I bought the NLA Executive Mini Starter Kit at a tobacco shop in my neighborhood, as I was eager to try the e-cigarette concept, for $24.95 + tax. The kit came with one white battery with a blue LED, one pre-filled cartomizer, a bottle of NLA menthol-flavored 16mg-strength e-liquid, and a USB charger. NLA was only one of two brands the store offered, and the counter person recommended the NLA as the better of the two.
When I first tried it, i was pleasantly surprised that it worked as well as it did. At that point I was convinced that vaping really could be a genuine alternative to smoking. Though it took me a few days to use up the remainder of non-electronic cigarettes (I can't bring myself to call them "analog" yet--it's just doesn't sound right to my ear), at the end of that I found I was satisfied enough with the experience to avoid, except for a couple of times, any further smoking. For those looking for a cigarette replacement, the size and colors of the batteries and cartomizers mimic those of a regular cigarette
For most of the refillable cartomizer's life it produced a decent, though not exceptional amount of vapor. I would say at its best the NLA cartomizer delivered about 80% of the performance of the Joye 510. The draw of the NLA is fairly similar to the Joye 510, which is due to the fact that their intake vent arrangements are identical. I used about 10ml of juice on this cartomizer in the past 3 1/2 weeks. The cartomizer finally began to die in the past couple of days, and is quite shot at this point. I will mention that I had already cut down on the number of cigarettes I was smoking to less than 10 cigarettes per day, so others might go through the juice and cartomizer more quickly than I did.
The battery life was poor, though not significantly poorer than any other cigarette-sized battery that I've read about on this site, so I purchased an extra battery. It was in trying to buy additional items for this system that I ran into the biggest downside of this system, and that is NLA's customer service, or lack thereof. The NLA website says that different color LEDs for the batteries were available, but there is no way to specify the color of the battery when ordering one on the website. Since having at least one battery that had an orange LED (to avoid excessive attention to myself at those times I least want to talk about it) was important to me, I really wanted an answer from them as to what the deal was on that.
And anyone who really wants a response from them, even with respect to trying to make an order, will likely be disappointed. They have a floating widget with a "live chat" button, which opens a window that says "connecting to a live representative: (something like that), and that window will remain in that state for hours if you let it. I tried this at various times throughout the day and night over the last several weeks with no response. They have a form on their web site for sending the company a message, which was the first thing I tried, and despite making a second request, they never responded. It's been three weeks.
It was for this reason that instead of ordering more cartomizers, I went ahead and spent $40 on a Joye 510 starter kit as several on this site recommended. I just didn't want to be a regular customer to any company who will not respond to me, and I certainly would not want to order anything from the website of a company that does not respond to requests over the web, and for this reason I do not recommend obtaining anything from them online. I did have the option of going to my local vendor for additional parts, but I was too unhappy with the company to continue buying from them in any way.
In looking for a replacement I chose to try the Joye 510, which turned out to be even more similar to the NLA than I realized at the time: the size, threading, and intake venting of the NLA and Joye 510 parts are exactly the same. The NLA is essentially a Joye 510 system with a cheap cartomizer! I've had no problem at all using my NLA batteries with the Joye 510 atty and cartridges. While I paid $40 for the Joye 150 as opposed to $25 for the NLA, I've updated this review since the initial posting to more accurately assess the costs of the two systems. I've tried to make the packages as equivalent as possible:
NLA
Starter Kit $24.95, comes with
1 battery
1 cartomizer
1 7ml juice
1 charger
Additional Battery $19.95
Total: $44.90
Joye 510
Starter Kit $39.99, comes with
2 batteries
2 atomizers
5 cartridges
1 charger
Additionally, 10 ml juice: $3.99*
Total $43.98
*at madvapes.com.
So the Joye 510 clearly costs less than NLA as soon as one gets a second battery, especiallly when one considers that the 510 poackage includes an additional atomizer, 5 prefilled cartridges as opposed to one, and more juice! Getting a second battery was a necessity for me getting what I wanted out of my vaporizer. I'm currently taking a community college class--just one class--and if I want to be able to vape on my way to school and on the way back as well, I need two batteries. That's how it is with batteries of this size. So while the NLA with only one battery may be a good place to start if one has a local vendor somewhere along one's routine paths to usual activities for no more than $25, one is better off just getting the Joye 510, essentially the same device, with its superior 2-piece atomizers and cartridges as well as two batteries to begin with. Nevertheless, if an incremental approach is more desirable for some reason, it can work out fine as it did for me, since when the time comes to replace the cartomizer, one can stick with NLA cartomizers or order Joye 510 components, and even switch back.
When I first tried it, i was pleasantly surprised that it worked as well as it did. At that point I was convinced that vaping really could be a genuine alternative to smoking. Though it took me a few days to use up the remainder of non-electronic cigarettes (I can't bring myself to call them "analog" yet--it's just doesn't sound right to my ear), at the end of that I found I was satisfied enough with the experience to avoid, except for a couple of times, any further smoking. For those looking for a cigarette replacement, the size and colors of the batteries and cartomizers mimic those of a regular cigarette
For most of the refillable cartomizer's life it produced a decent, though not exceptional amount of vapor. I would say at its best the NLA cartomizer delivered about 80% of the performance of the Joye 510. The draw of the NLA is fairly similar to the Joye 510, which is due to the fact that their intake vent arrangements are identical. I used about 10ml of juice on this cartomizer in the past 3 1/2 weeks. The cartomizer finally began to die in the past couple of days, and is quite shot at this point. I will mention that I had already cut down on the number of cigarettes I was smoking to less than 10 cigarettes per day, so others might go through the juice and cartomizer more quickly than I did.
The battery life was poor, though not significantly poorer than any other cigarette-sized battery that I've read about on this site, so I purchased an extra battery. It was in trying to buy additional items for this system that I ran into the biggest downside of this system, and that is NLA's customer service, or lack thereof. The NLA website says that different color LEDs for the batteries were available, but there is no way to specify the color of the battery when ordering one on the website. Since having at least one battery that had an orange LED (to avoid excessive attention to myself at those times I least want to talk about it) was important to me, I really wanted an answer from them as to what the deal was on that.
And anyone who really wants a response from them, even with respect to trying to make an order, will likely be disappointed. They have a floating widget with a "live chat" button, which opens a window that says "connecting to a live representative: (something like that), and that window will remain in that state for hours if you let it. I tried this at various times throughout the day and night over the last several weeks with no response. They have a form on their web site for sending the company a message, which was the first thing I tried, and despite making a second request, they never responded. It's been three weeks.
It was for this reason that instead of ordering more cartomizers, I went ahead and spent $40 on a Joye 510 starter kit as several on this site recommended. I just didn't want to be a regular customer to any company who will not respond to me, and I certainly would not want to order anything from the website of a company that does not respond to requests over the web, and for this reason I do not recommend obtaining anything from them online. I did have the option of going to my local vendor for additional parts, but I was too unhappy with the company to continue buying from them in any way.
In looking for a replacement I chose to try the Joye 510, which turned out to be even more similar to the NLA than I realized at the time: the size, threading, and intake venting of the NLA and Joye 510 parts are exactly the same. The NLA is essentially a Joye 510 system with a cheap cartomizer! I've had no problem at all using my NLA batteries with the Joye 510 atty and cartridges. While I paid $40 for the Joye 150 as opposed to $25 for the NLA, I've updated this review since the initial posting to more accurately assess the costs of the two systems. I've tried to make the packages as equivalent as possible:
NLA
Starter Kit $24.95, comes with
1 battery
1 cartomizer
1 7ml juice
1 charger
Additional Battery $19.95
Total: $44.90
Joye 510
Starter Kit $39.99, comes with
2 batteries
2 atomizers
5 cartridges
1 charger
Additionally, 10 ml juice: $3.99*
Total $43.98
*at madvapes.com.
So the Joye 510 clearly costs less than NLA as soon as one gets a second battery, especiallly when one considers that the 510 poackage includes an additional atomizer, 5 prefilled cartridges as opposed to one, and more juice! Getting a second battery was a necessity for me getting what I wanted out of my vaporizer. I'm currently taking a community college class--just one class--and if I want to be able to vape on my way to school and on the way back as well, I need two batteries. That's how it is with batteries of this size. So while the NLA with only one battery may be a good place to start if one has a local vendor somewhere along one's routine paths to usual activities for no more than $25, one is better off just getting the Joye 510, essentially the same device, with its superior 2-piece atomizers and cartridges as well as two batteries to begin with. Nevertheless, if an incremental approach is more desirable for some reason, it can work out fine as it did for me, since when the time comes to replace the cartomizer, one can stick with NLA cartomizers or order Joye 510 components, and even switch back.
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