It all started as I was bored one day and decided to drop by the local vape shop and see what they had for sell. Silly me I bought a "pod mod" to see what all the fuss with the devices was about.
Enter the mod on the far left. A "pod mod". I don't recall what it cost me but it was small and light and not very expensive and the sales person claimed "it won't leak" so I figured - what the heck, I'll get it and make up some 'salts' juice and try it out.
While it was fairly easy to fill and the sales person was right, it did not leak. It did suffer from a number of 'issues'. Namely dismal output, battery life and juice capacity. Did I mention that the "flap" to get at the microUSB connection for charging was challenging? While I tried to make use of it while I enjoyed my morning coffee after a few weeks of ether running out of juice or battery at just the wrong time I started looking else where. However now that I had 30ml of 50mg juice mixed up I though I'd 'upgrade' my "salts dispenser".
Move to the setup in the middle, a Nautilus mini clone (with aftermarket RBA) and a iStick40. While the RBA is downright painful to build on I left the 1.4 ohm Kanthal build on it and filled the 2ml tank with the 50mg juice. The iStick40 is said to have a 2700mah battery (and optional TC with NI coils). The iSticks have their USB ports on the bottom. So with the tank filled up and the iStick charged up I again went about my business. This setup was a vast improvement over the 'pod mod'. Better (but not great, after all it is a Nautilus mini) output, longer battery life and more juice. It felt good to be able to grab some gear out of my stash and put it to use. The setup did have its downsides, namely the filling of the tank. Tanks of this era are filled by unscrewing the bottom+coil/atomizer out of it and squeezing juice directly into the upside down tank and then screwing it back together. While I had a dozen or more of this style of tank in use in my early vaping days, I've grown accustomed to easy top fill tanks so started thinking that I could do better so back to the stash I looked.
Enter the setup on the right. While the mod itself is fairly new (Dicodes 21700) the tank is a eLeaf "Lemo2" (only slightly newer vintage then the Nautilus). This setup gives me 3.2ml of tank, even higher output, top fill ease, longer battery life and TC of the coil. The three drawbacks of this setup are that its MUCH larger and heavier than the pod mod that I started out with and the only way to get new energy into the mod is swap batteries. Last and importantly (for those that like to use coil wrecking flavors) is that the only way to service the coil is complete disassembly of the entire tank to gain access to the coil. (not much of a worry when vaping pure unflavored juice).
This is the setup I've been using while enjoying my morning cup of coffee though. Just all part of a evolution.