Vaporesso Armour S

"A phoney tough guy, & some minor issues but works very well in power mode"

Intro

I purchased the Armour S in the hope that it'd be virtually an Armour Ultra , but driven by an external cell instead of the Ultra's built-in cell. And in some ways this is true, but there are several additional differences which I neither expected nor especially welcomed in most cases.

However, perhaps most importantly, the Armour S does actually work very well in Power mode, and totally unaffected by the SS firmware bug, handling stainless steel coils every bit as well as nichrome Ni80 or Kanthal Ka1.
Also, like the Ultra, there's no plain old power mode listed on the menu, instead it's achieved by selecting "Eco" mode with the "Smart" function disabled.

If you're wavering about which to buy, then imo both can make very credible Dimitri mods. However, my feeling is that unless you're in love with the look/feel of the S, and can live with an internal non-replaceable battery, then possibly the Ultra has the edge as it's lighter, smaller, has a clearer display, bolder button profile, and avoids a potential longer term weak spot in the battery door. But I get that for many, the attraction of the 21700 or 18650 external cell will override these points.

I suggest leaving it in Eco mode with Smart disabled, when it'll perform very well as a plain old Power mode.

Summary

For me, the Ultra has 4 main advantages

Outstanding display brightness when set to max intensity. The only mod I've tested that I can read outdoors in direct sunlight
The Wattage display field is exceptionally large & much easier to read if your vision isn't perfect (sadly, other fields are tiny)
I paid around £40 inc shipping, which, of course, includes the internal battery, which would likely save maybe another £10 inc shipping. So not a bad price, considering.
It works impeccably well in Power Mode, although this does not appear in the setup menu. However, it can be achieved by selecting "Eco" with "Smart" disabled. Tests (at 30W 0.3Ω) reveal accuracy to within 0.4W of my Aegis Solo V1 & totally free from the SS firmware bug (for details, see the Mod Guide). Imo pretty impressive.

Modes

It's near impossible to find information on these. It was only from bench testing that I was able to determine what the modes achieved and evaluate their usefulness - or otherwise.

There are 6 settable modes as follows:

Boost, Pulse, and Eco are all Power Modes but with slight variations. I assume the names are attempts to mislead users into believing they're some new type of innovation.
- Eco is a straight Power Mode, and what I suggest you use for Dimitri. Basically, the Wattage you set is what you get.
- Pulse is the same as Eco, but with ~10% extra Wattage. In other words, set 30W, and you'll have ~33W at the coil, set 10 and get ~11W, etc. The extra is achieved by adding a slight 2Hz DC ripple onto the output Voltage, which might explain the "pulse" name
- Boost is very similar, but with around 12% ish more wattage than dialled in (estimated as difficult to compute accurately). The DC ripple addition is still used but it's less obvious, looking more like random noise.

💡Update 25 July 2026: Following testing, it appears that Boost mode on the Armour Ultra is exactly the same as the mysteriously named F(t) mode on the Vaporesso Gen 80S.

TC-SS, TC-NI and TC-TI are temperature control modes for stainless steel, Ni200 (almost pure Nickel), and Titanium. Unfortunately, no TCR values are supplied and since real-time information is not displayed during a fire cycle, it's impractical to perform basic confidence tests. Therefore, even assuming good TC performance, these TC modes are of no practical use. Since I no longer use TC, this isn't a big deal for me.

Functions within Modes

Smart is an option in Boost, Pulse and Eco modes. When enabled, if a new coil is detected which is outside the resistance range of the previous coil, the power is set to the middle range Wattage of the assumed (by its resistance) new coil. The auto-set Wattage appears on screen & the user is free to override it simply by setting any other. According to the manual, this resistance to Wattage correlation is valid only with Vaporesso GTI coils, although I've noticed one anomaly. I strongly suggest leaving Smart disabled to prevent unintentional changes as the Wattages are specified for nicotine & would generally be far too high for Dimitri juice. A tiny 'S' icon is displayed when Smart is enabled, a more obvious indication would be preferable.
Watt Lock. When enabled, the up/down buttons are disabled which prevent Wattage changes when in Eco, Pulse and Boost mode, and also prevents changes to the temperature setting in all TC modes.
TCR Lock. I haven't yet been able to find out exactly how this operates.

Pros & Cons

🙁 User confusion Functions with vague misleading names. User manual practically useless. Almost impossible for the average user to obtain proper info on what functions actually achieve and whether they're of any use, or just gimmicks

🙂 Works very well in "power mode" Simple Wattage (Power) mode is actually "Eco" mode with "Smart" disabled. During 0.3Ω 30W load testing, Wattage delivered was within 0.4W of the Solo V1 standard and (surprisingly) it's unaffected by the SS firmware bug, handling stainless steel coils every bit as well as nichrome Ni80 or Kanthal Ka1.

🙂 "Time to Full Charge" shown on display during charging, which is imo handy

🙂 Claimed 5500mAh internal Battery Apparently an exaggeration, but still compares very favourably with many other mods (for example, 3200mAh is claimed for the Geekvape Mini 5)

🙁 Locking slider operates with insufficient force, easy to operate accidentally. Perhaps superfluous since 4 clicks on the fire button achieves exactly the same thing

🙁 Button design A very minor niggle, but I'd rather the up/down buttons were chunkier with a more definite touch (they're still miles better than the Solo V3 and Argus MT). In a perfect world I'd also prefer a larger and more conventional shape for the fire button. But definitely no big deal.

🙁 Display layout During a fire cycle the only field updated is puff duration, all others are static. Also, there's no Voltage or Amps display - a slight disappointment for me at least.

🙂 Unusually large Wattage field readout Wattage is refreshingly easy to read but resistance, puff counter, & TC Wattage fields needlessly small

🙂 Unusually bright display when set to max intensity. Of significant benefit to outdoor trippers.

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