Looking at the specs of the Joyetech Espion Tour I was expecting to be greeted with a rather flimsy and quite basic plastic mod.

However, I was pleasantly surprised as soon as I took it out of the box. Yes, it is primarily made from polycarbonate, but it has a solid feel to its light frame. There’s a lot of detail gone into making the Espion Tour feel incredibly comfortable in the palm of your hand.

Either side of the device are colored panels that have graduated lines or fins that subtlety protrude to give you some grip. The body also has a lovely curve to it, so there are no sharp corners or edges.

One of the panels is a removable battery door which is held in place by 3 strong magnets. It fits seamlessly and has no excess movement whatsoever. The battery tray has nicely sprung positive pins, strangely there’s no battery ribbon, but removing the batteries is easy enough.

The other side of the device has the 0.96-inch OLED screen, which although basic in its format has quite a crisp display. Beneath the screen, you’ll find the +/- adjustment buttons and the micro-USB port. All of these sit slightly of center in a row but don’t look out of place.

The fire button sits on the side of the device, and also has a nice subtle curve to it so your finger rests comfortably in the center. Along with the +/- adjustment buttons, it is tactile with a satisfying click.

Overall the Espion Tour is far more impressive in the hand than in pictures. It’s a compact, lightweight design that’s incredibly ergonomic.

Don’t be put off by the fact that the Espion Tour is a plastic device. It still has exceptional build quality, with everything fitting together perfectly, no gaps, no plastic creaks, and no mushy buttons.

I’d actually go as far as saying the Espion Tour is one of the best plastic devices I’ve come across, not just for build quality but also comfort.

The Espion Tour is a dual 18650 device with a maximum output of 220W.

It has Joyetech’s full temp control suite with settings for (NI/TI/SS) and TCR mode, and of course variable wattage mode.

The display of the device shows plenty of information from coil resistance, volts, amps, and each battery level. This can also be adjusted in the menu with three clicks of the fire button.

As with all Joyetech devices, it’s an easy menu to navigate and use, and comes with all the safety protections from short circuit, over-charging, dual circuit, and timeout protection.

It also features 2amp quick charging and is firmware upgradeable.

The Espion Tour comes paired with the Cubis Max Tank.

The Cubis Max has a 5ml juice capacity and uses Joyetech’s NCFilm heating element instead of replaceable coils.

We’ve discussed the NCFilm in detail on previous reviews, but fundamentally it is a small Kanthal strip that you place your cotton onto. It is 0.2-ohm and is best suited to 35-45W.

The significant advantage of the NCFilm is that it has a claimed lifespan of 3 months, and is easily cleaned. So you only need to worry about changing cotton (which is inexpensive) when it comes to flavor decreasing, and Joyetech includes a bundle of pre-cut cotton in the kit for you.

To replace the cotton, you first need to unscrew the base cover. This then reveals the base which can simply be pulled out. Then you will notice on the inside of the base plate is silicon covering with a slot to place your cotton square.

It’s essential when replacing the cotton, to make sure you put some drops of eliquid to saturate it before placing it against the heating element, it also helps to keep it in place.

The base of the tank has a small notch on the side, so it’s easy to align when repositioning, and then you simply screw the base cover on to hold everything together.

The Cubis Max has dual top airflow which travels down the center chimney to the heating element and is adjustable by turning the top cap. It hard stops on either side and is relatively smooth to turn and adjust.

Refilling the Cubis Max is super simple, as it has a slide-to-fill mechanism at the top, which is indicated with a small red arrow. The mechanism has decent resistance to it so shouldn’t accidentally come open, but there is no designated locking mechanism for it, it just pushes back into place.

Let’s start with the Cubis Max tank, which actually performed better than I expected. Is it as good as standard sub-ohm tanks with mesh style coils?

No.

However, it does do a pretty good job, and I’m sure as Joyetech bring out further iterations it will get even better.

The Cubis Max provides a restricted lung vape with the airflow wide open and is not really designed for high-wattage clouds. That’s mainly because of the heating element itself and the small slither of cotton which will struggle to keep up with the wicking at higher wattages.

I found it performed bet at around 45W, any higher than this and it started to feel a little dry.

One thing to also note is that it doesn’t produce a very warm vape. It’s not cool like ceramic coils, but at 45W some may want a little more power and heat.

That being said the flavor it produces is actually pretty good, a lot better than I expected and I’m sure most would be surprised by it. But I’m also sure most would still prefer to use their own sub-ohm tank or RTA with the mod.

So that brings me to he Espion Tour mod itself, which in my opinion is the star of the show and a device that I’ve really enjoyed using.

It has all the performance you’d expect from dual battery Joyetech mod, it’s easy to use and is pretty efficient on the batteries. It’s also super compact and just feels great in the hand, one of the nicest feeling mods I’ve used, and I never thought I’d say that about a plastic device.

The Espion Tour is a cracking little mod, and I’d recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone looking for a lightweight dual 18650 device.

As for the Cubis Max, it just falls a little short on performance, unfortunately.

Still, Joyetech has to be commended for try something different with their tanks. Especially considering they are putting their users first instead of trying to cash in on selling the next lot of fancy replaceable coils.

I’m sure it won’t be too long until they improve the NCFilm technology.

For the moment I’d say if you can pick up the kit at a bargain price then go for it. If not maybe just look for the Espion Tour mod by itself, you won’t be disappointed.