Sigelei-100W box mod review

[Michael]

"The SIGELEI-100W is an advanced personal vaporizer, a turning point in the development of high performance electronic cigarette."

This is how the instruction manual begins, and I can honestly say that I've never heard a more true statement. The Sigelei-100W is a simple yet powerful box mod that can do absolutely anything you might want. But before getting into the details, let's take a look at unboxing it:



The packaging is well-made and very obvious. I've had several mods that came in boxes that don't even say the manufacturer's name, so it's nice seeing one that tells you exactly what's inside. A minor detail, but worth noting.



This is what it looked like as soon as I opened the package. I was immediately met with a warranty card, which is a nice gesture from the manufacturer.



This is the included paperwork. Warranty card, 510 adjustment instructions, inspection card, and instruction booklet.



The included instruction book is both concise and precise. The instructions are easy to understand and include detailed descriptions of all the Sigelei's features and how to use them. It might seem like nitpicking, but the instruction booklet is actually a big plus for me. When I bought my MVP, it came with one small card that said how to turn it on and nothing more. Most mods and atties don't have any instructions at all, so I love that this one describes everything.

So what else is in the package? I'm glad you asked.



This is more or less what it looks like underneath the paperwork. I say "more or less" because the Sigelei is a brushed silver-colored device. Mine came with two adhesive covers that I put on the sides. The guy at the store where I bought it said that his Sigelei did not come with the covers, so just be aware that yours might not look exactly the same as mine.



The included parts bag came with screws to secure the back onto the device, a screwdriver to adjust the 510 connection, and five (you read right, FIVE) extra 510 connection screws. They seem to be well-machined copper with a slot for flat-headed screwdrivers. 



The Sigelei-100W unboxed. As you can see, it is a simple device, with only three buttons and a small display screen. The big button is the firing button, while the other two increase or decrease the wattage.



As you can see, this device takes two 18650 batteries (not included). If you look closely, you'll notice that there are four magnets to secure the back onto the device. These are alnico magnets, which means they're very strong. There are also holes for the screws which came in the parts bag, but the magnets are strong enough to keep the back from falling off and my sticker cover hides the holes, so I won't be screwing mine on. As I said, they are very strong magnets and I haven't had any problems with the back falling off even when being bounced around in my jacket pocket or tossed onto my bed.



Batteries installed. The batteries are set up in series, meaning they have to be put in upside-down from each other. The battery compartment is clearly marked to show where to put each end of the battery. The compartment is very snug, so it has to use flat-top batteries. I tried my pair of Efest button tops, and they were about 2mm too long to fit. 



The Sigelei displays "0.0 V" and "1.0 ohm" when there is no atty attached. It still displays the correct battery life and wattage, even with no atty attached.



With my Mutation X attached. I measured the atty resistance before putting it on, and my ohm reader says it's .18ohms. The Sigelei only displays one decimal place, which is a little annoying, but it's not a big deal. It automatically calculates the voltage when you put an atty on, and when you raise or lower the wattage, the voltage is adjusted accordingly.

So what are the specs? I'm glad you asked that, too.

The Sigelei-100W, as might be implied by the name, is a variable wattage device that goes up to 100W. It can go all the way down to 10W, though I can't imagine why someone would want to go that low unless they were using a basic disposable clearomizer, but at that point there would be no reason to have this device since an eGo would do just fine. After using my Sigelei for an hour or so, I found that my "sweet spot" is around 60-70W. I tried it at 100W, but I take long hits and it burned the juice so fast that I got dry hits after about 4 second hits even when the cotton was still wet, since it wasn't pulling juice to the coils fast enough. If you take 4 second hits or shorter, you can rock 100W all you want and it should be fine. For me and my 6-8 second hits for big clouds, 60W is just about perfect. 

The voltage is automatically calculated using the wattage and resistance. I tested the calculation using a .40 ohm build on my Big Dripper, since that's a high enough resistance for my ohm reader to be reasonably accurate and the device's rounding up or down wouldn't affect it. I found that the Sigelei was calculating the voltage perfectly from 50W-100W (I didn't bother testing it lower). 

How does it compare to a mechanical mod? Boy, you sure are asking a lot of good questions.

Mechanical mods are unregulated. That means that it fires at around 4.2V (give or take) when the battery is fully charged, but as the charge dwindles, the voltage will drop. The reason for this is that the cell puts out as much power as it can, but as its power diminishes the coils won't pull as much power since it becomes harder to get. Analogy time: imagine eating food. When you have a lot of food in the house, you can eat as much as you want. But when a war strikes and everyone is living off rations, people eat less to make the limited resources go farther. Your battery does the same thing. Less power available means less output.

The Sigelei, however, is regulated by a bunch of chips, resistors, and capacitors. In simple English so people like me can understand, that means it is forced to pull the amount of energy it is set on. If it is set to 80W, it will pull 80W consistently until the batteries are dead. This makes your vape more consistent, and you can blow bigger clouds with batteries that are running low. 

The variable wattage also allows you to customize the flavor. If you like dry hits, crank it up to 100W and let it burn. On the other hand, if you like a smooth flavorful vape and don't care as much about cloud production, turn it down until you find a wattage that works for you. If you're like me, someone who wants great flavor and huge clouds, then you can find your sweet spot somewhere in between. It's completely up to you, with a 90W range (10W-100W) to choose from. The wattage goes up or down in .1W increments from 10W-50W, and 1W increments from 50W-100W. That means that if you like your vape at 69W, you can do that. If you like it at 17.6W, you can do that too. One thing I noticed is that if you hold down the "+" button to quickly raise the wattage from below 50W to above 50W, the wattage will start skipping in 1W increments from wherever it decides to start from. This means that sometimes you might end up at 65.4W instead of the 65.0W that it would normally be.

And now it's time for some cloud pics. In both pictures, I used my Mutation X RDA with a .19ohm dual parallel coil build and the same juice, and I inhaled for 4 seconds each time. The Sigelei was set to 65W and batteries at 49% power for the first pic:



And for this one, I used a fully charged battery in my Caravela mod (my hardest hitting mod) with the same atty and build (Mutation X, .19 ohm dual parallel).



As you can see, the cloud production is very similar. I think my cloud using the Sigelei was a bit denser, while the one from the Caravela was a bit bigger. But keep one thing in mind: the batteries in the Sigelei were at HALF POWER. The regulated mod was able to perform just as well as the unregulated mod, while the batteries were running much lower. If the Caravela had a 50% drained cell in it, there's no way it could have done that well. 

Conclusion: the Sigelei-100W is a spectacular device that can handle anything you put on it. And at only $100, it's the best investment I can recommend. Very well made, easy to use, and it feels really good in my hand too. The only problems I have with it are these: The ohm reader is slightly inaccurate, since it rounds the decimals to the nearest .1, and the 510 connection pin is reverse threaded, which means I always screw it further out when I'm trying to make it deeper, and vice versa. A minor complaint would be that it can't accept button-top batteries, but I needed to buy a new pair anyway. 

And now for a shameless plug: for this review, I used "Black Pearl," a 98%VG juice from Vintage Vapors in Chattanooga, TN. It's apple blended with caramel in the best possible way, and the super high VG makes for awesome clouds and an incredibly smooth vape. The lowest nicotine strength they currently carry is 6mg, though that is about to change as they plan on introducing it in 3mg soon. I just mixed 0mg and 6mg to make 3mg. 

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UPDATE 10.9.14
After having this mod for a couple of days, I've noticed a couple things. First of all, the battery life. It lasts way longer than a single 18650 mechanical mod, as expected, since there are two cells instead of one and it is regulated so it is more consistent. However, I've noticed that the battery still drains a little bit when you lock the device instead of turning it all the way off. Locking the device (pushing + and - buttons simultaneously) leaves it on while making the fire button not work until it's unlocked. However, it still is powering the screen if a button is pushed, and I assume there must be something else getting power as well because it drained quite a bit more battery when locked than when completely off (five presses of the fire button to turn off). 
The battery life is still great though. Leaving the device on all day, and vaping whenever I felt like it, my device got down to about 65% charge. It would have been even more charged if I had turned it off when it wasn't in use. I'm using my Big Dripper with a .3ohm build. If you went lower, I'm sure it would drain more battery, but it should still last all day even when cloud chasing as long as you're not blowing clouds 24/7. 

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UPDATE 10.17.14
For real though, that battery life. I did a test yesterday just to see how far it can go. I got two brand new batteries and charged them to 100%, then checked them with a multimeter to make sure they both read 4.20V. I put them in the Sigelei, then used it all day. Now, when I say I used it all day, what I mean by that is I didn't set the thing down for 10 hours straight, plus I used it intermittently for a few hours like I would any other day. For the first part of the day, I was hanging out with my girlfriend so I was just using it every now and then, like I would any other day. Then I took a road trip. I drove a few hundred miles to the place I'm working at today, and it was a 7 hour drive, plus time to stop for dinner and gas. Then when I got to the hotel, I watched TV for a couple hours while I rebuilt my other atties and tried out a few new flavors. My Sigelei was on 69.0W with a .35ohm Big Dripper the entire time, and the display on the side says it's at 5.1V. I left the same batteries in it all day through all of this, and I didn't turn it off at all during the entire day. Just before bed, I checked the batteries' charge again. The Sigelei said it still had 54% charge. I didn't verify with a multimeter because I was tired and forgot, but still, after that long of a day with nearly non-stop use, that kind of battery life is simply amazing.

On a separate note, I've been asked about its durability. It got dropped three times yesterday, when I got in and out of the car forgetting it was in my lap or things like that, on hard pavement. It has a very minor dent (actually, it's not even big enough to be called a dent, more like a "ding") on one corner, and the sticker cover I put on it is a little messed up, but otherwise it's perfectly fine. The firing button has gotten a few scratches from being in my pocket with my keys, but there's an easy solution to that: don't put your car keys in the same pocket as your mod. All my mods have scratches from my keys, including all my mechs and my MVP, so I don't think this is a mark against the Sigelei.

All in all, this is still a surprisingly fantastic mod and I'm happy that I got it. It's more expensive than any of my other mods, and I honestly don't know if I got a good deal or not, but I'm happy with it and it was worth every penny in my opinion.

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UPDATE 10.26.14
Just a small update as I've been using this thing for a couple more weeks. Still works like a charm, even after being dropped more times than I'd like to admit. It's starting to get a few dents and more severe scratches from all the abuse, but it still works perfectly. The other day it fell out of my car door onto the pavement about 4 feet below, and it got a nice little dent on one corner from that. I'm surprised at the magnet strength, the back didn't fall off even after that bad of a fall. It's gotten a little bit of juice inside the compartment from overfilled RDAs, but that's easy enough to clean out.

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I hope you enjoyed this review of the Sigelei-100W. If you just looked through at all the pretty pictures, let me remind you that there are words between them and I'd appreciate any comments on those words, since this is one of my first serious reviews.

[Don]

Just one thing to be aware of when using lithium cells in series. It is very important that you keep the pair together and don't use them for anything else. If one fails, relegate the other to single cell use. Buy identical cells in pairs for this sort of use and keep them together.

It is also very important that the cells are at an identical state of charge - they should both read the same voltage at all times. Ideally you should use a balancing charger with series lithium cells. But checking them with a voltmeter and no variation in voltage between the two is VERY important. If you don't have a voltmeter, now would be a very good time to get and use one. In fat, for safety and cell longevity I'd say it is essential.

[Michael]

I actually just bought a multimeter, so I should be able to measure it with that. I bought them as a matched pair today when I bought the mod, cuz I knew it was important to have exactly the same battery. Shouldn't they be the same voltage if I take them off the charger as soon as they get finished? Or at least close enough anyway?

[Spasmod]

Thanks for a very well presented and in-depth review Michael. I personally think right now, this box mod is potentially the best value for money. What I specifically like is the regulation throughout the entire range, unlike the Cloupor T5 which only regulates down to 0.6 ohms after which is becomes essentially an unregulated mech mod.

I'm actually a fan of the reverse threaded 510 pin as it can't move when installing and removing the atty. It's also nice to see they put a card in there to highlight how to adjust it and they also give spare pins. I know several people have wrecked theirs


I noticed you wrote 4.7V where you probably meant to write 4.2V  otherwise a fantastic review  

[JohnnyMac]

Very good review of a very nice mod, Michael! I really like that!

[Michael]

Thanks for noticing that Spas, I'll fix it ASAP. I also noticed that it can adjust in .1W intervals when you're below 50W, though in the review I said it's 1W intervals. Guess I better fix that too  I just forgot about it since I keep mine on 69W just for shits and giggles.

[Michael]

I just added an update at the end of the review, now that I've had it for a couple of days. I've pretty much only used this thing, and I'm already seriously considering selling one or two of my mechs. This thing is just awesome. I also fixed a few problems with the review, like where I said "4,7V" when I meant "4.2V" and things like that. 

Once again, thanks for commenting. I'm really glad you guys have enjoyed my review. I tried to make it as in-depth as possible without missing the small details, so it feels good to hear Spas call it a "well presented and in-depth review"  You guys are too kind. 

[18sixfifty]

Great review and it really is a great price for that good of a device. I would make one recommendation. Charge your batteries as often as you get a chance. This will give them longer life in a device like this. When you are draining a fair amount of amps it's harder on batteries if they are working on the lower end of their charge. They can continue to function with a regulated mod much lower than with a mech BUT it's also harder on the batteries. I would run two sets of batteries myself. Keep them marked and separate so you don't accidentally mix and match them.

Thanks for the review, I actually am considering forking out the $100 for one of these although I'll probably wait and see just how well they hold up to abuse.

[Michael]

I'll let you know about the abuse thing if I come to it. I'm usually pretty hard on my devices, though I've been pretty good to mine so far. But you do have a warranty with the Sigelei, so there's that. I highly recommend you get it if you find it for a good price, because this thing is just spectacular and it seems to be very well built and durable. I've already dropped it a few times and it hasn't even gotten scratched or dented at all.

[Michael]

Updated to include more info on battery life and durability (check the end of the post for updates).