The X Cube by Oakley

At first glance, the Oakley X Cube looks like little more than a block of would with a hole for a battery and an eGo connector on it.  Then, you look a little closer, and what you find is that the Oakley X Cube really is just a block of wood with a hole for a battery and an eGo connector on it.

Hey, Dawg, We Put Wood on Your Wood…

To be fair, the X Cube is slightly more than that, but only slightly. It is carved from a solid lock of wood, which we’re taking to be pine, but then again most of us here were failures in high school wood shop. Into this block is cut a hole just big enough to contain an 18350 battery.  The top has been cut off, and four small magnets hold it in place. A hole is cut in the top to allow access to a large button, which just sits on top of the battery with a spring under it.  When you press the button, voltage gets sent to the eG0 style connector, and thus vapage occurs.

It’s slightly more complicated than that, though.  Around the eGo connector is an LED ring that will display one of four different colors, depending on battery power.  The documentation also mentions the X Cube has short circuit protection, as well as a voltage regulator for a consistent vape throughout the cycle of the battery. Frankly, whether this works or not we really have no idea, given that the life of an 18350 battery in the hands of someone like us with a new device to play with just is not very long.

We found a few things to be annoyed with.  For starters, the top cap. The magnets holding it on are relatively strong, but they’re small.  One good bump and the top will fly right off, and chances are the wood piece will go one way, the button will go another, and the battery in still another.  As a result, places we would recommend against using the X Cube would include anywhere tall grass, in the vicinity of storm drains, or near the edges of observation decks at the tops of skyscrapers.  We’ve heard a penny can kill someone from a height like that; we’re horrified at the thought of what an 18350 could do to someone’s skull at termin

al velocity.

Someone at Oakley Loves the 80′s

Another thing to be irritated by is the eGo-style connector.  We hooked an AGA-S up to ours and it just makes the X Cube look more cobbled together from spare parts from a hardware store than it already did. Would it really have killed Oakley to include a ring to cover the eGo threads for those of use who use 510-threaded atomizers?  You know, the approximately 90% of us* who’d be interested in a device like this who don’t typically use eGos?  Just a thought.

In Oakley’s defense, they do sell the X Cube in a kit that includes eGo-threaded clearos.  Flourescent plastic ones, in fact, that look like hell with the natural wood of the cube itself.  Someone needs to let the design team over there that colors like black and silver were invented a while ago and work much better for jobs like this than neon.

If you’ve read this far, you probably already have an idea where this is going, but in case you just can’t get enough, here’s how we’d rate the X Cube:

Build Quality: 3/10

It’s hard to consider the X Cube built when what it really is, for the most part, is a couple pieces of wood very tenuously stuck together by magnets.  It’s difficult to open it to change a battery without the button falling out. There are signs that Oakley considered creating a battery vent in the button, and then just stopped drilling, no doubt figuring that if things got bad in there, the top was probably just going to fall off anyway.

Looks: 5/10

Being made of real wood is not enough to make something cool, particularly when that something is a drab knock-off of the Mjolnir from ePipeMods.com.  As far as blocks of wood go, sure, it’s nice enough. However, choosing not to include a way to cover the eGo threading means having to order a ring from a third party if you want to use a 510-threaded atomizer, unless you like your mods looking like your 12-year-old nephew built them himself in your garage as a joint project with his Boy Scout Troop and your plumber.

Flexibility: 3/10

You can only use a single 18350 battery, but you can use any of the wide range of eGo-threaded devices with the X Cube. I think that gives you approximately three choices.  Go nuts.

Performance: 5/10

It’s an eGo connector with a battery attached.  As if that wasn’t going to give you short enough battery life, the LED ring that glows every time you hit the button will suck the juice out of it even faster.

Price: 2/10

We found the X Cube kit, including a charger, two 18350 batteries, and two clearos, selling for $50 to $85. The $85 in particular prompts us to ask: For this?  Are you nuts?

Overall Score: 3.6

* This statistic was totally made up.

The X Cube by Oakley