RDA Reviews

Hellvape Drop Dead 2

Hellvape are back with another great budget friendly RDA, the Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA

by Antony Lord
Jan 23, 2024

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In the age of the pod mod and disposables, it’s always great to see a new rebuildable come to market and Hellvape are one of the more prolific manufacturers in this dwindling sector. This time around they’ve sent out their latest RDA, the Drop Dead 2, for me to take a look at.

Specifications

24mm diameter
22mm tall (excluding 510 and drip tip)
Postless dual coil build deck
Honeycomb airflow
Squonk pin included

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA unboxing

The Drop Dead 2 RDA is available in a whopping eight colours, and I was sent the stainless steel and matte black variants for testing, the black one ended up being my go to choice here. As always, Hellvape are pretty good with the pack-in items with a spare drip tip, coil cutting guide, spares, and tools (including the all-important squonk pin), plus some pre-made Ni80 coils and cotton.

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA break down

Hellvape has gone with a simple four part design here with the build deck, an outer barrel, airflow adjustment/top cap, and an 810 drip tip. We have a nice postless dual coil build deck and they’ve gone for one of their impossibly short Ag+ drip tips again but this actually works quite well here for a change as I don’t tend to find this getting overly hot in use.

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA build deck and squonk pin

Out of the box you have a solid positive pin fitted but you will find a squonk pin and the necessary Allen key in one of the baggies of extras. As squonking is my preferred method of using an RDA, this was quickly changed over and it literally took seconds, the positive block will obviously come loose whilst you’re doing this but is easy enough to get back in place if needed, and there looks to be a good amount of insulation. The positive pin protrudes quite nicely if you want to go down the mech mod route as well.

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA build

The included coil cutting guide suggested a 5mm leg length, so I simply followed this and the postless deck design made fitting the coils easy. The posts are quite close together and whilst this should be fine for most coils, if you’re into massive ultra-complex coils, you might struggle a little. As usual the included coils, whilst nice, are Ni80 (nichrome) which meant I couldn’t use them due to my nickel sensitivity, so I had to dip into my own box of coils again.

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA wicking

I made good use of the included cotton strips though and found I could easily wick both coils with just the one strip. This has quite a generously sized drip well so apart from cutting the cotton to length, all that was needed then was to tuck the wicks into place. Be careful when squonking though because as an avid over squonker, I quickly found that, yes, you can indeed over squonk this one quite easily!

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA airflow

The main barrel has 36 air holes (18 per side) with a stepped airflow design that’s quite versatile. You can cut the airflow off by rows (top to bottom) or by columns, and there is adjustment on the barrel allowing you to re-centre the airflow on your coils if you choose the latter option.

Cutting the airflow down by rows, I found that three rows was too airy for me although there was still a hint of restriction, whilst having just one row open was way too restrictive so two rows it is then. Closing things down by columns, I got the best vape by shutting this down to half and re-centring the barrel which gave me the optimum experience, so this is where I ended up settling in.

Pros

Easy to use postless deck
versatile airflow

Cons

Posts might be too close together for massive coils
easy to over squonk

Conclusion

Whilst RDAs aren’t my go to vape these days (I much prefer a nice RTA), I can still appreciate a good RDA and Hellvape have produced another nice budget offering for the rebuildable market with the Drop Dead 2 RDA. I’ll happily award this a solid 7/10.

Hellvape Drop Dead 2 RDA 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.