Smoant Charon Mini 225W Mod Review

Hidey-Ho fellow vape enthusiasts!

Sprks here with another analytical inspection of Smoant Charon Mini 225W Mod kindly provided by the kind folks at HealthCabin for the purposes of the review!

In Rainbow or Gold tone here:

Or you can have Black or Red here:

I was sent the Gold tone one for this review.

I received this a good while back (July) and have been using it frequently. It’s a mod that’s paint/finish has held up well, and it’s been a consistent performer in Power Mode.

It’s a looker (if Gold tone is your thing)

And it’s a fingerprint magnet!

It’s definitely got “bling”
(Not that I’m a fan of such)

Here is one of my (still) favorite things about Smoant… A respectable quality 510 connection!

Under the hood is nice and clean, with enough room to get batteries in and out without damage to wraps, while still being snug (as long as you’re mindful in pressing against the battery at the opposite end that rests against the 510, so that the spring compresses to allow for the extra room).

The screen size is about 50% bigger (overall) than the Cylon, BUT the “usable area” that we use most frequently, is only about a 30% increase. Still, a noticeable enough improvement for many “older” eyes.

The clock, while many would consider it a “froo-froo” feature, is completely worthless IMO on the Charon Mini.
Even with my “craptastic” pic below…You can still make out the Roman numerals on the Cylon (on right).
Good luck figuring out what time the Charon Mini is trying to communicate.

MrPipes was kind enough to point out to me that you can kludge a work-around for the lack of the AM/PM tickbox, if you set it to 24hr mode, set your time (ie: 18:00hrs), and then change the mode back to NOT using the “Use 24-hour format”.

Unfortunately, however, I’d saddened to report that that’s where the positive words end for the unit I received.

To start with, I’m a TC guy.

The way I look at it is pretty cut and dry. If they (any manufacturer) advertise(s) a mod to work in TC, I expect it to. Primarily because I won’t buy (or even offer to review) one that’s Power Mode only. It’s just not what I use or want/expect out of a mod made in this day and age. So my evaluations and expectations rely heavily on how that aspect functions. Take that for what it’s worth in relation to your needs/desires.

Initially, right out of the box, I noticed that this unit ran “hotter” than the other Smoant mods that I’ve become accustomed to (as well as other recent mods) at the same power level. I typically vape at between 32–40w. Most all of my mods (except notably older ones) all perform about the same, at relative power. (Translation: if I use the Cylon at 36w, I can set the Joyetech Ekee to 36w, and the performance is very very close. Likewise for the Ijoy Captain PD18650, and the GeekVape Nova.)

The Charon Mini, however, ran about 4–6 watts hotter than the rest. (If I had the Cylon set to 36w, I had to set the Charon Mini down to 32w or 30w to get the same heat.)
Once it’s set to the heat you desire though, it’s consistent.

This Power Issue also carries over into what’s applied to the TC and TCR usage (not unexpectedly). The problem is though, the fact that this was “that far off” turned out to be indicative of future things to come IMO. And it’s also the reason WHY it took me so long to release a review about this unit.

About 3–4 weeks in, and aside from the power issue, while the TC/TCR modes had been running mostly reliably…It finally came to the point that it started lacking power in TC mode, and then soon to follow (another couple 2–3 weeks), TCR mode.

The next thing I should mention before I go too much further is that, on this unit, TC SS appears to be set for the use of SS430, instead of the more common and preferred SS316. So it doesn’t exactly track really well for SS316. (This was -for a time- able to be solved by going into the menu and using TCR mode, almost exclusively. So thank goodness for that!)

When it started acting up (losing power) it would drop to around 22w-30w at times (around the 3–4 weeks mark) while in TC.
Sometimes (eg: after changing batteries, or letting it sit unused a while) it would resume normal working for varying durations. But the problem would reappear. And more frequently as time passed.

I finally went to using TCR mode exclusively.
This seemed to solve things for a bit, however, it was not a lasting solution. And things went from bad to worse. What had been a power drop down to 22w-30w, had now dropped through the floor, too 3w to 20w, and then 3w-7w at most.

Then, once I’d had enough, I decided to crack into it, and see if there was an unknown liquid event (ULE lol) that might have occurred while it sat upright in it’s cubby, along with it’s mates, while I was sleeping, or had one of his buddies out in play.

There was absolutely ZERO liquid inside the bottom of the 510 or anywhere inside the chassis, or anywhere on the pcb.

Ok then. That answered that. It’s strictly a hardware/firmware issue (Hardware being the most likely, but leaving room for the possibility of my making a mistake in “assuming” too much lol). Before I did dive in though, I did check to see if it was on the latest firmware, and it was. It showed v1.3.1 (which was current as of 10–5–2018).

The insides are very well assembled, and thoughtfully laid out.

Behold the Smoant ANT225 chipset

This unit, in reality, is powered by /drumroll:

The Holtek HT32F52352

This is indeed a very different animal from the Smoant ANT218 that powers the Cylon (confirmed) which is also suspected to be the same ANT218 that powers the Original Charon 218, and the Ranker 218.

The ANT218 chip is in reality an ARM device by ST Microelectronics (a long respected name in silicon, for literally decades). The STM32F412, as seen here:

This is the reason IMO why the Cylon (and probably the other ANT218 variants) are SO superior in their performance and operation.
(Thanks again to the “Degen family” for the inspiration and conversation that led me to digging back into a perfectly working Cylon, just for gut-shots, and confirmation of WHY it’s so special!

Incidentally, YES it still works perfectly once I put it back together

lol)

The back of your batteries rest directly on the PCB in the way the Charon Mini is designed.

So I’d exercise caution in just how roughly you put them in and pull them out. Any force you exert on them, can be transferred against the body of the pcb. So don’t press down too hard, or cock them at an angle, and force them in. Because even a hairline crack in a multi-layer pcb (like these are) could be catastrophic.

And finally, the battery monitoring wire (small blue wire just to the right of the black) that goes into main body of the battery chassis.