RBA Reviews

Hellvape Dead Rabbit 3 RTA 2024 Edition

Hellvape are flying the flag for rebuildable vape gear with the newly released Dead Rabbit 3 RTA 2024 Edition

by Antony Lord
Jul 19, 2024

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After what seems like an age Hellvape are back with a new rebuildable and this time it’s an addition to the Dead Rabbit RTA lineup. The Dead Rabbit 3 2024 Edition is a revamp of the Dead Rabbit 3 RTA that came out a full two years ago so let’s dive down and see what’s new.

Specifications

25mm dual coil RTA
38.8 mm tall (excluding drip tip & 510)
59 grams
Postless build deck
smoother honeycomb top down airflow
810 drip tip
3.5ml straight glass (2ml for TPD) and 5.5ml bubble glass

The Dead Rabbit 3 2024 edition is available in seven colour options, and Hellvape sent over the Stainless Steel and Gunmetal editions for review, I was particularly happy with the latter as it would match my Gunmetal HELL200 mod that I still have for a nice bit of matchy-matchy. Inside the box, you’ll be presented with the RTA in your chosen colour with a straight glass fitted, a bubble glass and a spare 810 drip tip.

Hellvape are always pretty good with the extras which you’ll find hidden underneath, and this time there’s a brief user guide, coils and cotton, tools, spare O-rings and grub screws, and finally a coil cutting guide.

The 2024 edition of the Dead Rabbit 3 is, at its heart, an exact replication of the 2022 version with one key change; the top airflow has been changed from bold diagonal slots to a more standard honeycomb arrangement. Up top we still have a standard 810 drip tip (with two included in the box) and a nicely protruding 510 pin at the base with good insulation.

In the international versions a 3.5ml straight glass is fitted as standard which now has an optical plating giving it a rather fetching metallic finish, sadly here in TPD-land we’ll be lumbered with a 2ml PCTG tube instead (Boo!). A much more practical 5.5ml bubble glass is also included, and that’s what I ended up using. Be aware that the 2022 edition came in two variants here in the U.K.; one with the bubble glass and one without, and although it looks like the 2024 edition will come with the bubble glass as standard, I’d check before purchasing!

On the exterior the only other change is on the bell cap where we have the familiar Dead Rabbit logo on one side with a 2024 logo on the other. The Dead Rabbit 3 was already a good looking tank, and this carries over those same swooping lines and bold cutouts from its predecessor.

Whilst this is 25mm at the base, this quickly flares out to 26mm just above this and at the top cap, and reaches just shy of 30mm with the bubble glass fitted. As with the 2022 edition, this can look a bit unbalanced on single battery mods and looks much better on a dual battery setup, you’ll probably want that extra power from a dual battery mod as well.

One of the biggest selling points for the 2024 edition is the altered top airflow which now has a honeycomb design. This still leads to a large cyclops slot which is angled down towards the lower airflow making this a (relatively) leak free design. I don’t remember the airflow being all that harsh or loud before, but I can’t seem to lay my hands on my 2022 tank (it seems to have done a disappearing act, possibly given away to a friend at work) and the airflow is nice and smooth here with hard stops at the fully open and closed positions.

With a lot of top down airflow tanks, this can compromise the size of the filling ports, but these are still a decent size so filling the tank isn’t an issue. There’s an easy to use quarter turn top cap system in play here as well.

The top airflow is directed down inside the tank to the build deck which is identical to the 2022 edition with air being directed to the bottom and sides of your coils. This is a modern postless design which is easy to build on as well.

Hellvape includes some nice multi core fused claptons in the box, unfortunately they’re nichrome so I had to swap them out for some kanthal coils as usual. The included coil cutting guide suggested a 5mm leg length and this seemed perfect. You’ll probably want a little more cotton here than you initially think as the large wicking ports at the base are actually quite a way down from the coils, but the Dead Rabbit 3 is fairly forgiving when it comes to wicking so as long as you have enough here to cover those ports, you should be good to go.

With everything setup and ready to go I let this rip at 70 watts and was treated with a decent, flavourful vape which was nicely saturated. This was a little on the cooler side which is where I prefer things these days, but there’s plenty of headroom here if you want to bump that wattage up a bit for a warmer vape as the wicking is nice and consistent.

Conclusion

The Dead Rabbit 3 2024 edition shows that there’s still room in the market for a good RTA, and it’s nice to see Hellvape still catering to this side of the market. Hellvape products are always well built and competitively priced as well so if you’re hankering after something different from a sub-ohm coil tank or fiddly boro bridges which seem to be the main form of hobbyist rebuildables these days, then this is well worth a look. However if you already have the 2022 edition, be aware that not all that much has changed.

Many thanks to Hellvape for sending the Dead Rabbit 3 2024 Edition over for review.

Pros

A rebuildable… in 2024!
Easy to build
Good flavour

Cons

If you already have the 2022 edition, there’s not much new here

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.