Eli,
The Volt cartos are priced the same as the CE2 cartos on Vapor Junction. That being said, I read a review on those CE2s and found that the standard kr808d-1 batt's voltage may be a little low for those cartos. I went over to the supplier's forum to read up on the Volt, and I have to say that I'm intrigued but cautious at the same time.
If the Volt are the same cartos as Bloog uses (which they appear to be), I don't have any actual complaint (unless you count the fact that they wick so well thin juice will run out the bottom before saturating the top, making it difficult to drip fill completely). That said, I also don't find them particularly satisfying vapewise. I ordered a pack of 5 and tried 2 for a couple of days, threw them away and the other 3 are sitting in my emergency box.
My standard carto is the clearomizer from madvapes (the 2.8 - 3.0 Ohm). Unless you cut your teeth dripping a LR atty on 6V, I don't see how anyone could feel like the batteries don't suffice with these.
Clearomizers have some caveats though: Like an Ego-T atty, they'll get this burnt taste after about a day of use. A cleaning/dry burn will bring them back and they'll last several days (by which I mean using the same carto, refilling over and over) before getting the funny taste again. I don't know beyond that, 'cause I toss them then. They also aren't great for being out-and-about unless you've got some sort of protective carrier - dropping a few in your pocket is just begging for a pocketful of juice due to a cracked or separated tube. Some people have complained about a heavy plastic taste added to juice or various juices causing tubes to spontaneously crack - I haven't experienced either, so can't comment. Clearomizers will either not leak at all, giving you the perfect vape IMO, or they'll leak catastrophically. At a buck to two bucks each, I just toss any that develop the "spontaneous liquid discharge syndrome".
Please forgive my bluntness, but I think I need to be very straightforward about my experiences with vaping. My first e-cig was Smoking Everywhere; not much TH, and the prefilled cartridges and the e-liquid caused an allergic reaction. I switched to V4L's Vapor Kings; good TH, liked the idea of the prefilled cartos, and the e-liquid caused an allergic reaction. I decided to fill my own cartos with U.S. e-juice; ran into the problem of over- or under-filling them, worried constantly about "topping off", used up about 5 cartos a day, and burned through enough poly fill to stuff a small stuffed animal. I then thought that I was messing up the initial filling process, so I found a supplier that pre-filled cartos with U.S. juice and bought some juice to keep carto topped off. This was pricey, and I disliked the taste of the e-juice. After watching several hours worth of "how to fill cartos" on YouTube, I tried filling my own again. I ran into the same problems as before, and thought that maybe I was going through so many cartos a day because I needed to up the nic level. Went from 24mg to 30mg, but the nic level was too high. I stopped using e-cigs because vaping was more stressful than enjoyable; I invested at least $600 in vaping, and I found myself dreading vaping. In my opinion, it wasn't worth it.
I believe most of us experienced bumps in the road (Like I started with a passthru and no one mentioned the short little cord meant the only possible position for vaping was hunched over your computer. As a "kick back and relax smoker", this made things difficult at first. Filling hazards and such are just a learning curve thing. If you were burning out (quality) cartos that still had plenty of juice, you were probably letting them get too hot - setting up 2 units with their own cartos and vaping the one that felt cooler to the touch drastically increased the longevity of my cartos.
I'm back up to 3 packs a day, and I don't like it. I will apologize to the die hard vapers right now, because what I'm about to say might offend y'all. My first time vaping, I went into it with the intention of quitting smoking. I spent way more money than I really could afford to do it, and ended up stressed out and upset. This time, the goal is to reduce the number of cigarettes I smoke a day. It would be nice to quit, but I'm not feeling very optimistic about it given my previous experience.
Eli, you seem to have some experience with this. Given my experiences with the old cartos, how will the Volt cartos improve upon my previous experience? Will they work well with a 50/50 mix? Do they require less to maintain than the old cartos? Given that I smoke 3 packs a day, about how many cartos am I going to blow through a day?
Everyone's taste is different. Again, assuming the volts are the same as the Bloogs, 50/50 mix shouldn't bother them. Their wicking ability is really awesome. Your mileage may vary, but I smoked a pack and a half per day and top off poly cartos literally every hour (but I also vape more than I smoked). Of course, the reason I do that is to avoid ever vaping one completely dry. If you're chain smoking throughout the day (and I can't imagine any other way of going through 3 packs a day), I could easily see you going through 15+ complete cartos per day - just depends on your personal habits/vaping style.
You've made the big purchases already. Compared to that, dropping 10 or 15 bucks to try something that might make that investment pay off (and more importantly, get you off cigarettes) is worth it.
The one other thing to consider is 3 packs per day is difficult to replace with stock slim batteries and cartos. You'd need a pocketful of both to do so. Most people trying to replace that much of a habit find it too much of a hassle until they get something with more capacity. Until recently, I used my kr at home with clearomizers and an Ego-T when out and about just to avoid having to lug around extra batteries and gear. I've just switched to the XL clearomizers for the ego batteries and can go from awakening to sleeping with 2 batteries and 4 cartos - much, much better than refilling every hour and recharging every hour and a half. If all of your investment has been put into slim battery equipment and you're serious about vaping, you might want to look into something like the Gogo, Igo, or a bottom feed mod. Trying to use slim batteries to keep up with a serious smoker who's not sitting next to a handy juice/electricity supply constantly is a ton of effort.
