Sailing A8

The Box of Shame

This April 1st, the Joke Was on Us

Hidden away in the back of a dark closet, deep in the bowels of Vape Squad HQ, sits the Box of Shame.  It is the final resting place for co-op buys, impulse purchases, and badly considered trades that have gone horribly wrong.  On this April Fool’s Day, somewhat appropriately, a new atomizer was added to the Box of Shame: The Sailing A8 atomizer.

The Sailing A8 is a sort of Phoenix-style rebuildable atomizer with a tank. A cotton wick is strung between two posts, where a coil is wrapped, and the end tucked through a hole in the bottom of the atomizer section into a tank below.  It’s a well-tested and proven type of setup, so where did Sailing go wrong?

Garbage In, Garbage Out

In the case of the A8, it’s all about the build materials.  Specifically, it’s about the materials used for the tank, which appears to be a kind of polycarbonate.  Unfortunately, it also appears to be a very brittle kind of polycarbonate. Take a close look at the photo at the top of this article (click it to zoom), particularly where the tank screws onto the top threads.  See those cracks? There are no less than eight of those cracks circling the top of the tanks.  By all reports, we got a good one — many others who received Sailing A8′s in the same shipment have reported that their cracks were split right in half when they received them.

Normally, we try to do rather extensive testing on equipment we receive here, but frankly, we’re not going to bother with the A8.  We can tell just looking at it that it’s going to drain liquid faster than a drunk at an open bar, and we’re just not that willing to throw away good juice.

We had high hopes for the A8.  While early adopters had complained of quality issues, it was long enough ago that we’d hoped Sailing had made improvements by now.  Obviously, they have not.

The Scores

Build Quality: 1/10

We have given the Sailing A8 our lowest possible score when it comes to build quality.  We normally shy away from the extreme ends of the scale, but in this case we didn’t even want to put juice into the tank since it was obviously just going to leak back out.

Looks: 7/10

It’s a shame the tank on this atomizer is such an utter piece of crap, because it’s rather nice-looking. The integrated mouthpiece and slim profile give it a clean, attractive look that made us want to buy it just from the pictures of it.  However, in this case function does not come anywhere following form.

Flexibility: 6/10

As a rebuildable atomizer, there is some flexibility here,  You can use the built-in coil and wick, or your own, for a broad range of possible setups.

Performance: 1/10

While it may be unfair to score a device low on performance when we’ve never even filled the tank, in this case we feel justified.  If all your atomizer can do is sit collecting dust along with all the other junk you just refuse to ever use, we’d call that pretty rotten performance.

Price: 1/10

We’ve seen the Sailing A8 at U.S. retailers for around $25.  However, and this is probably to the credit of those retailers, we’re having a very hard time finding any retailers selling it right now.  It seems likely they sold, sent back, or threw away their initial stocks of this lemon and aren’t ordering them from Sailing any more.  We’ve seen a few places still carrying them overseas, however.

In any case, $25 for this steaming pile is about $25 too much.

Overall Score: 3.2

Sailing A8