Wotofo Manik Mini Pod Review

If you’re anything like me, you like to keep an emergency vape on hand. Not purely for emergencies, but something to use while you’re quickly driving somewhere, or need to take a sneaky vape without breaking out the cloud machine. Small Pods are great for this, since they have such a small size, and can easily be slipped into the pocket!

I’ll be taking a look at one such device today, this one from Wotofo!

Let’s take a look at the Wotofo Manik Mini!!

Big thanks goes to Wotofo for sending this directly through to me for review, and for their unwavering support!

Photos

General Info

The specs for the Wotofo Manik Mini Pod are quite impressive, for such a small unit. 1000mah inbuilt battery, 3ml e-liquid capacity, 30 Watt maximum adjustable wattage, all in a 92 x 28 x 16mm frame.

To give you an idea of the size, it’s a little larger than a cigarette lighter, and about twice as wide, and really small in the hand. It’s definitely one of those vapes you’ll be able to easily conceal for a sneaky vape.

It’s you’re typical Pod vape, detachable once piece Pod, held in with magnets as well as friction fit, with a small black and white display and basic USB charging.

The Body

The main body of the Manik Mini is pretty classy, made from a Zinc Alloy frame, the copy I received was metallic gold with black leather inserts and matching yellow stitching. Wotofo have done a great job of sexing up a boring old rectangle that’s for sure!

Up top is your Pod recess with the usual magnets, and connectors in there for the POD. Note that the Pods are actually magnet AND friction fit, for quite a solid connection.

You’ll notice that the auto-draw receiver sticks up a little, this is because the inside of this Pod recess is apparently waterproof, and lifting this up allows it to still work with a little bit of e-liquid in the recess, if ever that should happen. Great thinking Wotofo!

On each side of the body, you’ll find airflow slots, well at least I think they are, blocking them off doesn’t seem to do a lot so perhaps they are just there for decoration. On of the sides an OLED display below the decorative airflow slot, lights up with a black and white display. It’s quite similar to a few of the Smok displays, like the latest NFIX pods. It displays all of the information you’ll need, puffs, resistance, wattage, battery, and voltage. Everything is pretty easy to read with the exception of the battery meter, which is really really tiny. Under this is a single button that you use for adjusting wattage as well as powering down and turning on the device.

On each of the larger faces of the mod is a leather insert with yellow stitching, one side with a large embossed “MANIK” and the other a smaller embossed “Wotofo logo”. The panels are a really nice addition and I quite like them. Simple yet elegant.

Lastly, on the bottom you’ll find your charge port, and a single vent hole. the charge port is a standard Micro USB port, I’m a little disappointed to see this to be honest. USB Type-C should be the benchmark for everything these days.

The PODs

You’ll receive two Pods in the kit. They are both one piece units, so you cannot replace the coils unfortunately.
They’re made from PCTG so you shouldn’t ever have any issues with cracking from any different juices, and PCTG is shock proof so, there is that too. The main mouth piece is of a duckbill design, which is quite comfortable to use.

The Pods are tinted pretty dark, just to make sure you can’t see your eliquid levels easily. Kind of kidding. But really, it’s not that easy to see your levels unless you remove the pod and hold it up and the way the duckbill mouthpiece narrows toward the top does not help with seeing eliquid levels either.

You’ll be filling these from the side, by opening the silicone plug, to reveal a fill hole that is not huge, but large enough to just get a normal chubby gorilla bottle nozzle into.

The two different Pods provided are:

• M11 Parallel Coil 0.6Ω 18-22W   
  Interestingly, this coil is the higher wattage one. I would have thought the mesh coil might have been but not so. This coil is naturally going to be more suitable for a Restricted Direct Lung vape, rather than a Mouth to Lung, and runs quite well at the 19-20Watt mark.      
                        
• M12 nexMESH Coil 0.6Ω 15-18W
  This is definitely the MTL vape of the two, with a slightly tighter airflow, and lower wattage, you can do mouth pulls quite comfortably without feeling like there is too much airflow. About 16Watts was perfect for me on this coil.

Airflow

I’m not quite sure where the airflow comes into this device. Obviously air enters the Pod from underneath, but the two slots on the side of the device, don’t seem to restrict the airflow by much when I block them with my fingers.

Either way, you’ll find that this puts out quite an airy MTL draw with both coils. You could almost do a very restricted Direct to Lung draw.
I think this should have been tightened up a a little or opened even more depending on which way Wotofo want to go with this. Trying to do both never works well, and in this case, you’re left with a Pod that doesn’t really do great with either option.

If you are looking for quite an airy MTL draw however, this is perfect and exactly what you’ll get.

Battery

Inside the Manik Mini is a 1000mah battery, which is actually quite large for such a small device, and will last you quite a while considering the maximum wattage you’ll run at is about 23 Watts.
I can get a day easily out of each coil.

Charging is done through the micro USB port on the bottom, a bit of a disappointment that this isn’t USB Type-C but, one good thing about it is you can vape while it’s charging so that’s a bonus.

Filling

Filling is straight forward. Take the pod out, hold it on the side, and unplug the silicone plug to reveal the fill port. You can easily fill 100% of the POD, you might need to hold it up to the light through, as the plastic is quite dark.

Any Leaks?

No real leaking. I’ve noticed a little seepage under the Pod which is to be expected with a bottom airflow Pod, and the connections are waterproof, so no dramas there.

Usage

Using the Manik Mini is super simple. Wotofo have made operation really easy with only the one button available.
It’s also an auto-draw device, so no button needed to fire, just inhale, and you’re vaping!

• 5x clicks of the button to turn on/off the device
• Hold button to clear puff counter
• 3x clicks of button to go into edit mode
  • click the button to increase wattage in 1W increments
    
    

Pros:

• Elegant design
• Small form factor
• Great flavour
• Easy to use one button design
• Vape while you charge

Cons:

• No USB Type-C (subjective)
• Pods are one piece design (subjective)
• Loose MTL or tight DTL (tries to do too many things)
• No adjustable airflow (subjective)
  
  

Where to Buy:

You can pick up the Wotofo Manik Mini Pod directly through Wotofo on their online store or from any good vape store that stocks Wotofo products. It’ll set you back around about $35 USD which is actually a little on the expensive side, but I’d expect that price point to drop pretty quickly once release stage is over.

Conclusion

All in all I’ve found the Wotofo Manik Mini Pod a good little device to carry around with me. It’s not the best nor the worst Pod system I’ve used, and think Wotofo could improve on a few things.

I would have liked to have seen a USB Type-C port for charging, for that extra fast charge rate, as well as a Pod with removable coils instead of one-piece pods (both of these are really subjective con’s though).

I also feel like Wotofo tried to do too much with it and instead of focusing on one type of airflow DTL OR MTL, the airflow that is available is a bit of both, but doesn’t really do either very well.

This would have been excellent as a really tight MTL device for on the go, if the airflow was just that little bit tighter. It equally would have been a great little restricted DTL vape if they’d decided to open the airflow a little more and provide a lower resistant coil with it. As it is, it lands somewhere in the middle not really specialising in either.

Overall, this is not a bad device if you’re looking for something to carry around with you, the coils put out some excellent flavour, and battery life is really good for the flavour and vapour you’ll get from the low wattage Pods.

Shane Presser

Shane Presser has been vaping since 2013, and has extensive experience with advanced equipment, coil builds and DIY mixing. He is the man behind VapersGarage, and also more recently Aussie Vape Stores, a resource to help vapers find their nearest Vape Shops, and eLiquid Vendors.