Fork me, things have changed... (backstory) Been vaping since 2010, and started making my own e-liquid in about 2012. took about the last 6-8 months off and now I'm doing research to replace my old and beet Mech tube mod... and holy crap things are different. We have like Pods now, salt nick and I missed the whole sub-ohm tank thing since I have been doing the RDA thing, and then there's the e-liquid... when the heck did it become affordable, I used to pay $30 for 30mil and I go to a shop earlier in the week and got like 100mil for like $25 and that was a shop price which is a little more than online! holy crap I'm not going to make liquid again for a while, I like simple and it's just more affordable now. But I think ill end up getting a regulated mod that comes with a tank and pick up a new RDA (want to try something other than round wire). The only thing is I prefer rebuildable because buying atomizers gets old after 9 years... Maybe a squonker thing?
Hmmm.. a quick catch up:
Mechs now have safety issues
Batteries got a lot more powerful but retained the same form factor and as a result mechs in general are out of favor because the safety measures that worked for the old batteries don’t work for the new ones anymore and the result is significant danger. They’re not impossible to use, but you literally do not dare screw up. Ever.
“Salt nic” is not looked at with universal kindness
The issue is it was invented and marketed by company who used opaque and misleading marketing and so far as anyone can tell did no safety testing at all. There is not one kind of “salt” there are hundreds of possible ones and something like 6 or 8 different compounds which are all commonly marketed as “salt”. Long term effects for the different compounds are totally unknown, unlike unprotonated nic that researchers have been messing with since the 1960’s.
It has some advantages though. Namely variable throat hit and as a result some smokers that can not tolerate regular nic can tolerate protonated stuff.
It’s on my personal “oh hell no” list but there are many here who disagree with this assessment.
VV mods have gotten a LOT better, cheaper, and more powerful
There are $30 mods out today that outperform stuff that would have cost $150 in 2012. They’ve become the standard goto instead of mechs. They have a lot of built in safety features, and dial-wattage and Temperature Control vastly simplify things.
Pods are basically oddly shaped carto cigalikes, more or less.
They’re (usually but not always) a return to the bad old days of cigalikes, but with a few improvements. They tend to have larger juice reservoirs and (slightly) bigger coils and wicks. Also they're proprietary from stem to stern generally. Continuing use costs get obnoxiously large fast. While many of them are imho actually functionally inferior to an old kanger ego a few of them offer improvements to the old devices. Pricing is not generally one of them though.
