Introduction
The ‘Samdwich’ RDA; I have no idea if it was a spelling mistake that wasn’t picked up on until it was too late to change it, or if it’s someone’s idea of spelling sandwich in a ‘cute’ way, either way it could have been called something else…anything else.
However, it’s a single-coil RDA – so I’m automatically interested in it.
Product overview
The Samdwich is a 22mm RDA with top down airflow.
What do you get?
- Samdwich RDA
- 1×26g 2.5mm fused clapton
- 1×24g 2.5mm round wire coil
- Spares + squonk pin
When an RDA comes with 2.5mm coils, I always assume there are potential heat problems – larger coils are either putting something at the risk of melting, or the whole RDA is about to glow white hot. I will of course be putting this to the test.
The one thing that I didn’t like about the package was the drip-tip – I get it, short low-profile drip-tips look cool, but they rarely work well. It’s of little consequence, it’s not as if swapping out one 510 drip-tip for another 510 drip-tip is hard.
First impressions
The Samdwich looks interesting – not an ugly ‘why did they make it look like that?’ interesting, but a genuinely interesting design. It’s a standard slightly compact 22mm RDA until you get to the top cap, which is a rotatable dial with a series of notches and ridges. It does have ‘samdwich’ written down the side of the outer barrel, but thankfully you can hardly see the writing – although this does cause a minor issue that will be covered later on.
Build
The deck is a standard two post design, with slight lips on the posts to make capturing the leads very easy, no pre-cutting of the coil leads is required. The deck does have channels to rest a coiling rod in, however for 2,5mm builds I raised the coil slightly and for 3.0mm I put the rod in the channel – this is down to personal preference and coil choice.
Wicking is as easy as any single-coil RDA – as long as you have enough cotton, it’s going to wick just fine.
How does it perform?
- Build one – 2.5mm 28g fused clapton this build was my attempt at a nice restricted DL build. It performed acceptably at around 30-35w with the airflow closed down a little, however once I opened up the airflow to the more open settings and pushed the power to 45w, it really started to work well, with good vapor production and flavor, however this seemed to be pushing the limits of my cute little build.
- Build two – 3.0mm 28g fused clapton the first build made me realize that this RDA’s potential was more in line with DL than restricted DL, so a bigger coil seemed to make more sense. One the two more open settings at 40-50w this build came into life, with great flavor and vapor production (for a single-coil RDA).
This made me wonder why the RDA came with 2.5mm coils. There’s nothing inside that I could see potentially melting, heat wasn’t an issue, even when chain-vaping a 3.0mm coil at 50w and the airflow was certainly enough for the larger coil.
Airflow
This was the interesting part of the RDA for me, the airflow is a little different.
The RDA barrel has an inner chamber with two holes at the top for top airflow, the top-cap has a hidden section with four different airflow settings. The ridged part of the top-cap has a small image of each airflow setting on each ridge, as you line up the ridge with the ‘samdwich’ logo on the barrel, the corresponding airflow setting lines up inside the barrel.
The settings for each side are: 1×1.8mm, 2×2mm, 4×1.25mm, 1×1.8×3.6mm.
Does it work? Yes it does – however, on my silver RDA the logo and airflow setting is hard to see unless you’re in good light. This is really a minor issue, because you can just hit the RDA and feel if the airflow is set correctly or need adjusting, or you can turn the light on. On other color variations of the RDA it might not be as much of an issue.
But why have such a complex airflow system, when simple side airflow is usually so effective? The next section will explain…
Squonk or drip?
Due to the top airflow design, the samdwich is an almost perfect leak-proof RDA.
There are some really excellent RDAs that I refuse to use in squonk configuration due to them being leak prone and me hating to clean the mess from my mod when I over squonk.
I’m sorry, but I’m a lazy reviewer, I haven’t even tried it as a dripper and I doubt I ever well. This is designed for squonking and does it very well.
Conclusion
Silly name aside, this is a great little RDA. It vapes very well and squonks even better.
Disclaimer
The Samdwich RDA was provided for the purposed of this review by Healthcabin