Well, that's what I thought. But as I'm only just learning about mechanical mods (mostly reading about the DIY kind with your own boxes), I discovered that they don't have any boards, so I had no idea what this board was at first. Thought it was some kind of battery safety regulation (which it is I guess, but I thought it was only to prevent overheating, not actual watt regulation). Til I saw the title of this thread, I had no idea what a 'kick' meant, so I looked it up, and found my unit under "Evolv Kick" pictures. Since it came from China, I assume it's a clone.
I was suprised that no one answered the OP's question with a list of brands for the same thing, since this is what he was asking about.
Just looked up the EMI Avenger. So the prices for these 'special' mechanical mods is just in the polish and the engraving, if they are just basic metal tubes with a bought kick?
I think I'm missing something... there's not a whole lot of design going on here, so what is the difference between them?
Lol. There are literally thousands of posts arguing about that very same idea.
LOL yep! Glassgal just opened a can-o-worms!
Glassgal, you're right, mechanical mods basically are just tubes, with a simple mechanical switch on one end, and a 510 connection for your atomizer on the other end. No wires, circuit boards, etc. They are simple and reliable, and when using rebuildable atomizers you can run far more power than regulated mods can handle.
The kick is sold as an add-on for mechanical mods. It allows a bit more versatility, you can use your mechanical mod normally with straight battery voltage, running high power setups. Or you can throw the kick in there, and have some added safety features, and regulation so that your voltage stays constant, instead of slowly getting lower and lower.
It just gives you more options, and allows you to keep the sleek look of a mech with the features of a regulated device. Normally the kick is not sold with a device (meaning the OP isn't looking for a mod WITH a kick, he's looking for a mod that can fit a kick) but some devices do have "kick rings" which are extension rings specifically included to allow a kick to fit inside.
Now the price of high end mechanical mods is a result of many factors. Most vaping equipment is made in massive numbers, in huge factories in china, by rather unskilled workers getting paid very little. The products have little, or poor R&D, as evident by their constant release of products with glaring design flaws which any half-decent engineer would have ironed out in the prototyping phase.
Their quality control is also very lacking, which means damaged/out of spec products get released and sold along with the decent ones. Customers getting products with missing screws, missing holes, things improperly aligned, etc aren't uncommon when buying cheap mass produced Chinese wares. They also generally use cheaper, lower grade/quality materials.
All this allows them to sell devices that are very, very cheap in price.
High end products are usually hand-made, in very small numbers by a small number of highly skilled individuals. A lot of effort is put into research and development of the products, with many versions and different prototypes being made, tested, and revised. Quality control is better, which means the stock they ship out has been checked better, the chance of you getting something that doesn't fit right, or has some issue is reduced. Often times better quality, more expensive materials are used.
All this means that it cost the manufacturer much much more to produce their product, so they must sell it for more. Now whether or not that difference in quality is worth the price is a personal choice, but there is no denying that small-scale hand crafted items cost a lot more to produce than something made in a 5,000 person Chinese factory.
I'm sure you know of the difference between buying cheap glass blown by chinese factory workers, with suspicious or completely absent annealing processes, compared to a highly skilled craftsman making a piece of art. Someone who doesn't know glass might think the shoddy china glass is no different than a skillfully crafted piece, but we both know that isn't the case
