What’s up! Happy New Year, this is the STATE of VAPE, January 2018. Let’s talk about what’s going on in the vape industry. If you haven’t seen it, about a month ago, I posted a video of my whole vape collection. I showed you everything that I’m working with over here. When I think about my reviews, and comparisons, and stuff like that, this is what I’m looking at all day.
2017 wasn’t an overly active year for vapes, there wasn’t like a ton of new big releases. I would say the last one is the Ghost, and the one most people are digging. The performance, the vapor quality, you know, those are the strengths. Some people kind of crucified me a little bit, for my beliefs, but whatever, it’s a good vape. So besides that one, the other big brands, you know Storz & Bickel, PAX, Firefly, DaVinci, nothing really new from them this year. There were slight upgrades to the Crafty and Mighty, they’re more reliable now. They don’t have as many issues as they did in the beginning, still pretty much the same vapes though.
Then you have ones like the Starry, which is a new one that I just reviewed a month or two ago. It’s cheap, it’s 120 bucks, but it’s got a bunch of the features, that until very recently, were dedicated to more expensive models; removable batteries, digital display, the ceramic oven, the nice ceramic mouthpiece, the magnetic top, the nice small size. Not a lot of issues, so that’s kind of like what I’m currently recommending is the best for the overall value, for around 100 bucks.
The Flowermate is still around and it’s a popular one that’s under 100 bucks. It’s 80 bucks for that one; good herb vape.
And then you have things like the Solo 2 which recently came out actually, Arizer did release a few things fairly recently. The Air 2 a lot of people like, and the Solo 2; it’s a hot one. I would say that’s one cool upgrade to that one. It’s mostly the same vape as far as performance to the original Solo, but it has some slight differences, like the build of the unit, the way it looks, is a lot cooler.
Actually, Arizer just released another one called the ArGo. It’s like a small one, the smallest one they’ve released so far. I don’t have one as of yet but probably soon, a couple of people do and they said it’s cool.
Now there’s also been some like, unique ones some, good ones. Not necessarily newly released, they just took me a while to get around to reviewing, but like the Milaana and the VapCap, the Vapman, some Sticky Bricks, the Splinter, the Apollo one with the halogen bulb. It’s interesting, but these are all like wood, and some of them are butane powered instead of batteries, and the other ones have removable batteries.
Now there’s like two things I want to talk about as far as portable vapes go before I move on. So one of the areas that I feel like there’s room for a lot of improvement with portable vapes (and I think 2018 is going to be the time that you’re going to see a lot of it), is like the top part. I’m going to call it, focusing on the top this year. So up until now, we’ve had a lot of varieties (in all different ways), that these companies are heating the herb. There have been different power supplies, different heating elements, different chambers, lots of variety.
But I’m going to you know, say it’s pretty safe to say that after that ,above the chamber, it usually seems like an afterthought with most of them where like the vapor comes out of the herb chamber and just goes straight to your mouth through the mouthpiece. Some vapes that really works for, and there’s no issues with that, but I’m going to say that for the vast majority of vapes, that’s not necessarily the most ideal way to do things. One of my biggest pet peeves, still with vaporizers after all this time, is after six years, the vapor is generally, with most of them, still not super comfortable. It’s still kind of, you know, warm, hot, like you feel the heat that you’re breathing, and especially when it’s just a straight vapor path from the oven to your mouth.
And with vaporizers, with pretty much all of them (with a few exceptions), you have to draw for at least a few seconds, 5 to 10 seconds sometimes, 15 to 20 seconds, so when you’re sitting there breathing in warm or hot air for that long, it’s not exactly the most comfortable thing after a while. So that’s an area that needs to be improved, and I’m going to use the Ghost MV1 as an example of one of the first really good vapes to address that, which is one of the big reasons that I like it so much.
What Ghost did is not only did they focus a lot on the heating element and make that part cool, they focused a lot on what happens after the vapor comes out of the herb chamber instead of just having a straight path to your mouth, which wouldn’t necessarily be the best, and would kind of put it right in line with most other vapes. They have a heat sink where the vapor goes up into it, and then it travels up and down, and the heat sink gets a little warm on the outside, but that’s what it’s supposed to do. It dissipates the heat so that by the time the vapor gets to your mouth, it’s cooler, it’s more comfortable, and it doesn’t feel like you’re sucking on a heater, you know?
So that’s one of the ways that the vapor quality gets, or feels really good with that one, because you can taste more and it just feels smoother. I just like the way that it fits, you know, because when the vapor feels really good and smooth, it enhances everything else about it. Now there’s actually not many other ones that have even remotely intricate vapor paths or mouthpieces, Storz & bickel, which came out three years ago, they have the cooling units on top, which do have some kind of channels in them where the vapor goes through. And even though it is small, and even though it’s plastic, and it’s, you know, there’s like no heat sink action going on, it’s still pretty effective. Most people think and say that the vapor from the Crafty and the Mighty is pretty comfortable. They like it and it’s basically one of the most popular portable vapes. But now what I’m noticing lately, is that even with that kind of cooling unit, even like a, you know, basic kind of thing, compared to some of the newer ones, like the MV1, I notice a difference in the comfort level and smoothness of the vapor between the two. I absolutely love my Crafty and Mighty, but I do think the vapor is smoother feeling from the MV1.
Besides those two, I’m not really coming up with many or any other ones, maybe I’m missing one or two, but that goes to show you, you know, I have a lot of vapes here, and I can only name a few that have what I would call an advanced vapor path design. So step it up! I’m going to say that the VapCap, the Vapman, the Zion, the Milaana, vapes like that, those are exceptions, those actually work with the straight path. People like it with a straight path, that’s how you could tell it’s working, I get it, I’m down with that for every other portable vape. Well the battery powered handheld ones, yeah.
As you know, I like, have every vape in the world almost, there’s a few I don’t have, but I still smoke sometimes. I vape my brains out every day, but I still also smoke, almost every day now. The reason I still smoke is because there’s no vape, no portable vape, that can really accurately replicate or mimic the experience of smoking. So as I demonstrate in this clip from my “How to Roll a Joint” video, what I wants is to be able to take a nice short one to two second pull, and then blow out a monster amount of vapor, that lung full, satisfying, big draw. If you take a two second draw with any portable vape, you’re going to get nothing, because most of them, or all of them, need a couple of seconds to get going before they even start to produce vapor at all. And then if you want a lung full of vapor, you’re looking at a 10 to 15 second draw.
What I’ve decided that I’m going to do, or try to do, is develop my own vape this year. I’m going to try, because I really want one that addresses exactly what I need best, because I don’t want to be smoking J’s anymore. I mean, they’re cool, but you know, it’s not healthy smoke wise, you know, burning, and combusting. So I’d eventually like to get those down to just an occasional thing, but until I get a vape that I take quick hit from and then I blow out a cloud like in that clip, until I get that, I don’t feel like I’m going to be fully satisfied 100 percent.
So, desktop vapes. There’s been a few cool ones, a few new things this year. NewVape updated their FlowerPot, they’ve got some cool new heads for that ShowerHead stuff, it’s cool. Glass Symphony; I picked up one of those, it’s a pretty interesting device, and I like interesting stuff. I got some Wood Scents log vapes, those are cool and interesting, and then besides those few, really know what vape I like? You know the plugin vape that I’m still using pretty much every day? My Plenty, that I bought in 2012. So once again, step it up!
I think there will be some improvements with pens this year. Definitely. The reason that I say definitely, is because I’ve been reading a lot about the increase in popularity of concentrates this year. Concentrates, it’s picking up fast, a lot of people like it. I like it, but I don’t like it as much as flower though, I like my flower. So I think it’s the perfect storm right now for companies ready to advance their stuff, they’re right on the precipice of getting to the next level of technology (it seems like), and then you have an increasing demand. So I think it will work out for that. Maybe I’ll make one of those too ;)
My goal by the way, is to have the largest vape collection in the world. I want that, it’s unique, it’s different. I’ve been asking people which ones I don’t have, and I’ve been picking them up as often as I can. I got a bunch in the last month or two. I like the unique, obscure ones a lot, and hopefully one day, I want to open a vape museum. And 20 years from now, these will all be like ancient relics, who knows what vapes are going to be like.
So I think it’ll be cool. If you’re not on the forum by the way, the forum’s really helpful and there’s a lot of information on there, and yeah, I want you to join the forum. Even if you just browse it, and don’t sign up, check it out, search around. I mean, you can basically find the answer to any question you have, and if you don’t find the answer, ask a question on there, and that’s where you’re most likely to get answered by multiple people. So here’s looking at a cool year, and an interesting, fun year for vapes in 2018.
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