I picked one of these up a couple weeks ago just to play around with. Here's a couple of my observations, some of which have already been pointed out...
1) The vape is more consistent. Even though the Hana is very nice, I can tell a difference between fully charged battery and a low battery. This tells me that despite it's attempts to produce the same wattage, once the battery gets lower it isn't up to the task. On the other hand, with the T5 this doesn't exist at all. The last vape right before it shuts down is exactly the same as the first vape right off the charger. That's going to contribute to more drain overall, but it's something I'm willing to trade for such a consistent vape.
2) The charger built into the device works every bit as well as my better chargers. Provided you are powering it with a high amp brick. I use an HP branded USB power supply which supplies very clean power at 2.5 amps. To be honest I haven't timed the charge rate, but I can tell you it only takes around 2 hours, at MOST 3 hours from fully depleted.
3) The gauge is VERY conservative. Once it reaches 0%, depending on your wattage it will still vape for quite a while after. It is my believe that the gauge represents it's ability to power a device at the full 50 watts. Though I do know once it reaches 0 it can still power a 50 watt device at least a small bit... However, if you are running lower wattage it will keep going quite a distance after. In fact, at one point I was running one of my kayfuns at 15 watts and after reaching 0 it continued to vape for at least another hour or so. In fact, if I recall it didn't actually even die that night... I went to bed before it shut down on me. On the other hand I was running a dripper at 40 watts and while it did last a while after reaching 0 it wasn't very long. So it just depends on what you're drawing from it, but the gauge isn't a hard and fast "reach 0 and die" indicator.
4) Numba.... Part of me wants to think like you... But on the other hand... I can't... 26650's just aren't all they're cracked up to be in my opinion. You're talking 8mm larger in diameter... If I remember my math correctly that would be P*r*r*h for volume? So we're talking 138041 cu/mm for an 26650 and 66161 cu/mm for an 18650... So 8mm might not sound like much, but you're actually talking about more than double the volume... My VTC5 is 2600mAh... Now if I could pick up a 26650 that had 5200mAh then by all means, I be the first one to be shouting wondering why the hell the didn't fit it for them... But the reality is you're going to get 3500mAh or so at best I believe... An extra 900mAh... Is that really worth the extra expense, weight, size, etc? And you assume they had plenty of room inside to fit it... Just because the case is large enough to accommodate it doesn't mean they could have... Without opening it up and looking at the internal build anyway... But even if they had, from their point of view since 26650's are less common, and offer very little increase in life while adding weight, I honestly have to understand their decision and think 18650 probably did make the most sense.
On the other hand... If they truly DID have room in my opinion it would have made MUCH more sense to use dual 18650s... More weight yes, but if they really did have plenty of room in there it would have made a lot more sense in my opinion than going 26650...
But as it stands, I'm happy with it as is...
