Vandy Vape Jackaroo Kit: Test Results Are In

The Jackaroo is stated to be a rugged and water-resistant mod — I’ll test and give those results later in this review. The only other similar mods that come to mind are the ones of the Geekvape Aegis series, and the Jackaroo is a little smaller than those (except the Aegis Mini which is internal battery) and made to take a single 2×700 battery which is a configuration not offered by Geekvape currently. It’s got a nice soft rubber coating, replaceable panels on the side and a color screen. Overall, I really liked the design from the start, but the name seemed funny to me so I looked it up. Turns out that a “jackaroo” is a young man working on a sheep or cattle station to gain experience. Not sure what that has to do with vaping, but that’s what Vandy went with.

The Vandy Vape Jackaroo is a solid and nicely built and designed mod. It’s mostly a rectangular-shaped mod, but with nice ergonomics. It has a SMOK Mag-like gun handle feel to it, but without actually looking like a gun handle. It’s very comfy in the hands and soft due to the rubber coating on the mod, which also makes it more durable. It features a front-facing color screen and off-centered 510. It’s about the same size as some of the smallest dual-battery mods, and much bigger than your average single-21700 mod. It also has a good weight to it for a single-battery mod.

Vandy Vape offers ten color options, but all the options are mostly black and rubber coated. The color differences come from the panels, with six options made of G10 (which is a high-pressure fiberglass laminate, a kind of composite material) and the other four being resin. The panels are removable and replaceable via four screws, and as far as I know, Vandy Vape plans to offer them separately like they did for their Pulse squonk mods.

The battery door is a screw cap, like the original Geekvape Aegis. It has a latch you flip out and use as a handle to unscrew it and screw it back on. The threading is smooth, and batteries fit great and it won’t damage any wraps. The latch is also very easy to pull out and push back in, so well done there. The screen is large and bright. It’s not a full-color screen but it has a black background and a color font that can be changed into any of the six options.

There is no button rattle on this mod, however one odd thing with the fire button is that it can rotate very easily. Not a big deal, but something I noticed. The 510 is great and gave me no issues with any atomizer. It’s not centered but flat and fits flush. It can handle a 25 mm atomizer without overhang. There is no charging on this mod, which is fine, as I don’t recommend charging mods internally anyway. There is a USB port for firmware updates only. It isn’t visible from the outside and is under the front panel which you remove via four torx screws.

The Jackaroo has pretty much every mode we’ve seen on mods these days. You have Power mode (watts), Voltage Mode, Watt Curve Mode, Temp Curve Mode, Bypass Mode, and Temp control mode for Ni200, Ti, and SS. No TCR mode, but the TCR is adjustable in each of the preset modes. The only thing I would consider missing is a pre-heat option in power mode, but you can use watt curve mode for that anyway.

As far as the menu goes, the layout looks just like the one Voopoo is using, so it’s a pretty outdated menu system that is not so easy to navigate. Here is a quick rundown of the usage:

• Five clicks of the fire button to turn on and off
• Three clicks to enter mode swap (use up and down to scroll and fire to accept)
• Use up and down to enter the sub menu (which is a combined settings menu and also allows you to change to curve modes in TC or Power and change TCR)
• Four clicks to change power setting in TC modes
• + and fire to lock the mod (locks adjustment buttons only, can still fire)

There is a settings icon in the sub menu which allows you to remove modes from visibility and change the color of the font on the screen or do a factory reset. It’s a poor menu system, but if you used a Voopoo mod in the past, or even the other Vandy Vape mods like the Pulse squonkers, you’ll know how it works.

Testing on this mod was done with Samsung 30T 21700 Batteries. They list the specs at 100 watts, 8 volts and 40 amps. All three are listed on their site so that is great. During my testing the max achieved wattage was 106.s. The amp limit I got was 27, which is average for a single battery mod these days but way under their 40-amp rating. The volt limit I got with a 0.62-ohm coil was 8.1 volts, which shows there is a boost circuit like most single battery mods on the market these days and is also right in line with their rating.

The mod adjusts in 1-watt increments and it scrolls pretty fast.  During my testing, the mod did a great job of not getting hot. It’s also an accurate mod. It mostly hits slightly on the high side, just like their Pulse 80W when I tested it, but still pretty accurately. I’d recommend starting 5 watts lower than you normally would, to be on the safe side. Putting on a new coil auto sets the wattage as well, based on coil resistance. Overall, a really good performer in power mode.

Using SS316L Wire in SS mode, I tested six builds:

• One simple round single coil
• One simple round dual coil
• Two fancy wire single-coil builds
• One fancy wire dual-coil build

The Jackaroo has the full watt limit available of 100 watts and while there is no TCR mode, you can adjust the TCR in each of the modes. Sadly, the mod uses the same non-standard system as Voopoo. The default TCR for SS was 1300, which didn’t work at all — even dropping down the temp to 300 F would result in dry hits and too warm of a vape. The mod was inconsistent, but it worked its best at 1100 where I was able to get a warm vape around the 430 F range most of the time. It throttles smoothly but at times not enough, leading to dry hits. It would also fire weakly at times with a fully wet wick and sometimes fire strongly with a dry wick. Overall, not a mod I’d recommend for TC, and something Vandy Vape really needs to work and improve on for future mods.

The Jackaroo mod is listed as a durable mod. They call it waterproof, shockproof, and dustproof however they don’t list an actual rating for it (like IP67 for example). I ran the same tests I did for the Aegis line.

I started with the water test. I let it sit in my hot tub at roughly one-meter depth and 102 F water for ten minutes with the mod on and battery installed. After pulling it out, it still worked perfectly fine and currently still works with no issues. I opened the battery door and checked the battery compartment for moisture and found none. Some moisture did get into the side panels but that’s a sealed-off area that doesn’t affect electronics, so all I did was wipe it down. Water also got in between the screen and the front panel as well. It appears to get in via the fire button, however this area is also sealed off, so just removing the front panel and wiping it down cleaned it off. There was no actual damage to the mod, so it passes the water test for sure

For durability, I did a three-drop test. All drops were done on concrete. First drop was one meter, second was two meters, and for the third drop the mod was thrown up in the air and spun at a height of around three meters. I checked the mod in between each drop to make sure it was still working. After the three drops the mod still works with no issues. The damage to the mod is extremely minimal, with nothing but some small cosmetic scrapes of the panels and the rubber. It did better than the Aegis line here, since the Aegis drop tests often led to cracked screens. The Jackaroo screen is recessed so that wasn’t an issue. Overall, it’s a very durable mod that passed my drop test as well.

I want to start off by saying that in general most tanks included in kits aren’t very good these days. And it’s not the tanks themselves, it’s the actual coils that are usually subpar. Most of the time it’s best to buy a mod and tank separately.

The Jackaroo tank comes with a 3.5 mL regular glass and a 5 mL bubble glass. It uses a standard 510 friction-fit resin drip tip — the one on my kit is red, to match the red panels. I used other 510 tips as well with no issues. The threading is nice and smooth on it and the fill method is a 90-degree turn to pop it off. To lock it back on, you push down and turn 90 degrees. It’s easy to get on and off, so good job there. It has one large fill hole for juice. The airflow control ring is smooth, easy to adjust and it’s on a stopper. Overall a nicely built and well-designed tank, but nothing to stand out from others.

The tank comes with two coil options:

• The “Mesh 80” 0.15-ohm mesh coil rated at 50-90 watts
• The “Mesh 50” 0.3-ohm mesh coil rated at 40-60 watts

I started off with the 0.15-ohm coil and found it best around 65-70 watts. The flavor wasn’t very good though, decent at best. Not even close to the top 70-watt tanks on the market and maybe a little worse than your average kit tank. I then used the 0.3-ohm mesh coil, which I found best at around 60 watts. This one was even a little worse for flavor than the other coil.

I wish companies would make tanks that are more appropriately rated for the mods as far as battery life goes. Overall, I am not a fan of the tank’s performance and it needs more power than it should, considering it is included in a kit with a single battery mod. A 40-50-watt tank would have been a much better fit.

Overall, Vandy Vape did a great job with this mod. If you don’t use temp control and want a rugged mod, this is a great option indeed. Outside of the TC performance, I don’t have major complaints about the mod itself. They do need to fix their amp listing though, and drop it down to at least 30 instead of 40, which would be a more acceptable listed rate. The menu system could also use some work but those aren’t deal breakers to me, especially since it’s the only rugged single 2×700 mod on the market. The tank however is pretty mediocre and not worth it. I’d opt for the mod only instead of the full kit and pair it with a better atomizer.

Let me know what you think in the comments and thanks for reading!