I bought one CE3 as a test a couple of months ago, from a local vendor. It was terrific - great vapor production, long-lasting, easy to clean, no leaks. Well... that is, no leaks once I figured out the trick to filling it. So, completely sold on them, I bought a pack of five. The first one out of the box was only so-so - mediocre vapor production and it leaked a bit, though not really bad. The second one was terrific again, as was the third. The fourth was garbage - it was about impossible to even keep juice in it long enough to find out how much vapor it put out. And the fifth was... pretty good. It didn't leak, but it didn't put out much vapor either.
And two more boxes later, that's been my experience with them - out of a box of five, I get three or maybe four that are great and the rest are only so-so. I don't know how much of it is manufacturing issues and how much of it is my fault, but in a sense, that, in my opinion, can be counted as something of a manufacturing issue anyway. If it's so delicate that a user can entirely inadvertently and unknowingly make it useless, then that's something that should probably be addressed.
In any event, I like them much more than any of the CE2s and probably better than the Stardust. They're a bit more of a hassle to fill, but they vape MUCH better. When they work. And don't leak.
Still trying to sort out why the ones that leak leak. As noted earlier, if the fill hole is punched out, that can be a problem, but that doesn't seem to be the case always. I swapped out a top gasket from one that I knew didn't leak into one that I knew did leak, and it still leaked. The gasket seemed to be seated solidly, so I don't think the problem was the seal around it. My assumption then was that it was leaking from inside the coil assembly housing and the air was coming in through the mouthpiece and the center tube - like possibly there was too little wick material, or it was just distributed in such a way that there was a gap in it and liquid could seep through that? I dunno - I'm just reasonably certain that it wasn't the top gasket seal.
Still though - the CE3 is definitely the best clearomizer I've tried so far. Though I did just get my new Vivi Nova in the mail an hour or so ago, and I'm loving it so far. But that's a subject for a different post...
