a hole coming in from the side on the posts. The deck has cutouts for your leads on either side so it doesn’t matter which way you wrap your coils and there’s a slight lip on the outside of each cutout to try and prevent coils slipping out as well. One area that I was a little concerned about from the initial photos I saw was the wicking ports as these appeared to be fairly small, but in practice they've proved to be more than up to the job.

Photos done, it was time to put my first build in here. It was at this point I realised there should be an o-ring fitted to the bottom deck and that mine was missing! I honestly can’t say at this stage if I lost it taking the deck on and off for the photos or if it had been missing from the get go, which would be a QC boo boo on Augvape’s part. Fortunately there was a spare in the box. The replacement seems to fit quite well and I haven’t experienced it moving since, which would suggest it wasn’t fitted in the first place, but I would suggest keeping a close eye on this as it wouldn’t be the first atomizer I’ve had where this particular o-ring has a tendency to wander or get stuck to the bottom of the glass and subsequently go missing.

Augvape Druga RTA building and wicking

For my first build I went with a simple round wire build as I know a lot of people still prefer these types of builds. Whilst I got the first leg screwed down without any fuss, the second leg kept getting spat out from under the screw, a quick test wiggle on the leads is in order before you clip the leads to ensure everything is captured correctly here. This was a spaced coil with 2.5mm inner diameter which came out to 0.48Ohms. Previous experience with decks that have side airflow coming from the posts has taught me that you really want the bottom of the coil lined up with the bottom of the side airflow for best results, so that is what I did here. Wicking was simple, cut the wicks to the outside edge of the deck, give them a quick comb out and tuck them in the wicking ports.

This gave super flavour at around 30 watts with the airflow about 80% open, and the wicking kept up a treat with plenty of bubbles being produced. I found that if I closed the airflow too much, a bit of a whistle began to develop, however even fully open it’s a slightly restricted direct lung vape. I then tried dropping the coil slightly so the side airflow was now more at the 3 and 9 position on the coil to try and bring the bottom airflow into play, this didn’t seem to make much difference in the vape quality but it didn’t solve the whistle either.

Next up was the big boy build. For this I chose a coilology ss316 alien coil with a 2.5mm inner diameter. Capturing the leads was much easier this time but it was a little tricky cutting the legs tight into the deck to avoid potential shorts. I set off with the coil sat with the side airflow at 6 and 9 on the coil again and wicked as before. This came out to 0.2Ohms and obviously requires more power, 55 to 60 watts seemed optimal, but the flavour was a little off and that whistle was even more prominent. I tried dropping the coil, but this just made matters worse so I gave in and lifted the coil back up so the bottom of the coil was lined up with the bottom of the side airflow… Bingo! The flavour was back and the whistle was dramatically reduced.

Pros

Easy to use build deck
Great flavour
Consistent wicking

Cons

Coil height is critical
Included drip tip a little too short for my liking

Conclusion

The Druga RTA is a superb RTA just so long as you pay attention to the coil height, you want the bottom of the coil lined up with the bottom of the side airflow for best results. Wicking has kept up a charm with the 2.5mm inner diameter coils I’ve used, in fact the deck seems optimised for this, but you should be fine with a 3mm coil although you may need to thin the wicks out a little more. This will definitely be going into my regular rotation and this is a great addition to the Druga lineup, well done Augvape.

Many thanks to Augvape for sending the Augvape Druga RTA out for review.

Augvape Druga RTA handcheck

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.