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Vivant Alternate – Torn Apart for Science!
The Vivant Alternate portable vaporizer quickly became a shop favorite thanks to thick clouds, great flavor and an easily switchable battery. Today we’re tearing one down to see where the magic happens. Don’t try this at home!
First we remove the top screws and take a peek into the Alternate’s heating chamber. The chamber is diffused and features eight convection heating jets for evenly extracting your loaded material. The chamber walls also heat conductively to maintain efficiency in both extraction and battery life.
After removing the top screws we remove the battery door and another three retaining screws to gain access to the internals. Please do not follow past this step, your warranty will be voided – we tear apart vapes so you don’t have to.
Once the retaining screws, spring-loaded positive connection and top plate are removed we’re able to pull the two halves of the chassis apart. Inside the chassis we find the enclosed heating element, airflow valve and circuit board. The wiring is held in place with high-temperature silicone adhesive. The adjustable airflow valve on the side of the Alternate passes air directly into the heater, completely isolating the air path from the electronics.
Here’s a side view of the Alternate’s components – the PCB is attached directly to the back of the OLED digital display. On the left you can see the gold colored positive connection with extra thick wiring; on the right you can view the heater’s sealed air intake located on the bottom of the element.
Here we have the Alternate’s shell fully disassembled without any internals, valves, buttons or other pieces. The Alternate is made of a durable thermoplastic which is surprisingly tough for being so lightweight.
The larger opening in the side of the chassis is the air intake. The three green pieces comprise the adjustable airflow valve system; a cleverly designed feature unique to the Vivant Alternate.
A tiny vape like the Alternate has no room for a bulky circuit board; a closer look at the PCB shows how well Vivant made use of space. The OLED display and button actuators are found on the underside of the board while the charging port and other electronics are connected on the topside.
Now we get to the muscle of the Alternate: the heating element. We had to snip the heater’s connecting wires in order to remove it from the unit for further disassembly. The green piece acts as a cushion, holding the heating element in place for optimal air insulation.
The insulating enclosure has now been removed. The wide metal section is the loading chamber; the more narrow metal section houses the internal heating element and forms the Alternate’s convective heat path.
The white ceramic rod is the Alternate’s heating element, normally contained within the circular opening of the metal housing. Upon drawing, air passes through the wider opening in the housing and travels around the element, rising to the set temperature before passing through the eight convection jets in the chamber.
The Vivant Alternate includes a high-output, high-capacity 18650 battery manufactured by Sony, one of the biggest names in Li-ion batteries. The Sony VTC4 provides an incredible 30A maximum output paired with an impressive 2100mAh capacity. The max output of a vape’s battery is a big factor in heat up time and ability to maintain temperature; capacity is a major factory in battery life. The VTC4 has all around great specs and makes a top notch vape battery.
The top section of the Alternate is designed to be easily disassembled for cleaning, making the final part of our dissection the simplest. You can unscrew the threaded metal fastener with a coin and gently wiggle both portions of the top section apart; they’re held together with a silicone o-ring. The small green piece is an airflow valve within the mouthpiece – we noticed it can be removed entirely to open the airflow a bit more if you’re into that.
A friendly reminder to not disassemble any part of your Vivant Alternate other than the mouthpiece section. Disassembling the Alternate unfortunately required destroying the vape and manufacturer warranties don’t cover tear downs, even those done in the name of science.
We hope you enjoyed this tear down post; if you have any questions or you’d like to see a different vape taken apart feel free to drop us a note in the comments section below. You can also check out our Reddit, Blog and Instagram pages for more vape tear downs, sales, news, reviews, giveaways and all that other fun stuff!