This isn't really to start a major threat. I just have to make my 5 posts so I can reply and question elsewhere on other threads.
But here is my question. What really is the point in upgrading to the expensive mods? Everyone on the forum and everywhere else keeps throwing around words like "upgrade" and "next step". They act like if you have been vaping for more than 2 months then you HAVE TO upgrade your gear like life is some competition for who has the best mod, or it world like some RPG where you have to keep going to the next better thing or you're just not going to make it. Ok if you are into the competition stuff to see who can puff the biggest cloud. Fine that's what you're into and I can see how you might want to stay on top of what stuff works better for that.
But for me it isn't about being a fanboy of "authentic" equipment, or being some sort of loyal stooge to the local vaping community hanging out in the vapor shop talking about the latest piece of pointless metal that I just dropped 300 bucks on and pretending that it works any better than the one I got a week ago for 275. I got into this because e-juice is cheaper than buying 3 packs of smokes a day at 9 bucks a pack. So I'm certainly not going to spend 300 dollars, 200 dollars or even 100 dollars on something just to puff vapor. I don't even like the idea of spending 40-50. So why does everyone seem to think that if you're not keeping up with what the next guy has then you;re just not a serious vaper. That's like saying that if you're not spending 200 a week on cigarettes then you're not a serious smoker. And if you really want to be serious you need to "upgrade" to fine cogniac dipped hand rolled cuban cigars for 150 dollars a piece. Or maybe get into artisan limited run pipe tobacco for 1500 dollars an ounce and smoke it in a 250,000 dollar anteaque ivory and 24 karat gold pipe.
Let's get real. If my ego type battery and cheap single coil plastic atomizer satisfies me, then that's my business. I'm getting sick of asking a decent battery that lasts longer than 4 hours on a charge, and having people point me toward a 40-60 dollar box that doesn't support any of my other stuff to go with it, so I'll end up having to get a whole new setup and still pay 100 bucks I can't afford. As for the mods. the only advantage I see is that the battery is removable, so when it fails to hold a charge I just get another battery. But then I still have to buy the expensive charger, and expensive spare batteries. Yes for me 30 bucks for a battery charger and 30 bucks a pop for batteries is way too expensive. I got in this to save money. Not spend the same amount of money on toys to play with. Especially when you have the "authentic" fanboys on one side telling you that if you buy anything but an authentic you will regret it when it breaks in a week. Or that some tiny issue like the button rattling because it doesn't fit as snug is just such a major game ender for buying the cheap knock off. And then on the other side of the equation people saying the clones are just as good if not sometimes better. In the end I don't know who to believe and I don't have thousands of dollars to buy one of everything and compare on my own. Besides that all the vapor shops around here are two categories. Authentic only and you can't get anything less than 100 bucks. And the ejuice cost 15 bucks for the cheapest stuff, and only goes up from there for a little 10ml bottle that will last me about a week.
Or the generic smoke shop type places that don't sell anything but the clone knockoffs and sure they are less than the authentics but still 2 to 3 times what you can buy it online for. And their ejuice stinks, tastes bad, and still costs anywhere from 7-10 dollars for a 15ml bottle. If I listen to the people online and only buy the most expensive stuff cause it "supports the little guy" then I would be spending more than what I spent on cigarettes.
I hate to sound self centered but I got into this to help myself. Screw the little guy, and screw supporting america when america won't support itself. 95% of everything we buy here is made in china anyway all the american companies outsource to china. No matter what you do china gets a slice of the pie somehow. The only difference is that instead of directly supporting a chinese company you are supporting a greedy american company that outsorces all it's manufacturing to china so that it can put the markup into it's own pocket and charge you twice as much for the same chinese made stuff.
As far as this rant goes I have been looking for a variable voltage battery at a reasonable price without buying a clone and I can't do it. I have searched the web and ebay and amazon and everywhere else for weeks and all I am finding are clones. Even the ones claiming to be authentic turn out to be clones when you really look into it. Vision's own website has pictures for what is different from the clone to the original, and then when you click on their own products the pictures show the same white lettering and miss spaced voltage markings. Their own pictures look exactly like the pictures of the clones and don't even look like their picture of what the original should look like on their how to tell the difference page.
From what I can tell the only differences between the originals and the clones are tiny little nit picky things like what color the letters should be, or this dial marker is a little higher up on the battery. All the reviews I seen of the originals have the same issues as the clones and aren't made any better at all.
Lets stop being fanboys here and talk about what is important. Not smoking death sticks AKA cigarettes, and start giving people encentive to not smoke them. If I knew I would be spending hundreds of dollars just to get a vaping setup I would have just bought a couple cartons of smokes and called it a day. At least with those I don't have to hear a bunch of stuff about "clones vs authentics", and "vaping on the next level" like everyone who's into this just got into it so they could blow the biggest cloud, or brag about how expensive their toys are. I just want a cheaper healthier way to get my nicotine fix. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less.
