For huge, delicious clouds
In spite of its name, the Asgard Mini is a 25mm diameter dripper.
It has won our prize for best dripper, thanks to the quality of its finish, its ease of assembly and its excellent flavour rendering.
Intended for high-powered direct inhalation, it makes dense vapour and delivers really well-defined, balanced flavours.
It’s perfect.
Airy drippers are a great way to get into big vaping. We’re not talking about the size of the drippers themselves, although most measure at least 24mm. But the first time you inhale, you’ll discover the huge air intake that makes direct inhalation easier. Plus, the openness of the dripper will show you assemblies that are nothing like the ones used in MTL. Exotic wires, like the fused or big claptons, can come out to play in airy drippers. It’s big vaping, at least on the inside.
Airy drippers are very popular with the cloud chasers we hear so much about. The fashion they started in the United States has grown into a modern vaping subculture. The fleeting shapes they make are truly eye-catching. You only need one tool to learn this art form: a dripper with a very open air flow. Let us explain in detail just how they work.
Drippers are less practical than atomizers, but well-informed enthusiasts still love them. Their simplicity means you can try out any assembly you like. Their effectiveness is also partly due to the absolute control you have over how much liquid the coil soaks up. That’s as much a drawback as an advantage. In any case, it’s a different approach to vaping. However, not all drippers are created equal, so to take full advantage of the best models you need to do a bit of research.
Airy drippers are the vapes with the most open air flows. They are only used for direct inhalation, and their air flow can range from slightly restrictive to completely free. Since assemblies are built to match, they’re often huge, regardless of whether they are single or dual coil.
For single coil drippers, your best bet is coils for use at 50 or 60 W, or 80 W for dual coil vapes. As far as maximum power levels are concerned, some drippers have no limit but your enthusiasm or … your sanity. They make a lot of vapour, even the massive amounts that cloud chasing enthusiasts want. But those volumes can plunge a room into fog in just a few puffs.
Gone are the days of having to choose between vapour and flavour. Although drippers optimized for flavour rendering still deliver the best flavour, airy drippers – or the best among them – can now also deliver remarkable flavour. That’s true for intensity, balance and precision.
And that is what sets them apart. Any dripper with a free air flow can make vapour like a steam train. Lots of power plus lots of air equals lots of vapour, no matter what. But, where most deliver bland, vague flavours, the best will give you a superb flavour experience.
This quite remarkable result is partly due to improvements in drippers and the expertise gained by manufacturers and modders, and partly due to the new coil wires that have come onto the market. Every dripper comes with the wire and assembly that suit it best, but claptons, aliens and other exotic wires have massively improved the performance of drippers in this category.
In this respect, the restrictions of having to make ultra low resistance assemblies only concerns users of mechanical mods. Electronic boxes allow a lot more flexibility. There’s plenty to enjoy as you work out which assembly suits you best on each dripper and with each liquid. Or maybe it’s just the one that makes the most vapour, if that’s your aim.
Vapour production worthy of turn-of-the-century steam trains has some downsides, the first being how much liquid it consumes. Making more vapour means using more liquid. At the highest powers, a dripper soaks up as much liquid as a fan propping up the bar on World Cup night. You can forget about 10ml bottles for the big ones, or change to DIY to keep costs down.
High powers also use a lot of energy and put a strain on box batteries. In any case, single batteries are limited to 80 or 100 W, depending on the format. You can go higher with two or more batteries, and you won’t have to change your batteries four times a day, which is a plus. Whether your priority is the available power or battery life, consider adapting your mod to the power you want to use.
We don’t want to preach, but please remember that respecting the people around you is all the more important when you’re making big vapour clouds. People don’t tend to notice small clouds which are unlikely to bother anyone, but a huge one can easily annoy other people on a café terrace or even in a narrow street.
Vaping is under severe scrutiny these days. The news is full of anti-vaping campaigns, giving the general public mixed messages about this amazing tool. That’s another reason – should you need one – to be more careful and not contribute to tarnishing the image of vaping. So, our last word on airy drippers is to use them with respect!
The average price of an airy dripper is usually between 20 and 60 Euro.
Following testing by our experts, the editorial staff of the Vaping Post recommend the brilliant Asgard Mini RDA by Vaperz Cloud.
Yes, all types of e-liquids work in an airy dripper.
Yes, airy drippers come with a 510 connector, which is the standard throughout vaping. That means you can use any airy dripper with your current battery.
Some vapers want to create massive vapour clouds when they use their dripper. They often use drippers that use two coils or even more. We’d advise caution though, as using a dripper this way can be disagreeable for other people near the vaper.
The letters DL stand for direct lung, and are just another name for an airy dripper. So a DL dripper and an airy dripper are exactly the same.
A bottom feeder dripper, also called a BF, is a dripper that uses a bottom feeder box. With these drippers, you can feed them with e-liquid without “dripping” manually. To find out more, we recommend reading our article What’s a bottom feeder (or BF or squonk)?
We don’t recommend any particular size. Generally, vapers choose a dripper of the same diameter as their battery so they’re flush, i.e. perfectly straight and aligned.
Yes, airy drippers really let you taste the flavours in e-liquid. Some vapers think they’re even better than flavour drippers. But not everyone shares their opinion.
You can’t reduce the amount of e-liquid an airy dripper uses very effectively at all. These drippers are specially designed to make a lot of vapour, so it’s only natural that they need a lot of e-liquid to work. You might want to use an indirect inhalation dripper instead if you want to reduce how much e-liquid you use.
An 810 drip tip is a bigger drip tip than a 510. They are usually used on very airy drippers designed to make a lot of vapour.
To adjust the air flow of your dripper, just turn the air flow ring. In general, the more air a vape takes in, the more vapour it will make, but the blander the flavours will taste. You need to find the right balance between flavour delivery and vapour production depending on what you want from your dripper.
