Smoant Knight 80 Review

Smoant has been having a lot of success in the pod mod market with its massively successful Pasito pod mod, primarily because of its proprietary RBA which set it apart from most of its competitors. Still, the Chinese manufacturer is trying to reach an even larger part of the market with a new and improved device. The Smoant Knight 80 features external battery compatibility, multiple vape modes, an LED display, revised RBA, and is even compatible with Pasito coils. It sure sounds like an intriguing product, let’s check it out:

Smoant Knight 80 Packaging

The new Knight 80 all-in-one (AIO) vape mod comes in a square cardboard box with a large picture of the device on the front, and a list of kit contents, manufacturer contact information and a scratch-and-check sticker on the back.

Inside the box we have a large, black envelope containing the user manual, warranty card and other reading material, the Knight 80 itself sitting snug in a Styrofoam holder, and the usual accessories masked by stylish triangular cardboard pieces: a Type-C USB cable for charging,  and a spare coil head. The device comes with a coil-head pre-installed.

Smoant was kind enough to also send me the adapter required to use the Knight 80 with Pasito coils, as well as the new RBA designed for the Knight 80, but if you’re interested in them you will have to buy them separately. I’ve heard a lot of people say that they should have been included in the kit, and while I agree that would have been great for consumers, RBAs are kind of niche, and this is a business after all…

Smoant Knight 80 Design and Build Quality

Smoant’s latest AIO device measures 90mm x 45mm x 27 mm and is made primarily of zinc alloy with plastic sections and removable panels. It has a classic box mod design and, to be honest, it is the chunkiest AIO I’ve used in a long time. That has a lot to do with the 18650 battery compatibility, but still, if you’re looking for something sleek and pocketable, there are much better choices out there.

The Knight 80 can be a bit of an eyesore, in my opinion, mainly because of the decorative stickers the company opted for. The device itself doesn’t look bad, especially if you like the box-mod design, but it comes with no less than three decorative stickers, some of which are kind of uninspired. The sample I received for review was ok, it had these resin-imitation stickers, but I’ve seen some of the others available on the Smoant website, and they just aren’t my cup of tea.

Personally, I think the Smoant Knight 80 would have looked much better if they ditched the stickers completely and just went for a simple paint finish in various colors. However, Smoant decided to do something similar to the Pasito, only it didn’t turn out as well as I’m sure they hoped it would.

The Knight 80 AIO is a manually-activated device, so it has a square-shaped power button on one of its narrow sides, near the top, as well as two adjustment buttons under the display. The screen is generous in size for this type of device, but it isn’t particularly bright, which can be an issue when using the device in bright sunlight. I’m pretty sure it’s the tinted plastic cover, not the screen itself, but for users the effect is the same.

The side opposite the rectangular display is an L-shaped battery door, which you can recognize by the small notch for  your fingernail on the bottom of the Knight 80. Like the pod, it is held in place by powerful magnets, so there is absolutely no wobbling. The battery compartment features clear polarity indicators, and while it doesn’t feature a ribbon for easy battery removal, using your thumb does the job just as well.

Overall, the build quality of the Smoant Knight 80 is pretty decent, although it does have quite a lot of plastic, from the pod itself, to the battery door and the decorative panels. Using actual resin would have probably upped the price a bit, but I actually would have preferred that to the sticker and plastic combination. Still, it is what it is…

The bulky shape of the Knight 80 probably won’t appeal to everyone, but it does have the advantage of using a replaceable 18650 battery, so I guess it just comes down to personal taste and priorities. I for one can attest that it feels very nice in the hand, especially if you’re accustomed to using advanced box mods.

Smoant Knight 80 Refillable Pod

The removable pods hold up to 4ml of e-liquid, are only slightly tinted, so you should see the level of juice inside at all times, and are held in place by magnets. And let me tell, you these are some of the strongest magnets I’ve ever seen on a vape mod. I actually had to check the manual because I couldn’t remove the pod from the mod, and even after that it required a bit of an effort. They are so strong that when taking the photos, the pod was pulled onto the mod from over a centimeter away, so you really shouldn’t worry about the pod coming off accidentally.

To fill the Smoant Knight 80 pod, you need to first detach it from the mod, as the fill port is located on the side facing the device. It is sealed with a rubber plug that’s easy to remove and plug back in, and the size of the fill port is decent. I’ve never had any leaking issues, and as long as you pop the plug back in after refilling, you shouldn’t either.

One of the many neat things about the Smoant Knight 80 pod is the adjustable top airflow system. It’s a fairly straightforward design, but one that works very well. You basically have a metallic airflow ring at the base of the removable 510 drip tip, and that connects to two relatively large cutouts in the pod itself. These are really the top ends of two hidden channels that reach down to the base, from which the air goes up through the coil. Ok, maybe it’s not that simplistic of a design, but it sure works well.

The Knight 80 AIO was designed primarily with direct lung (DL) vaping in mind, so it’s not surprise that the airflow let’s you adjust between an airy and a restricted DL draw. However, with the airflow completely closed – rotating the metallic ring until the slots no longer align with the cutouts on the pod itself – does restrict the draw quite a bit, allowing you to do a very loose mouth-to-lung (MTL) pull. Still, for a true MTL experience, I suggest getting the Pasito adapter and trying the Pasito’s 1.3Ω coil-head. That should work really well with the airflow completely closed off.

Changing Coil-Heads on the Smoant Knight 80

To change the coil-heads on Smoant’s newest AIO device, all you have to do is remove the pod, turn it upside down and pull out the golden base. You want to be really careful not to lose that base because it will render the Knight 80 utterly useless until you get a new one. The coil-heads and even the RBA must first be connected to this base/adapter and then pushed into the pod.

To use Pasito coil-heads and its proprietary RBA, you must first buy another adapter, which looks very similar to the Knight 80 one, only longer.

The coil-heads are press-fit into the pod, so you won’t have to do any turning.

Smoant Knight 80 RBA

As I mentioned above, the rebuildable base is not included in the standard kit, but it is available as a separate purchase. It comes with a handy 510 adapter that lets you mount it on an advanced mod or a proper resistance reader, so you can tweak the build before mounting it on the Knight 80.

This new Knight 80 RBA is a bit different than the one we saw on the Smoant Pasito, in that it is more conventional, making coil building easy even for inexperienced vapers. The deck is a standard two-post design with an airflow slot on the bottom. It offers a decent amount of space, although you will only get away with micro-coils of 2mm diameters or less. 2.5mm might work too, but I was afraid the coil would touch the chimney, so I stuck to 2mm.

You can obviously use the RBA for MTL builds as well as DL coils, but I personally recommend going for the latter, as this rebuildable base is already more airy than the two coil-heads included in the kit, which, coupled with the loose airflow makes for a very poor mouth-to-lung vaping experience. For true MTL, I recommend buying the Pasito adapter and RBA instead.

Smoant Knight 80 Battery Life 

One of the main advantages of using the Knight 80 AIO over say a Smoant Pasito pod mod is the external battery. While depleting the battery of the Pasito means you have to wait for it to recharge or at least use it with the micro-USB charging cable attached, the Knight 80 lets you swap out batteries on the go. For active vapers, that’s a big deal.

Battery life depends on a variety of factors, so it’s impossible to estimate how long you’ll be able to vape on a single 18650 battery. It depends on how much you vape, what wattage you’re using the device at, the capacity of the battery, so you’ll have to experiment and see for yourself, but the fact that you can simply insert a fresh battery whenever you want makes this battery life a non-issue.

The only thing I was disappointed by was the 1A charging rate listed on the Smoant website. I know this isn’t an advanced mod per-se, but it is damn close to one in every way but the charging rate. And since they implemented USB-C charging as well, they could have gone for faster charging as well.

Using the Smoant Knight 80

Powered by the same Ant Chip as the newly released Smoant Landon mod , the Knight 80 features a very simple menu system and navigation. In fact, it doesn’t even have a menu system to go into, everything happens right on the home screen.

To turn the device on and off, simply push the fire button three times in rapid succession. The display is pretty busy, showing both the currently selected vaping mode and a battery indicator at the top, then various parameters (real-time voltage, coil resistance, and puff counter), and a puff timer at the bottom.

To browse between the available modes – variable wattage, temperature control, custom power curves, TCR, and bypass mode – all you have to do is press the power button three times until the current mode icon in the top left corner of the screen starts blinking, and then use the – and + buttons to cycle through the available modes. Simply pressing the fire button confirms your selection.

It’s all pretty basic, unless you want to use DVW, Smoant’s version of custom power curves, that one is tricky. You have to first select the mode, then press the power button and the + button simultaneously to set the duration of the five available intervals, long press the fire button to input the changes, and then press the power button and – to set the wattage for every interval, and once again long press the power button to save your configuration. Not the easiest custom curves mode ever, but it actually works once you figure it out.

For safe transport, you can lock all the buttons of the Smoant Knight 80 by pressing the + and – buttons simultaneously for a couple of seconds.

How Does the Smoant Knight 80 Vape?

If you’re looking for an enjoyable direct lung vaping experience, you can’t go wrong with the Smoant Knight 80. Whether you go for the two included coil-heads – a pre-installed 0.3 mesh coil, and a dual-mesh 0.4Ω coil – or the RBA section, this thing performs splendidly. The two mesh coils actually perform quite similarly, with the single mesh coil offering a slightly more airy draw, and they both deliver excellent flavor and more than enough vapor, provided you provide them with enough power.

That reminds me of another cool feature of the Knight 80. It has a smart sensor that detects what coil-head you attach to it, and recommends a wattage range on the display. It doesn’t work with the RBA, but all the other coil-heads, including the Pasito one should be fine. It’s not something groundbreaking, we’ve seen similar systems on the VooPoo Vinci X and on the Vaporesso Target PM80, but it’s a nice feature for beginners.

The one thing I wouldn’t recommend the standard Knight 80 kit for is mouth-to-lung vaping. Although you can get away with a very loose draw if you close out the airflow completely, neither of the included coils are designed for MTL, and the RBA is even airier. If you want a tight, authentic MTL draw, you just have to spend extra on the Pasito adapter and used Pasito coil-heads or its own RBA.

Other than that, though, this is a really solid piece of equipment. I’ve mainly been using it in variable wattage mode, and I haven’t even touched temp. control, but from my experience I think this is one of the best all-in-one devices available on the market right now.

Conclusion

The Smoant Knight 80 is not your standard 2020 all-in-one vaping device. It’s a lot bulkier than other products I’ve tested recently, like the VapeOnly Space or Druga Narada Pro, for example, but it’s also more advanced than those two, offering numerous vaping modes, external battery compatibility and large e-liquid compatibility. It’s not the most ergonomic or stealthy vaping device ever made, but you can’t have them all. As far performance goes, it’s a stellar device, and the Pasito adapter makes it that much better.

The Smoant Knight 80 kit was sent to me directly by Smoant, for the purpose of this review.

Tags : all-in-one mod,Knight 80 AIO,mod reviews,pod mods,Smoant,Smoant Knight 80