I hear you on the consistency thing. I had one bad atomizer shipped with my first two. I love the performance but have this vague fear in the back of my mind that it could fail at any time. I think I'm just learning the hard fact that vaping takes gear and back up gear. All the parts only have so long of a life. I initially thought I could vape all month for 30 bucks or so but it's starting to seem more like 60+ with atties and the inevitable batteries I will need.
One side note is that I removed the little rubber mouth tip from the Echo E cart and the experience improved a lot.