Introduction
I get sent too many pod systems to review. They are usually good, but it’s hard to find passion for something that is so simple and similar with every other pod system.
Therefore, when I received an actual RTA to review, I smiled a lot. At this point, I don’t even care if it’s good – it’s an RTA and that is enough to make me happy.
Product overview
The Steamcrave Meson RTA is a 25mm, 5/6ml, top-to-side airflow single coil RTA.
What do you get?
- Meson RTA (5ml straight glass fitted)
- 6ml bubble glass
- Spares/tool
No cotton or coils? This doesn’t usually bother me much, but seeing as Steamcrave recommend a 2.5mm coil for the Meson, this seems like an oversight. Sure, I can wrap a 2.5mm coil, but for people who rely on prebuilt coils, this could be an issue.
This is a minor point, but the drip-tip is excellent – too many companies are getting lazy with their drip-tips, it’s nice to see Steamcrave paying some attention to the minor details.
First impressions
The main first impression is that the Meson is not your typical compact single-coil RTA – at 25×43mm (without drip-tip or 510 pin) it looks far more like a dual-coil RTA.
One upside of its size, is it’s capacity – 5ml with straight glass is good, 6ml with bubble glass is good, especially when you consider that the bubble glass is only slightly wider than the straight glass. The only issues with the straight and bubble-glass is that you have to disassemble the tank using a coil to unscrew the chimney to swap between the two.
Design and build quality are both in line with Steamcrave’s larger RTAs – it’s well made, with the Steamcrave logo on the top-cap, knurling on the top and bottom-caps, the deck is accessed by unscrewing the bottom-cap and dropping the deck out.
Overall, it’s a handsome beast – it doesn’t look out of place on single or dual-battery mods.
Deck
The Meson has a postless block deck, with the coils held in place by grub screws.
As previously mentioned, Steamcrave recommend 2.5mm coils for the Meson, which seems a little strange, until you look at the chamber. The chamber is very compact, with the coil sitting inside a slot barely wider than the coil and honeycomb airflow slamming right into the side of the coil.
This type of design is quite common with recent RDAs and usually results in excellent flavor, but it also forces you to be careful with coil size/placement to avoid shorts.
Build
After removing the deck by unscrewing the bottom-cap and putting it a suitable mod, I pre-cut my coil with 4mm legs and secured/aligned the coil. This is all very straightforward, however just to make sure, I test fired the coil with the RTA full assembled to make sure there were no shorts.
The choice between 4 and 5mm for the coil legs is hard, 4mm runs less risk of hitting the chamber, but the longer legs with 5mm makes it easier to align the coil. At the end of the day I didn’t have major issues with either length.
Wicking is very simple, and more forgiving than some other Steamcrave tanks – due to the airflow coming in from the top, I wasn’t concerned with leaks, so I thinned the wicks a lot and placed them in the wicking ports. I kept the wicks reasonably short, as I didn’t want them protruding through the deck and placed (rather than stuffed) them into the wicking ports.
One note: when you reassemble the RTA after building, make sure the bottom-cap is screwed on securely, this is what prevents leaking. Once it is secured I found the Meson to be very leak resistant.
How does it perform?
- 2.5mm Fused Clapton 26g*40g×2 - 0.41ohm - 6 wraps at 30w this build gave nice flavor, but was missing vapor saturation, putting it the power up to 35w helped a little and a final bump up to 40w was all it needed to give full flavor and nice saturation.
At 30-35w it’s reminiscent of something like the Eclipse RTA – great flavor with average vapor production, taking it to 40w takes it to a level that most other restricted single-coil RTAs can’t achieve, the vape is juicy and saturated, the flavor is strong and accurate.
Could it perform better with a 3mm coil? Maybe, but the airflow, chimney and chamber size are far more in line with 2.5mm coils, perhaps a 3mm round wire build would be nice, but I can’t see it outperforming a 2.5mm clapton.
With this build running at 40w, I’ve had zero wicking issues – the wicking keeps up admirably well even when chain-vaping.
Airflow
The Meson is a restricted DL RTA, it most certainly isn’t MTL no matter how much you shut down the airflow, and neither is it as open as something like the Kylin Mini 2.
The actual airflow while not silent, is very quiet for this type of RTA and due to the honeycomb hitting the coils the airflow is very smooth.
Conclusion
Can you tell that I like this RTA a lot? Restricted DL at around 40w is one of my favorite styles of vaping, and the Meson very quickly became my favorite RTA for exactly that.
There’s not much more that I could ask for with the Meson, it’s easy to build, it doesn’t leak, it looks good and the vape quality is class-leading.
Actually, there is one thing I would ask for – include some 2.5mm coils with the Meson.
The only downside that I can think of, is that it doesn’t have much versatility, you’re not going to put a 3.5mm coil in it and vape it at 70w, it’s just not made for that style of vaping.
Overall, and after some careful deliberation – the Meson RTA is the best single-coil RTA that I’ve used to date.
Disclaimer
The Steamcrave Meson RTA was provided for the purposes of this review by Healthcabin
