Hey newskin!
In my initial spending spree to take the vapor plunge, I got a Greensmoke starter kit and passthrough. It seemed that the carts had high capacity and could be opened and juice added. That much was true. The battery life is not great, as was stated. The passthrough, OTOH, is one serious high-vapor machine.
GS pros, IMHO:
1. No worries about maintaining the atty...there is a new one in every cart.
2. Passthrough is very good...of course it is $50! And it is automatic, unlike the Joye 510 passthrough, which is manual button-activated.
3. Possible to add your own fluid...and the carts really are BIG. Actually less messy than adding to a Joye.
4. Indeed a vapor monster. I think this is because the batting is in a sort of donut packing, with the heating element being a couple of wires going up the center of the batting donut.
Cons:
1. No real choice in flavors, since the carts are for GS only. And the flavors are not great.
2. Battery gives with mine about 1.5 sec hit before cutoff. Takes a few seconds to be active again.
3. Looks like a cigarette, other than different colored carts. For some this may be a plus, but I prefer the cool high-end pen look of the Joye.
4. While I have opened GS carts and added juice to them, there are no blank carts available from GS, and so you have to fully vape the cart if you want to start again with a fresh flavor, if you can actually get rid of the original flavor.
5. You can't, that I can tell, remove the cart batting and put in your own. If you try, the element springs open, and you cant really reassemble it up through a new batting donut.
6. The atty is cheap, which is why a new one comes in every cart...and why 5 carts are $15. I don't think they last more than a couple fillings in that cart. One of mine kept working through a couple fillings, but upon opening the cart up to refill, everything had turned black inside! 8-o Could be the fluid? It was 11 gm vanilla from e-smokytreats. It could be the passthrough runs too hot.
7. You only get the ability to recharge one battery at a time with a starter kit only. It looks like you could do two, one with a wall-recharger, and one with a USB recharger. No. It is a USB recharger that can plug into a wall recharger unit. The wall recharger unit by itself cannot recharge a battery.
There are ways of getting a GS starter for about $110. If you intend to make your own juices, then it is probably not a great e-cig to get. But it is a clean, well-build, no brainer e-cig that can knock your socks off. Perhaps one of the best for someone with no time for maintenance or very new to the whole concept of e-cigs.
Like I'm a seasoned pro. Its freakin' day three for me!
Kurt
