This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition: It Really Does Rip, but May Leave a Headache

Design & Quality

This Thing Rips recently released “Rig editions,” which feature a larger battery with a built-in container and a large silicone tray. The This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition is one of the largest vape pens out there. It is a diameter of 22mm wide and almost 6 inches tall. It comes with an 1100mah battery with 3 temp settings and a built-in silicone container at the bottom of the battery. It uses a green frosted glass that is very delicate (broke one of the two included just taking off and on a few times). It has a plastic mouthpiece on top with a filter to prevent concentrate from being inhaled. In between the glass attachment and the battery is a removable variable airflow with 4 air vents. You can easily twist this to change your airflow.

What You Get With This Thing Rips: Rig Edition

When you buy a This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition, you’re buying for 2 things: the vape pen and the silicone tray. Both are cool. However, This Thing Rips has a very big tendency to use misleading statements with a TON of marketing jargon.

Low Temp? Yeah Right.

They claim the This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition comes with a “Low Temp Atomizer.”  This atomizer is as far from Low Temp as you can get. It burns red hot within seconds no matter the setting. If anything we would call this a high temp hit. But hey, this thing is meant for rips.

Not So Special This Thing Rips Battery

They also claim their battery is a “Hypercharge Battery” because it has a “Set it & Forget It” setting. This remembers your temp setting.  You may remember this feature from every single variable voltage battery every made. There is literally nothing different from their battery compared to other regular 1100mah batteries that have variable voltage. It should also be noted their battery is not sub-ohm. At least they are not claiming their products are valued 3x more to try to sell it to you (like the This Thing Rips Roil, This Thing Rips Remix, etc.). This means its very unlikely they are using any decent grades of titanium wire in their atomizers, as it usually requires sub-ohm capabilities to operate.

The battery does have a cool button to go with the #ThisThingRips logo very faintly printed on the battery. It also charges via micro USB.

High Temp Atomizers

Their atomizer is a standard 10mm in diameter atomizer that uses white ceramic double coils and a cheap alloy. This is another product that decided to add more unneeded stuff rather than giving users a quality coil. The coil leaves a lot to be desired. It  burns your wax even at its lowest setting. It gives that all-too-well-known “cheap vape pen” smell and taste. For me the taste was reminiscent of the old micro style vaporizers in 2012. After a lot of use and testing, it left us with a slight headache from the smell and taste.

Dab Tray

One great thing about This Thing Rips Rig edition is the cool dab tray. It’s 8 inches by 8 Inches with a large compartment on the top that is an inch and a quarter deep. It’s really useful if you have multiple vape pens and a rig. You can use the compartment to put used atomizers or other nails. The problem is, like the coil, the quality was sacrificed. Doing a simple quality test by bending the silicone you can clearly see they used lower quality silicone with fillers to make this. You can clearly smell this when you take it out for the first time and you get a huge whiff of plastic chemical smell. Make sure to wash it when you first get it. Don’t store wax without a container on the silicone. The chemicals and flavor might cross into your wax.

Ease of Use

The #ThisThingRips R2 Rig Edition is easy to use, like most simple double coil vape pens. Take the green glass off and place your wax on top of the coils. Then replace the glass,unlock, press the power button, and inhale. It has 3 settings (that differ from what the manual reads): Blue is low, Green is medium, and Red is high. Press 3 times to change the setting, and 5 to turn it off.

The built-in wax container is easy to use, you simply screw on and off, and atomizers are screwed and replaced very easily.

Strength

If you want strength, the #ThisThingRips R2 Rig Edition delivers. It’s alloy coil gets hot incredibly fast and within less than 5 seconds the coils will glow red hot. You’ll see clouds build up quickly in the chamber and rip through your wax within a few hits.

They claim the “Power of a Rig in the Palm of your Hand.” It gets pretty close to when you get your nail red hot and drop some wax. This thing does rip hard.

Efficiency

The This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition is surprisingly efficient, given its larger size. Even though the diameter of the vape pen is 22mm, the atomizer is only 10mm.  Unlike other larger vape pens, you don’t have more unnecessary empty space on the sides of the coils. The coils are low enough that it’s very hard to miss completely and have the wax just sit underneath the coils.
Even though it’s longer and deeper, don’t overload the atomizer or you’ll inhale wax unto the glass when it pulls around the coils. You’ll still get some wax on the walls of the atomizer. Especially shatter or really gooey consistencies.

Versatility / Atomizer Options

#ThisThingRips has 4 other vape pens before releasing the Rig Edition vape pen. including 2 double coil and 2 coil-less versions. The atomizers for these vape pens are not compatible with Rig Edition vape pens. This would be fine, except the This Thing Rips Roil, Remix, etc. are all eGo threaded, while the Rig edition is 510 threaded, which means you can use the Rig edition atomizers on those batteries, but you can’t on the larger Rig edition.

The atomizers also have crimps. This is usually a sign of cheap quality metals being used. Higher grade Titanium, Kanthal, or Nichrome atomizers would not have crimps.

You can only use the other #ThisThingRips Rig Edition’s double lava-quartz atomizer with this. We hope they release “Rip Edition” atomizers of the coil-less so you can use the longer lasting battery with those atomizers.

Portability

The This Thing Rips R2 Rig edition’s large size and very delicate glass container make it very large to carry in your pocket. Make sure to not keep it with anything too large that can break your glass. Use the silicone ring around the glass, but it won’t protect it perfectly (we were using ours when it broke).

The Built-in container on the battery makes it perfect to take with you. Throw it in your pocket or better yet your backpack.

Discretion

The quick heat up of the R2 Rig Edition allows you to get quick hits. The super hot atomizers that burn your wax create such big clouds and wax smell it may be hard to be discreet. THe flashy orange color also does not look like a standard eCig item, which helps with discretion. Last, if someone sees the name printed on it “This Thing Rips” – they might figure out what it is. The term “rips” is more associated with weed than eCig

Taste

The reason you get a #ThisThingRips R2 Rig edition is not the taste, but the “power of a rig.” That means taste is horrible. Their cheap coils leaves a lot to be desired. They went with “power” to get the coils red hot, that means that no matter what, you will burn your wax.

The taste and smell leaves even the best tasting wax with an after taste of “vape pen.” If you’re used to using quality vape pens or quartz nails, you might get a very small headache after a few hits, similar to smelling diesel exhaust. You also get the same after-taste.

Don’t use good wax on this; it’ll be like using ketchup on a fine steak.

Value

The #ThisThingRips R2 Rig Edition is a very expensive vape pen at basically $130 ($129.99). It adds more things to make the higher price point more palatable. It includes 2 white ceramic double coil atomizers, 2 glass covers, a very small dab tool, and the large dab mat.

The problem is the silicone dab tray at most would be around $30, so you’re paying around $100 for a large vape pen with a battery with a built-in wax container and almost 2x the capacity of other vape pens. If the atomizer didn’t use such a cheap coil you could maybe justify that. But here this is at  a more expensive bulky version of their $50 R2 series.

This Thing Rips Warranty: Sub-Par

The batter is not sub-ohm and the warranty is sub-par. They only have a 90-Day Warranty, compared to a 1-Year warranty most other vape pen companies have. They only sell at head shops, so you wont’ be able to use any coupons here. You most likely will not find the product for sale online except on eBay, which usually carries no warranty. It also makes no sense that this version with cheaper white ceramic atomizers is the same price as their lava-quartz OG Four 2.0 edition (which is $20+ more regularly).

Replacements

There are currently no replacements available unless your smoke shop has them, so don’t burn them out quickly or just stuck waiting or buying a new pen. We’ll edit this once they are sold. There are replacements for the non-rig edition available on eBay, but those are not compatible.

Another big frustration is it is only available in non-direct sale stores, so you have to drive to a head shop that carries them (no easy shipping to your house) or order from a  Even though I can find it at my local shop, their store locator does not show it.

Conclusion: Don’t Bother, I Did

There’s many other vape pens that can do what this does, for cheaper, smaller, and with better quality. You’re also stuck purchasing from places other than the original seller, so say good bye to getting replacements shipped easily. A lot of smoke shops have a no returns policy as well. This may mean you are stuck mailing it if anything goes wrong. When it comes to the This Thing Rips R2 Rig Edition, don’t bother. I got it, reviewed it, now have a slight headache from it, and into the drawer of never-used vapes it goes. If you are still interested in it, it is available at VaporNation.