Everyone is different and when we come to sense of taste and smell literally everyone is an individual. Thats why e-juice reviews that discuss flavor are so totally subjective. WHat you are hearing is how that person tastes/smells it - line up 100 other people using the sme tools and same e-juice and you could get 100 other reviews.
Taste and smell are very closely connected i the old brain. Part of what you taste when you eat is what you are smelling as the food (or whatever) goes under your nose. This is why foods you love can taste wrong, dull or very different when you have a bad head cold. Its very possible that when you inhale, depending on your taste buds and neurological receptors for taste you can pick up the flavor -- some more, some less, some none - but its not just what is on your tongue but in your nose and you may not be inhaling through your nose. Then when you exhale you do get some sense of smell (although most e-juice has little) and that gives the taste buds the hint of what they are tasting and - boom you taste it!.
Then you have the problem of having been a smoker - taste receptors and those of scent can have been close to dead for almost as long as you have smoked. They don't spring back immediately although people say usually say smell comes back pretty soon while taste can take some time, or come back and then go again and then come back. That because cells with scent receptors grow and replace differently then taste buds and other areas of sensing in your mouth. Then again, there are also people in the population that cannot smell or cannot taste or can smell and taste things others cannot. Either they have the receptors or they don't for certain selet smells and tastes (like a small percent of people cannot taste that sucralose is sweet).
Actually there are a number of good vaping videos that talk about this stuff too. Many of us spent years smoking and don't reaslize that we were really no longer smelling tobacco or even tasting in (makes sense - how often did you smell tobacco on others until you stopped smoking and started vaping and realize that smell was around you all the time).
So we switch to vaping and go with a tobacco flavor figuring we would need that after smoking for many years and end up disappointed because its one of the taste/smells we are most used to. Many people even suggest your first few e-juices not be tobacco and then if you need the comfort of tasting tobacco (which your really were not) switching then and you will be able to.
Others suggest that if your not tasting the more subtle flavors in e-juice switch to something that will pack a punch your not used too like cinnamon, or another very spicy e-juice, or something very minty or menthol and keep it around in case the tastebuds want to drift off to sleep again in a month or so.
Not tring to achieve an ADV and switching off flavors a lot during the day keyed to mood or meals or activities can also help. Your brain has ben trained in many ways while you were smoking to just sleep through the taste and smell of the cigarettes if the ones that taste them are even working. Since vaping is now your alternate method it will look and treat something with vaping the way it was used to doing with smoking and that is taste and smell too. After a bit of the same old thing through the day the brain can say 'why bother' and just quits 'receiving' those signal just like it did with your smoking - why more people say they enjoyed smoking when the first woke up instead of later in the day when the brain was just tired of interpreting yet another cigarette.
And then in the reverse if your over stimulating it - too many spicy, hot, strong tobacoo or menthol/mint flavors because you want to taste them they maybe overwhelmed.
So which, if any, is you? You're the only one who can really figure it out, depending on what flavors you vape now, how long since you stopped smoking, where your smell and taste seem to be now since you did smoke and so on.
Just 'tasting' on an exhale is no more unusual then only tasting on inhale, tasting on both or being able or unable to discern individual flavors. If you are one of those people that can eat a bite of food and register it as good or bad but have no clue what makes up those flavors (the vast number of us chances are you will never break down different flavors in e-juice.
And you have to remember too that many reviewers have been doing this for a while, just like a food reviewer or a wine taster, and so on. They know the tricks of the trade for getting tastes, what they are looking for to break down a flavor combination and so on. Just like tasting wine, when you know where the wine comes from, and what grapes were used and several other things you have already broken down what possible things you're looking for in the taste. Sme with food reviews and it holds true with e-juice reviewers.
Even if their review was not solicited, they have an idea of the maker, the basic flavors and so on. Taste is so subjective that what ones tastes like to one can taste totally unlike what they said it did to another. And just because people say they detect it on inhale and then exhale - since most flavor is lost in the lungs as it drops out of the vapor because of the way lungs work its even possible that the taste was there on inhale but did not register until exhale - and maybe that is the case with you - or the taste does not cut in until it gets a better smell of it on exhale.
Every one of us is an individual and we all will smell, taste and so on as is right for us. Do not be made jealous about how other people say they are tasting and smelling and enjoy what you taste and smell. We all vape differently and have different results, like and don't like different things.
There is nothing wrong with chasing it a bit if you want, maybe another type of e-juice, maybe try a different delivery like dripping a bit (many say you get more taste and clear taste that way) or if using a cart change to a clear or tank (some say the fibers in a cart muffle taste). Maybe you need a more or less vapor to carry flavor - or different flavors, so maybe a VV device would help - who really knows except you. Always worth looking around if you think maybe you are lacking in an experience but don't be pushed into just because you feel like you have to be like everyone else, because you will eventually make yourself crazy. To not be crazy I have come to believe that I am experiencing the right way and if someone sounds like they are getting a different experience I just tell myself that its more in their explanation then anything
