RBA Reviews

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA

Looking for a new single coil RTA? Hellvape might have just the thing with their new Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA

by Antony Lord
Sep 27, 2023

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Hellvape seems to be one of the few manufacturers still regularly releasing rebuildable atomisers and most of them are pretty decent with a wallet friendly price tag, so I was more than happy when they asked me to look at their latest single coil RTA, the Dead Rabbit Solo.

Specifications

33.4mm tall (excluding drip tip and 510 connector)
24mm diameter (at the base)
47.3 grams
Postless single coil build deck
Top airflow
2ml straight glass / 4ml bubble glass
810 drip tip

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA boxed

The Dead Rabbit Solo RTA is available in six colours including the dreaded rainbow, fortunately I was sent the stainless steel and gunmetal versions for testing, with gold, blue, and matte black rounding out the line up. The pack-ins are very light this time with a brief user manual, bubble glass, and finally a baggie which contains spare O-rings, screws, and the infamous Chinese barbie sized blue screwdriver. Whilst I rarely use the packed in coils because they’re invariably Nichrome (which I can’t use), the agleted cotton strips are always handy so I found this a tad disappointing, but you can’t complain too much as Hellvape products are usually aimed more towards the budget end of the rebuildable market.

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA first look

Out of the box the Dead Rabbit Solo comes with a 2ml straight glass fitted, luckily there is a much more practical 4ml bubble glass included even with the TPD edition, and it’s very straightforward to swap the glass over. At just 33.4 mm tall, excluding the drip tip and 510 connector, and with a 24mm diameter at the base, it’s a rather stubby tank and should fit on most modern mods.

You can clearly see design cues being brought over from the earlier Dead Rabbit 3 (dual coil) and Dead Rabbit M (mesh) RTAs which gives the trio a rather uniform appearance on a shelf. There are protruding areas around the base and the top airflow ring with rather chunky cut outs affording a good amount of grip in the areas where you need them the most. I’m a big fan of stubby tanks and gunmetal single battery 21700 mods, so the gunmetal version I was sent makes a great match up for my preferred setups and design wise it was an instant hit for me.

Once again Hellvape have opted for a top down airflow system with hard stops at the fully open and closed positions. The two large cyclops inlets allow a surprising amount of air into this tiny tank, but even at the fully open position, there is still a tiny bit of restriction, and I was pleased to find that the airflow remained smooth and quiet across its full range.

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA fill ports

With the Dead Rabbit Solo, Hellvape has opted to use a slide to fill method this time around which reveals a reasonably sized fill port when opened along with a pressure relief port which is now located in the area where the drip tip sits. This has been the bane of my life with this little atomiser but not for the reasons you might expect…

There’s enough tension on the slide mechanism so I haven’t found this opening up in pockets which is the usual worry with these designs, and the top cap can be unscrewed to allow for deep cleaning and removing the airflow ring, when necessary, both of which are good. The problems come when it comes time to fill up this little beast as it constantly wants to back up making filling a chore. After a bit of investigation, I realized that part of the upper airflow system actually encroaches into this area effectively making the fill port much smaller than it actually appears and that’s where the issue arises from. After a few days of trial and error, I eventually discovered that the best way to consistently fill up without all the mess (and swearing) was to remove the drip tip and make sure that the e-liquid bottle was held bolt upright relative to the fill port especially with 50 and 100ml shortfills.

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA drip tip

Hellvape seems to have developed something of a fetish for stupidly short drip tips at the moment, and the one included here is verging on the ridiculous protruding just 3.8mm above the raised 810 area. I personally found this far too stubby for my liking, and that raised platform means that not all of your 810 drip tips are going to work well here. Fortunately I found the perfect solution when I remembered that the recently released Dead Rabbit Pro RDA also came with a stupidly short drip tip, but this left 4.7mm exposed above the 810 platform and that turned out to be just about right for me and much more comfortable to use!

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA airflow

With the base removed you can see the top down airflow is directed to the sides of the coil with a honeycomb pattern and also directed under the coil via two larger ports below this. You can see that you have a relatively large postless build deck as well which is raised slightly off the base of the tank.

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA build and wicking

With no coil cutting guide included this time around and no guidance given in the manual, I had to eyeball the correct leg length to use here. I figured about 5mm should be about right but ended up having to lift the legs slightly when screwing them into place so I’d say that 5.5mm would probably be better. At least with the four posts this will work with coils wound in either direction, and coil installation was a breeze.

For wicking I cut in line with the outer edge of the base and only fluffed the cotton very lightly as those wicking ports turned out to be quite large, they’re also quite deep as well and the cotton barely managed to reach the two kidney shaped ports at the base, so I was worried that this first attempt was going to flood the deck quite badly. This, as it happened, turned out to be the perfect amount of cotton, this has wicked for days with bubbles forming after every draw, and it’s never gurgled or leaked once, and this was with a 3mm inner diameter coil as well where I’d normally go for a 2.5mm coil.

The flavour and vapour production here is top notch as well and now that I’ve got used to that finicky fill port, this has become something of a firm favourite which I’m sure will remain in regular rotation for quite a while.

Pros

Easy to use build deck
Great flavour
Smooth airflow
Wicks very well

Cons

The fill port takes some getting used to
Stupidly short drip tip included in the box

Conclusion

Another great rebuildable offering from Hellvape, I certainly can’t complain about the great flavour or smooth airflow on offer from the Dead Rabbit Solo RTA. This looks like it will be around the £30 mark when it hits the U.K. so If you can overlook the slightly fiddly filling, then this might be worth a look if you’re into single coil rebuildables.

Many thanks to Hellvape for sending the Dead Rabbit Solo RTA out for review.

Hellvape Dead Rabbit Solo RTA bubbling

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.