LiteCig USA discontinuing sales of m401 series? Next best alternatives?

[billybc96]

Yeah, I was really surprised by this. At least I think LiteCig USA is discontinuing sales of m401 series e-cigarette parts and accessories. This based on what I've just seen at there website when I went there to order more batteries and an atomizer, but nothing was in stock, or wasn't even listed anymore! Which is a real shame, as I really liked them as a supplier - quality goods, fast shipping, and excellent service whenever a wrong item got shipped. This last happened more often than I'd prefer, but they'd always take care of that super fast. I don't see any other US supplier that sells m401 series gear for as little as LiteCig USA did. Some other suppliers I've tried sold me some really cruddy batteries or atomizers. The atomizers actually fell apart before I even got a chance to use them. The outer rings split down the side when just pulling the darn things out of the empty cartridges they were shipped in. All of them! I'd like to not experience that sort of thing again, and I'm also concerned that m401 gear seems to have disappeared from some other alternate US suppliers I've used in the past. Any suggestions? I really need some m401 XL cartridges as well, but am also having trouble with that. I've tried several other e-cigarette models, but settled on the m402 over a year ago as my favorite overall. I don't really want to switch to another model if I don't have to. But if I do, any model recommendations? Recommendations for good US suppliers? (I've tried Intellicig USA's version of an m402 battery, but wasn't happy with its problems charging on non-Intellicig PCCs, or with the heavier draw.) I'm kind of really concerned right now, so any ideas would be very helpful. Thank you.

[billybc96]

For what it is worth, I suppose I should mention I have a preference for the m402 stainless steel finish batteries, and the "gold" m401 atomizers. I've tried cartomizer model e-cigarettes (though it has been awhile), but much prefer the m401's 3-piece style of design - especially when using mostly VG juices as I need too. I tried m401 cartomizers at one time, but they turned out to be just a royal pain. I'm not all that sure why cartomizers seem so popular these days. Maybe they work better with larger battery e-cigarette models? At least they would be easier to refill, I suppose, but taste seems to be an issue too, or am I just spoiled by the m402's high level of flavor delivery?

[billybc96]

Ah, I saw that LiteCig USA at least still had some black m401 XL cartridges in stock. I bought those right away, sending LiteCig USA a note saying how sorry I am to see that they are discontinuing m401 gear sales (which they confirmed earlier by e-mail), but also thanking them for their great service over the last 2 years or so. They will be placing all their remaining m401 gear in stock in their Clearance Items sales category sometime soon, but I'm not sure when exactly. I kind of wish they sent out a notice of this out to their customers beforehand, but they never have been a supplier that e-mails customers about any new announcements about anything, so that is no great surprise. At least I've got some replacement m401 XL cartridges on the way. (I hope they send the right size cartridges this time around!)

[Tracey1]

Here are a few other suppliers you can try. Not sure of quantity or quality but they do offer the M4 series.

electronic-cigz.com premium Electronic Cigarettes, US-made e-liquid, e-cig accessories.
Sass-E-Cigs.com Electronic Cigarettes, Parts and E Liquid
EGO battery | kr808d-1 battery | kr808d-1 batteries
No.1 Electronic Cigarette Wholesale|E-Cigarette|Best Electronic Cigarette Manufacturer|E-Liquid|Mseries E-Cigarettes
Rocky Mountain Vapor, The Mountain top of Electronic Cigarettes

You could also try an SD Key Ring e-cig. It's a smaller (but fatter) battery than the 410 but it's a 300 mAh battery battery. Will last a lot longer than any of the M Series batteries. You could get a 510 to 401 adapter and use your 401 attys on them. I have three of the SD batts and really like them. I got them at Stormy's Vapor Cellar for for about $20.00 each. http://stormysvaporcellar.com/images...ring%20mod.jpg Great little battery. No lights or buttons. It's an auto batt. I find them very nice to have around. Good luck on your search. I'll post more info when I can.

[Jibbu]

Here are a few other suppliers you can try. Not sure of quantity or quality but they do offer the M4 series.

electronic-cigz.com premium Electronic Cigarettes, US-made e-liquid, e-cig accessories.
Sass-E-Cigs.com Electronic Cigarettes, Parts and E Liquid
EGO battery | kr808d-1 battery | kr808d-1 batteries
No.1 Electronic Cigarette Wholesale|E-Cigarette|Best Electronic Cigarette Manufacturer|E-Liquid|Mseries E-Cigarettes
Rocky Mountain Vapor, The Mountain top of Electronic Cigarettes

You could also try an SD Key Ring e-cig. It's a smaller (but fatter) battery than the 410 but it's a 300 mAh battery battery. Will last a lot longer than any of the M Series batteries. You could get a 510 to 401 adapter and use your 401 attys on them. I have three of the SD batts and really like them. I got them at Stormy's Vapor Cellar for for about $20.00 each. http://stormysvaporcellar.com/images...ring%20mod.jpg Great little battery. No lights or buttons. It's an auto batt. I find them very nice to have around. Good luck on your search. I'll post more info when I can.

How'd you do that ?!? When I tried a search I didn't see any of these wonderful links. Thank you very much!

[billybc96]

Electronic-cigz.com was a supplier I used when I unsuccessfully tried switching to m601 e-cigarettes. They were extremely unhelpful on several levels - very disappointing, wouldn't use them as a supplier for anything. Sass-E-Cigs.com only has m401 batteries, no m402 batteries. They are out of stock on gold m401 atomizers, but seem to have others in stock okay, so they may be an okay supplier for those. I've not tried them before though and I'm wary of unfamiliar suppliers these days. Can anyone recommend their m401 gear? Rocky Mountain Vapor supplied me the m401 gold atomizers that fell apart when pulling them out of their protective empty cartridge cover to use, so that was pretty unsatisfactory. They weren't any help with getting that taken care of either (just tried to sell me even more junk) - so I'm certainly not going to try them for any other parts. I did recently just try Sharp Smoker for 4 stainless steel finish m402 batteries, but those have a terrible hard draw which makes them next to useless. I'm checking with them right now on returning that order for a refund, though I still have to pay return shipping, need to use original packaging, etc. They are also a bit pricey, though they do have a 20% discount for new customers (which is why I gave 'em a shot in the first place). I don't think I'll be ordering from them again. Too bad, as their shipping time after ordering was very good.

This means I'll likely just have to make a "bulk" shipment order from Absolutelyecigs.com, which is actually an offshore supplier, with relatively high shipping prices, but with low parts prices. I used them before for an m402 PCC box, and that has still been working fine for me after over a year of use (though for some reason it will not charge Intellicig's m402 auto batteries). Shipping costs are double to triple that of a domestic supplier, but their parts may very well be genuine Smoore, so I can probably depend on them. Any other good domestic U.S. m401/m402 parts supplier recommendations? An extensive Google search isn't coming up with much more than the above, and so many suppliers have crap gear and crap return policies, so I am very wary of wasting time and money on any of them. A sad state of affairs for U.S. m401 series users.

[Jibbu]

Electronic-cigz.com was a supplier I used when I unsuccessfully tried switching to m601 e-cigarettes. They were extremely unhelpful on several levels - very disappointing, wouldn't use them as a supplier for anything. Sass-E-Cigs.com only has m401 batteries, no m402 batteries. They are out of stock on gold m401 atomizers, but seem to have others in stock okay, so they may be an okay supplier for those. I've not tried them before though and I'm wary of unfamiliar suppliers these days. Can anyone recommend their m401 gear? Rocky Mountain Vapor supplied me the m401 gold atomizers that fell apart when pulling them out of their protective empty cartridge cover to use, so that was pretty unsatisfactory. They weren't any help with getting that taken care of either (just tried to sell me even more junk) - so I'm certainly not going to try them for any other parts. I did recently just try Sharp Smoker for 4 stainless steel finish m402 batteries, but those have a terrible hard draw which makes them next to useless. I'm checking with them right now on returning that order for a refund, though I still have to pay return shipping, need to use original packaging, etc. They are also a bit pricey, though they do have a 20% discount for new customers (which is why I gave 'em a shot in the first place). I don't think I'll be ordering from them again. Too bad, as their shipping time after ordering was very good.

snip

Hey, billybc96, can you use the atomizers from ProSmoke? They seem to be low resistance and may solve the problem of hard draw.

[billybc96]

I see that LiteCigUSA finally has all their remaining m401 e-cigarette gear on clearance. I bought a few items of interest, but they are all out of m401 atomizers of any kind, and very limited in battery selection at this point. No more blank m401 cartridges of any kind left. I got some extra battery charges and a new m402 PCC box at a smoking good deal (about half the usual price, and shipping is a good deal too - as always with them). Plus I got 2 stainless steel USB pass-through m401s, which I'm looking forward to checking out. I also finally got my malfunctioning m402 battery refund from Sharp Smoker. They were pretty nice over there, but the return for a refund process was a bit of a hassle (takes awhile). With not a single one of the 4 batteries I ordered working right (as you can well imagine) I was pretty disappointed with that overall experience. Gold m401 atomizers, my favorite, seem to be nearly unavailable in the U.S. for some strange reason, and m402 batteries seem to be in short supply as well, though m401 batteries still seem to be available in most of the usual finishes.

I didn't see anything at ProSmoke indicating that their atomizers are low resistance, and I'm not sure I want to go that route in any case. They only have black and white atomizers. I see that Fresh Smoking has gold m401 atomizers, so I think I will try them out. They don't have any m402 batteries though. Same with Freedom Smoke USA (both only have m401 batteries), but they have white and black m401 atomizers, and might be a good atomizer supplier option. They have some good e-liquids I've tried out before. Their Rocking Chair Special e-liquid is pretty darn good. As far as batteries go, I may just have to give up on stainless steel finish m402s and just go with black, but I can't stand it when the paint finish starts chipping off of batteries. Looks ugly.

Since I'm unemployed at home right now these days, not using my m402 PCC charger much at home, and all my other m402 batteries are pretty much dead, I switched to using my Intellicig m402 length stainless steel batteries. Those are actually working very well right now. I think just sitting around for an extended period of time improved their draw somehow. They still don't charge in any of my m402 PCC boxs for some strange reason (which really blows), but they are otherwise pretty darn good batteries. I may have to order some more from Intellicig. Interestingly enough, Intellicig is discontinuing the use of m401 atomizers entirely (not that they ever had gold ones anyway), going to just selling cartomizers instead (of an unknown design to me). They still sell regular cartridges, but no atomizers - which is kind of weird. I might have to check out their pre-filled cartomizers, though the m401 cartomizers I've tried before were not very satisfactory in the long run - a pain to maintain when refilling. Intellicig's Eco Pure Rich is a pretty decent all VG e-liquid. No blank cartomizers available.

I went ahead and ordered 3 gold m401 atomizers from FreshSmoking. I hope they turn out to be reliable. I'll just have to wait and see. The price was decent enough. So now I'm continuing to search for a good stainless steel m402 battery supplier, which has turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Even absolutelyecigs.com out of Asia (I presume) doesn't have what I'm looking for anymore, and their shipping to the U.S. is now about $15 an order - a bit steep these days, even though their prices are otherwise very low. Genuine Smoore m402 batteries would be nice to get, as nearly everyone else's m402 batteries seem to suck in one way or another. *sigh*

Once again, if anyone has some further suggestions, please don't hesitate. Every bit of input is helpful. Thank you.

[billybc96]

Electronic-cigz.com still has m402 stainless steel automatic batteries, which can be bought in 2-packs for about $14.50. I ordered 2 sets. I have used this supplier before for some m601 series e-cigarette gear that ended up being pretty disappointing in performance, but their m401 series stuff might be perfectly fine. I'm a little desperate, so I'm going to give them another chance here. I hope not to be disappointed. Shipping rate was very reasonable. I will post how well these work out. I am hopeful, but a little wary of this supplier, but this is a different e-cigarette model battery than what I received from them before, so everything might work out okay. I will also post how well the FreshSmoking m401 atomizers work out.

[billybc96]

I finally received all of my orders. I've been away for a few days, so I don't know when exactly the shipments came in, though I do know that the last order from LiteCigUSA came in first. (I'm not surprised by that at all.) The Electronic-cigz.com order of 4 m402 batteries came with an extra m401 stainless steel finish battery. No explanation why. Probably that was just a fluke, but I am happy to have the extra battery in any case. They are all stainless steel finished, with blue LEDs (not green as I expected, but that's okay - anything other than red/orange LEDs is good with me), well packaged, each with a little and unobtrusive green Electronic-cigz symbol on them. They seem to work just fine. No draw issues, but I've yet to test using them while driving or in other louder than normal environments to see if they might be overly sensitive to such things. The 3 FreshSmoking gold finish m401 atomizers also arrived over this last weekend and I have tested them without any issues. So far they appear to work fine without any break-in period required. Very satisfactory. I hope both the batteries and the atomizers will last me an appropriate length of time before dying out on me. I have no complaints.

I've recently been trying out some of Vaperite's natural and organic e-liquids. Even though I have had allergic skin reaction issues with all or mostly PG e-liquids in the past (to the point where I was compelled to switch over to using only all VG e-liquids, such as those from Intellicig), I've found that I appear to have no problems so far with using the mostly 50/50 PG/VG blend Vaperite e-liquids I've tried so far. I've recently put in a new order for some more of their Organically Flavored APV Tobacco (genuinely good stuff), as well as some of Vaperite's other natural or organic (or both) tobacco flavors. All in 50/50 PG/VG blends. Not everything I've tried so far from Vaperite has been to my taste, but everything has been very good compared to all sorts of other e-liquids I've tried out there, including Halo and Alien Visions (though some of their stuff is pretty darn good in its own right). Backwoods Brew e-liquids, though popular with many here on the forum, have always seemed too weak in flavor to me. Freedom Smoke USA has some pretty good stuff (Rocking Chair Special Blend is the bomb if you can handle a mostly PG blend e-liquid), but Vaperite seems to be an overall cut above in quality, flavor and vapor presence. Though not as harsh and strong in throat hit as something like Halo's Torque 56 (which is probably not a very fair comparison anyway), Vaperite tobacco flavored e-liquids just seem to to better at creating a better overall genuine tobacco flavor impact, without resorting to flavorings that are overly harsh, heavy, or too chemical tasting in some way or another. They are pretty good right out of the box, but steeping them a few days or longer creates an even better experience that is hard to compare to, especially considering the lack of allergic reaction issues. Some forum members had warned me of possible atomizer performance reducing residue buildup issues with Vaperite's e-liquids, but I've yet to experience that. It may be more of an issue with cartomizers, rather than with a 3-piece e-cigarette setup such as I prefer using. Or it may just be an issue with some Vaperite e-liquids I simply have not tried out yet.

I'm glad I appear to have found a few decent domestic U.S. suppliers for all of my m401 and m402 e-cigarette supply needs. It is just too bad that I now need to use more than one, and so far I've yet to find out how these 2 most recent suppliers handle things when ordered parts don't work, or when they've shipped me the wrong components, etc. Only time will tell. Their costs are a bit higher, but shipping fees are reasonable, and shipping times are good enough - though not quite as lightning fast as good old LiteCigUSA is dependably capable of. I will post any issues I may have if they occur.