Vandy Vape & Tony B Pulse Dual Review: A Compact & Affordable Performer

Vandy Vape and Tony B are at it again, and the latest product to come out of their collaboration is a dual-18650 Pulse squonk kit. The Pulse Dual is the smallest massively produced dual-battery squonk mod on the market and is rated for 220 watts. The kit is also premiering the Pulse V2, a 24 mm RDA that can be used for single and dual coil builds due to its innovative insert design.

This kit was sent to me free of charge by MyVpro, where it’s currently available at a discounted price.

Price: $78.99 (at MyVpro)
Colors: Black & black, black & red, black & blue, black & green

My first thought when I opened the box was that this is a mod designed very similarly to the Wismec Reuleaux RX series. In fact, Tony B got the RX series designer JayBo’s blessings for the design of the mod, which is probably one of the best and most practical designs for a dual-bat squonker. Many Reuleaux owners were transforming their RXs to squonkers, by modifying the third battery slot to a squonk bottle chamber. Fun fact: Wismec released their own dual-battery squonk mod – the Reuleaux DF – around a couple of months before the release of the Pulse Dual.

The body of the Pulse Dual mod is black, while the battery door and drip tip come in different colors. MyVpro sent me doors and drip tips in all four available color options, which was a very nice surprise. It is a heavy-ish and sturdy mod, with no play or rattle anywhere. The bottom latch is also very stable. I even had to use a bit of force to open it, which is a good thing; many bottom battery latches are wonky and fall apart pretty easily.

The Pulse V2 RDA is rather tall and hefty. It is a two-part design, with the top part functioning as the airflow control. Its paint job feels solid and overall machining is excellent. But the most interesting part of the RDA is the three ring inserts it comes with: a honeycomb and a slot insert for dual coils, and a honeycomb single coil insert with longer airflow channels. Unfortunately, the single coil insert broke on me (and kinda easily to be honest), but I managed to test it extensively before it happened – more on that in the RDA section of the review.

As I said before, the form factor of the Pulse Dual mod is excellent. It fits and feels perfect in the hand, and has some weight to it without being too heavy. Its screen is black and white, but the font is large, bright and easy to read. The door that secures the bottle is easy to remove but stays firmly in place due to the six magnets.

The Pulse Dual mod comes with many features and options, but it is easy to use once you get the hang of it:

• Pressing the up and down buttons gets you to the menu.
• The screwdriver icon lets you activate or deactivate the modes you are going to scroll between (TC/Voltage mode/Bypass – power mod is on by default) and allows you to change the screen timeout time (ST), adjust the brightness of the screen (BRI), choose if the mod will fire when locked (FIR), reset the puff counter (PRST), and reset to factory settings (RST).
• A long press of the fire button exits the settings submenu.
• The DIY menu allows you to set the power and temperature curves.
• The VER icon checks for the firmware version.
• The ID icon shows the code of the device.
• With TC mode on, you can also use the F-C icon to change between Fahrenheit and Celsius, and also set the resistance of the coils using the Ω-set icon.
• With power mode on, three clicks of the power button scrolls between the activated modes, and four clicks lets you change the wattage when in TC mode.
• Up + fire locks the buttons.

The screen interface features dual battery monitoring, the chosen mode, wattage, volts, Ohms, number of puffs, and puff duration.

The squonk bottle that comes with it is probably the only weak point of the mod: it is proprietary and only fits 7 mL of juice. It is not a perfect cylindrical shape — it has a lump in the back, which actually gives it an extra mL or so. I wish it came with a larger capacity, especially when using the mod with a dual coil build, but I can see why they went with that bottle size: anything bigger would result on the mod losing its practical form factor.

The Pulse V2 is a 24 mm diameter RDA with x-shaped posts, similar to the Pulse X but in a horizontal orientation. Building on it is relatively easy, similar to building on a postless deck. Just give an approximate measure to your coil legs length, place them in the post holes, and cut the extra length from the bottom. With the way the posts are placed at an angle, cutting the bottom part of the legs is very easy. Still, I’d love a coil measuring tool, as that would make the whole process even easier. I haven’t checked, but maybe the retail edition comes with something like that.

The airflow rings are made out of PEI and lock in place on the bottom part of the RDA. Both the dual-coil inserts have plenty of airflow, with the honeycomb providing a very slight restriction. They are both super smooth; I can’t actually pick a favorite out of the two. I enjoyed the honeycomb airflow with the included coils but really loved the slot airflow with more complex coils. Bear in mind that the coils will need to be placed close to each other due to the inserts protruding inside the deck. I advise going for 3 mm ID coils, maybe 3.5 mm at most. Anything over that and you run the risk of touching the plastic inserts and potentially melting them.

As I mentioned before, the single coil insert broke when I was trying to remove it from the deck. It broke relatively easy and fell apart in four pieces, which left me wondering why Vandy Vape didn’t make the inserts out of stainless steel or at least a more durable material. I had already used it for a good three days before that happened and I am happy to say that this is one of the super rare cases where an RDA can be equally good in single and dual-coil configuration. Unfortunately, I am kinda hesitant to keep raving about this RDA, especially when I keep looking at these four plastic insert pieces on the corner of my building mat.

The mod fires fast and feels very accurate from a wattage perspective. I also tested temperature control performance with a couple of 24-gauge stainless steel coils. I got solid dry hit protection, although the vape felt a tiny bit underpowered with the SS mode in its default TCR setting (1100). I tried to play around with the TCR but ended up going back to the default. I’d say it’s close enough, but not perfect temperature control. But with many squonk mods going the power mode only route lately, and others offering dodgy TC, the Pulse Dual is an alright choice for vapers who also want to occasionally use temperature control.

I built the Pulse V2 RDA using the included nichrome triple fused Clapton coils, as well as some handmade nichrome aliens in single and dual coil configurations. Regardless of the build, I got amazing flavor out of this atomizer. The angled inserts channel the air directly on the center of the coils and reduce the chamber significantly, which does wonders from a flavor perspective. Keep in mind that the bottom part of the RDA, which also houses the inserts, is secured in place by a pair of notches. This means that the outside airflow slots are not adjustable, and partially closing the airflow will have the air hitting the coils at an off-centered angle. Closing only a small part of the airflow is fine, although I personally liked the airflow fully open anyway.

Due to the way the inserts are angled, you will have to try real hard to make the Pulse V2 leak. But if you remove the top cap to drip, you will probably have some condensation accumulating between the two parts, which may result in a couple of drops making their appearance. Not a big deal though, and easily avoidable.

Squonking channels e-liquid directly to the bottom of the coils, which is not as cool as the top squonking design of the Pulse X, but does the job better than most bottom-fed RDAs that fill the bottom of the deck. And while the position of the coils – in the middle of the deck and relatively close to the drip tip – may cause a bit of spitback when using it in dripping mode, I had to really oversquonk to get spitback in squonking mode.

The Pulse Dual is probably the best dual-battery squonk kit for the money right now. It is compact, offers excellent performance, and has solid build quality. On top of that, it comes with a very versatile RDA that cleverly adopts a very smart insert design, managing to perform at a very high level for both single and dual coil builds. In fact, the Pulse V2 offers the best performance I’ve ever had for a single coil build out of a dual-coil-first RDA.

Right now, the Desire Rage mod comes with a similar price tag to the Pulse Dual kit. With these two mods performing at a comparable level, getting an excellent RDA included in the kit adds so much value — it seems like a no-brainer to me. I only wish Vandy Vape makes inserts for the Pulse V2 out of other materials, or at least makes the plastic inserts available as a separate purchase, as I had bad luck with my single coil insert. Other than that, the kit gets two thumbs up from me.