VAMO vs ProVari part 2

[robby]

Jan 30, 2013 14:36:56 GMT giles said:

Jan 30, 2013 14:08:14 GMT DiscoDes said:

How are you measuring the voltage?

On a multimeter, with some difficulty. But you know something is wrong when you try and vape it.

But it is difficult to tell on my multimeter. It would be nice to have one which was designed around 0-10 volts, 0-4 ohms instead of around 240v, 20k ohms. Does anyone make such a thing at a cheap price?

What range are you on? Should be 20V DC, but it wont be accurate because of the way the voltage is processed. It is Pulse Width Modulation. Should be a 200 ohm range if it is a digital multimeter, even the cheap ones. Is the spring in the end cap gold plated or just like steel? Where are you connecting your meter to when reading the voltage?

[DiscoDes]

You can't measure the voltage on a multimeter, that's why I asked. It outputs a square wave which when averaged gives you your mean voltage. You really need a oscilloscope to measuer its output. Anything else will give you spurios readings.

FYI output is a 33hz Square wave, Boost is done by a DC-DC converter with pulse width modulation.

[DiscoDes]

Jan 30, 2013 14:06:35 GMT giles said:

I just got my SS V2 Vamo - built like a brick thing incidentally - and the AVG mode is unusable anyway. The voltage generated seems to thrash around - no taste on one draw, burning on the next.

I just realised you should be in RMS mode!

[lobeydosser]

Vamos this year, something similar next year, this ProVari V ? will rage on for years to come.

I thought long and hard before spending so much money on one PV, but in the end, I decided that whatever PVs come on the market over the next 10 years, the ProVari will still be the benchmark that all others are compared against and that my friends is why folks buy it.

It is not the cost nor the prestige, it is simply the reliability.

[DiscoDes]

Jan 30, 2013 17:20:25 GMT lobeydosser said:

It is not the cost nor the prestige, it is simply the reliability.

+1

[yorkcitytom]

I bought a Vamo recently, mainly because dropping the Provari a couple of times (it didn't break of course) made me realise that I really needed a back up device.

Head to head, using a Vivi Nova on both, they both seem to perform in exactly the same way, so value for money wise The Vamo is excellent. Build quality and ridiculous size however means that it will remain in the cupboard marked "break glass in case of emergency".

[giles]

Jan 30, 2013 14:41:03 GMT robby said:

What range are you on? Should be 20V DC, but it wont be accurate because of the way the voltage is processed. It is Pulse Width Modulation. Should be a 200 ohm range if it is a digital multimeter, even the cheap ones. Is the spring in the end cap gold plated or just like steel? Where are you connecting your meter to when reading the voltage?

Forgot about the pulse width modulation

Also forgot to check that it was in RMS when delivered, which is why I mucked about testing. Thought I'd have to send it back

But the point remains about AVG being useless.

[robby]

AVG is useless on the Vamo and just about everything else that uses that chip. It`s an unnecessary complication, they should programme it out really. Once you set it to RMS, it wont come back again though unless you press one of the buttons for about 15 seconds. How you finding it now?

[giles]

My contribtion to the Provari vs Vamo debate: I really don't think you'd want the SS Vamo to be any more sturdy than it already is. It weighs over twice as much as my black LT, which is itself a pretty robust piece of kit. The build quality of the chrome versions may well be poor (I don't have one) but the SS seems to me to be as good as it gets. I don't think you can justify buying a Provari on the grounds that it will last longer.

I bought vw because I change attys a lot and I tend to forget to change the voltage on my LT and tin mod, and it was cheap. I don't care enough about aesthetics to pay anything like the Provari price even if it had vw, and I wouldn't pay £23 for a Provari without vw.

I doubt if Provari will be the standard of the future. If the guys who make it had their act together they'd have vw already. And the design isn't exactly ground-breaking - we are not talking about Swatch or Apple here. It looks to me like they've taken the profit made from their inflated prices and put it in the bank instead of spending it on R&D.

Then again, I said that about Apple in 1997 - remember when they were a computer company?