e-Cigarette:
These look like cigarettes though the traditional white part of the cigarette is the battery (USB rechargeable usually) and the traditional filter part is the cartridge containing the liquid and atomiser. No buttons to push to activate usually, just smoke as you normally would and the tip should light up and you get a hit of vape.
Vape Pens:
Moving away from what the cigarette looks like to the more stick like devices. These usually have a larger battery unit but now has a button for you to activate the atomiser to vapourise the liquid. Usually the power is set so there’s nothing for you as a consumer to do but enjoy the juice. These are starting to make more of a comeback due to some regulations coming in place in May 2017. Devices like the Juul have made a good impact to the pen space. So much so, high-end manufacturers like DotMod moving into market as well.
Regulated Mods and Tanks:
Here’s where it starts getting more complicated. There are literally hundreds of mods and tanks you can buy ranging from £5 all the way to £500. As I mentioned above, everything is subjective, so no one can sit there and say “you need to buy this one” as they don’t know you personally. All reviewers like us can do is make recommendations as to what we found to be good or bad. Make the review as true to our experiences as much as possible and let you find what suits you.
A regulated mod is a device that has an amount of circuitry or onboard computer which regulates and controls the power output of your device. These will generally have a safety cut off and other neat little features to keep you satisfied. A tank is what holds the e-liquid or juice. These vary again like mods though tanks are generally a smaller investment and some people choose to have a different flavour in different tanks to save mixing the flavours. Tanks are split from regular 1.0 Ω+ tanks and sub-ohm tanks.
I started more complicated vaping with VIP eCigs. They looked premium so I thought I’d take a punt at their gear. After using their pens for a while, I moved on to the more expensive (c£40 a few years back) Skystorm regulated mod. That allowed me to control the power that I was vaping at. The Skystorm came with a basic tank that I could simply buy pre-made filters to change out the coil and cotton with ease. £10 for 5 filters (a filter lasted for a few days) I thought was great compared to smoking cigarettes. The device could go up to maximum of 30W which I thought was plenty. Within 6 months I bought a new kit. The Wismec Reuleaux RX75 Mod with the Smok TFV4 Mini Tank. I’m not going to bore you with my history but you get the picture. Gear changes often. Finding one piece of kit that satisfies your needs forever is impossible. You will either buy something else, quit completely, or go back to smoking cigarettes, let’s hope it’s not the latter.
Mechanical Mods and Rebuildables Atomisers:
By this point you need to know what you are doing. Safety is paramount, do not blow off your face and make the news because you were not fully aware of the how to vape safely. A mechanical mod has no regulation circuitry, hence the name. There are no safety circuits, no fail safes, just a battery connecting straight to the atomiser.
An understanding of Ohm’s Law helps here, basically it’s a law stating that electric current is proportional to voltage and inversely proportional to resistance. This means how you build your coils and what battery you’re using matters. As I mentioned before, this is a summary post so you have a general gist, we’ll post an in-depth guide soon.
The questions is now, why use a mechanical mod and rebuildable atomisers? For me, the weight, the smoothness of the power delivery of mechanical mods makes for a more comfortable vape. Building a specific coil for your atomisers can also allow you to get the maximum flavour from your atomiser and juice. This also means you’ll have to consider the cotton you use and how you wick the juice to your coils. As you can see, a much more complex way to vape verses just replacing a pre-made filter.
My daily vapes are both mechanical mods with rebuildable tanks. A DotMod Petri Lite V2 with the DotMod Petri RTA as one unit. The second is the Frankenskull V3 Squonk Mod with the Psyclone Mods Hadlay RDA. Both are super portable and produce great flavour.
