I use mechanical mods and my Provari side by side. My Provari has seen more use than any other mod I've had, but thats just because I find the Provari to be extremely convenient. If I flood my atomizer, I just crank up the voltage. If my coils get gunked up over the course of a 3-4 hour night, I just crank up my voltage and burn some space around my coils. I ONLY use rebuildables on my provari, usually at 1.1 to 1.5 ohms and at 3.2 to 4.1 volts. But if I screw up and wrap a coil too high, I just put the voltage on my Provari up.
More recently the Provari has taken a back seat to mechanicals, including my Reo Grand with A7 bottom-fed rebuildables. Its hard to pick up a Provari mini, a battery case with 4 batteries, and a bottle of juice, and walk out the door. Especially if I want to wear tight pants. So my Reo Grand has been taking over because its got the bottle of juice and a battery that'll last all day inside of it's body.
I just bought a new mechanical mod and I doubt I'll ever buy another VV or VW mod again. I don't have the need for another VV mod because I've already got my Provari and my Evic to check resistance & battery voltage. I find that while the Provari does have a smoother vape than every regulated mod that I've had, mechanical mods do beat the Provari. It wasn't until I began to understand the allure behind .8 to 1 ohm resistance that I learned how mechanical mods could vape on par with the quality of my Provari.
On a Provari, you wrap a 1.1 ohm coil and set your voltage at 3.X volts (you can't go any higher than 3.2-3.3 or around there) Which is fantastic. It vapes very well & you enjoy it. It adheres to the "take the number of your ohms and double it for a good voltage" rule. So you get a good vape. But on a mechanical, your battery starts off the charger at 4.2 volts. So your effectively tripling the ohm number for your voltage. This basically means that for the first hour of your battery's life, you barely have to kiss your drip tip and your going to blow out a nice, thick plume of vapor. After that first hour, you can start sucking a bit longer. By the time it's time to change out your battery that night, or the next day, your taking 5 second hits, like the hits you'd be taking from your Provari. So you reduce the amount of time you have to hold the mod up to your face when you sub-ohm on a mechanical.
The natural voltage from the battery is pretty cool in that it isn't boosted at all. If you fire an atty on a mechanical, then fire that same rebuildable on your provari, you'll notice that theres a slight difference in the sounds the atty makes. Its a miniscule difference, but you can actually tell the difference if you take a hit off of both of them consecutively. The mechanical mod warms your mouth more evenly, while the provari warms your mouth in bursts. The vapor spits from the coils a bit with the Provari, where-as on a mechanical, it kind of just pours out of the coils in an even wave. Compare the Provari to any other VV mod, and the spitting and sputtering is even more pronounced on the other VV mods. It's like a machine-gun rattle snake sound and you can feel it in your mouth & see the coils spitting when you fire with the cap off.
So I use mechanicals and my provari almost equally at this point in time. But if 1000 vape-dollars dropped in my lap tomorrow, I would probably only buy one more Provari, and spend the rest on mechanicals, because I really enjoy them & I feel that with sub ohms, they seem to vape a bit smoother than the Provari.
Have a Forge clone and an IGO-W, I run them about 1.0-1.1 and they work great.
