I ordered the Blu Starter pack two weekends ago. Got it 3 business days later. So far, it has been good. I've not had problems with vapor production cutting out and I like the flavoring. Funnily enough, my fav flavor is menthol. This was surprising to me, I was expecting to like the vanilla more.
There is one issue - the battery charging mechanism still requires some redesign. It doesn't fully charge the batteries when used as expected. I've figured out what needs to be done to get a full charge.
So, addressing some old reviews of blu, here is my experience (as of 5.2.2010)
1. Bad customer service - To be honest, I'm not really sure on this. My stuff shipped fast without any issues. I've not had to deal with customer service.
2. Bad vapor - actually quite the opposite for me. I get good vapor production until we near the end of the cartridge. In fact, the vapor doesn't seem to dissipate as fast as their literature would suggest. I learned how to blow smoke rings within an hour of getting my pack.
3. Battery - So, when charged properly, the batteries do last. The problem is if you just screw the batteries into the USB charger or blu pack, they don't get full charged? Why? I think it is due to the voltage level used by the usb and blu pack. Essentially, to charge a battery, you must apply a voltage greater than the current cell voltage. When you start with a near empty battery, the cell voltage is low, so applying a fixed 5v charge can bring it up. However, as the cell voltage increases, your charger must "work harder" at supplying a higher voltage. Apparently, the charging circuitry in the battery is designed to monitor the difference in charge and cell voltage and cut off when they get to within some threshold. However, the voltage available over usb (at least from my laptop) or from the blu pack must not be high enough so that the batteries get fully charged. If I used the wall adapter plugged into the USB charger instead, and don't fully screw in the battery, I'm able to get it to fully charge.
Note - the batteries should take ~ 2hours to charge from empty.
I think a lot of people's bad experiences with the batteries could be linked to a badly designed charging mechanism. They probably just rely solely on the incoming supply voltage, instead of at least building in a boost converter to up the voltage for charging.
4. Throat hit - not being an actual smoker, this doesn't matter for me since I get the 0 nicotine cartridges anyway. I may buy a pack of nicotine ones so a friend can try it.
Based on my readings, much of the bad reviews are in the past (6 months or older) which makes sense - if they plan to compete, they'd want to up quality control and things like that. Probably improving battery charging tech isn't very high on their list. Right now, they are the most cost effective starter kit in terms of what you get for the amount spent and I think #4 is about the only issue they really need to work on to stay relevant.
Though I am concerned a bit about the vapor. I'm going to have to smoke a real cig in my apt to see how it dissipates vs the blu.
