Overwhelmed by advanced ecigs

[Drop Dead Fred]

So I tried Blu ecigs out for about 6 months. They were good for a while, but my main gripes are that: battery only lasts for about 50 puffs, and its actual life lasts maybe 2 months if I'm lucky. After that, its completely broken. The worst part I would say is that the cartridges are advertised as 150 puffs-200 puffs, but I only get about 50 puffs from it, then it dies. Not to mention, 1 out of every 5 I use, the cartridge is defective in some way (won't work at all, or requires me to puff on it super hard to get a hit).

I said all of the above so that people can recommend some good products based on what I am looking for. I am reading about tanks and cartomizers and have no idea what they really are or do. I checked out a kanger starter kit on their website, saw the tank and the battery, but I didn't see any liquid with the kit. Am I supposed to go to a different website and buy the liquid for it?

If someone could direct me to a reliable, quality starter kit, that would give me everything I need to vape, I'd really appreciate it. Going from the simplicity of blu cigs to these more high end products is a little overwhelming for me since I am really new to vaping. Thanks

 

[jblack741]

this may work for you:

Innokin

Aspire

This is a US site so shipping is not bad and the service is good.

 

[Marty163]

Being new this year myself I know what your mean. I recommend staying away from starter kits as they are usually more expensive. If it were me I'd like to of been recommended an ego style twist battery (provides the electrickery and you twist the base to alter the amount of electrickery you want), a kanger clearomizer (personally a Kanger T3D as they are really cheap and really simple as are the replaceable coils (the thing that turns liquid into goodness)), a ego charger (puts some electrickery back into the battery), some spare coils for the Kanger T3D (google will help with finding these ) and lastly some half decent liquid.

 

[Marty163]

Once you have hands on and assemble the components a few times it all starts to make sense. I've got an APV and a rebuildable on order. At first is sounds a lot but in essence they're two parts. 1-something that provides electric and 2-something that turns liquid into vapour

 

[Drop Dead Fred]

this may work for you:

This is a US site so shipping is not bad and the service is good.

Ok so the aspire link for instance. That item and a bottle of juice is all I need in order to vape? Looking at the juice I found a few other questions to ask.

How long will a 15ml bottle last approximately? 200 puffs? 300?

What strength does the average former smoker use? Im thinking of going for the 6mg.

And finally, these flavors are kind of crazy. How is anyone supposed to know what unicorn blood or krakenberry tastes like? lol. I'm assuming you can take your tank that you bought from one place, and use liquid from another company, right?

 

[DaveP]

A Vision Spinner and a Kanger Evod or Aspire CE5 BDC would be a nice inexpensive start. I agree with the other suggestions as well. If you buy the Vision Spinner you will need two so that you can still vape while the other is charging.

Google Electronic cigarettes along with your zip code and you can see where the vape shops are in your area. Check the home page of the ECF forum for a link to those shops (if listed) and you can go right to their web site and browse. If they are registered vendors here, they are legit. The registered vendors are the last section of links in the home page.

 

[Marty163]

Wirh regards to flavour I was lucky because a local store to me allows you to try before you buy. I was a 15-20 a day guy. They recommended 18mg/1.8%.
As you see from the Aspire category is s clearomizer. You'll still need something to power it.

 

[DaveP]

Ok so the aspire link for instance. That item and a bottle of juice is all I need in order to vape? Looking at the juice I found a few other questions to ask.

How long will a 15ml bottle last approximately? 200 puffs? 300?

What strength does the average former smoker use? Im thinking of going for the 6mg.

And finally, these flavors are kind of crazy. How is anyone supposed to know what unicorn blood or krakenberry tastes like? lol. I'm assuming you can take your tank that you bought from one place, and use liquid from another company, right?

The Aspire link is for a tank atomizer that needs a battery to make it work. A good choice would be the Vision Spinner. It's a popular variable voltage mod. SInce the battery is built in, most people have two or some other ecig for backup while charging.

The Innokin link is for an MVP 2 that comes with an Iclear 30 tank atomizer. The battery is built into the MVP, so you will probably be able to vape all day and charge it at night. For the price, most people buy two of those so that they are not dead in the water while the unit is charging. Charging can take 3 hours +/-.

Most vapers use 4-5ml per day. A 10ml bottle = about 2-3 days. That's chain vaping for the most part. If you vape like you smoked, a 10ml bottle may last 2 days or a week. I order 50ml bottles when I order.

If you were a 2 PAD smoker, 18mg to 24mg is good for staving off the cravings. If you smoked less, you could go lower. The good thing about nicotine levels is that you will be ordering juice like you bought cartons of smokes. You can try lower levels while you still have some higher level juice around just in case.

 

[readeuler]

Welcome to ECF, you've come to a fantastic place for advice. Get your Blu ready, and remain calm!

When "stepping up the vape ladder", there are tons of variables at play. I'll assume that you're vaping to smoke less/not at all (if not at all, and you made it 6 months on Blu's only - that's absolutely amazing), that you have a bit of money you're willing to spend (I imagine Blue stuff isn't too cheap).

A small step in the right direction would be some kind of eGo setup, like you saw on Kanger's website. Kanger sells hardware only, to my knowledge, but lots of vendors that sell a multitude of brands will also sell liquid, which you will need to buy separately (but, not in pre-filled cartridges, luckily).

Your Blu has 3 main pieces: A battery, an atomizer, and a tank. The atomizer is really the star of the show, because it uses energy from the battery, and juice from the tank, to produce that vapor we all love.

This set-up is a little different for most "heads" out there now; they generally combine the atomizer with a tank to hold the liquid (no more disposable, pre-filled cartridges). This set-up is generally preferable, because it's one less piece and the tanks are refillable; no more being tied to liquid that comes from the hardware manufacturer! The atomizers do wear out, and can generally be replaced (the tank that holds that atomizer and liquid can be reused for quite a while) for much cheaper than the cost of the whole "head".

There are other steps in the right direction, most of them a little "bigger" than the step to an eGo. I don't do a lot of buying, so I'll let someone else do the referrals. But with the more advanced devices, you'll need those two components: Something that holds a battery and lets you push a button (an eGo battery, or a more advanced "mod"), as well as a tank/cartomizer/clearomizer to produce vapor and hold liquid. The equipment itself is generally less complicated than deciding what equipment to buy, trust me!

 

[mkbilbo]

So I tried Blu ecigs out for about 6 months. They were good for a while, but my main gripes are that: battery only lasts for about 50 puffs, and its actual life lasts maybe 2 months if I'm lucky. After that, its completely broken. The worst part I would say is that the cartridges are advertised as 150 puffs-200 puffs, but I only get about 50 puffs from it, then it dies. Not to mention, 1 out of every 5 I use, the cartridge is defective in some way (won't work at all, or requires me to puff on it super hard to get a hit).

I said all of the above so that people can recommend some good products based on what I am looking for. I am reading about tanks and cartomizers and have no idea what they really are or do. I checked out a kanger starter kit on their website, saw the tank and the battery, but I didn't see any liquid with the kit. Am I supposed to go to a different website and buy the liquid for it?

If someone could direct me to a reliable, quality starter kit, that would give me everything I need to vape, I'd really appreciate it. Going from the simplicity of blu cigs to these more high end products is a little overwhelming for me since I am really new to vaping. Thanks

A couple to consider:

Innokin iTaste VV V3.0 Starter Kit

Batteries are 800mAh which means a lot longer lasting than Blu. Don't worry too much about that "mAh" thing. Just know that it's a measure of battery capacity. Bigger the number, longer the battery lasts (though, also, longer it takes to charge... it's like bigger the gas tank on your car, the longer you can drive but the longer it takes to fill up with gas).

Has what we call "pass through" which means if you have a powered USB port handy or are, say, sitting on the couch where you can plug into an outlet, it "passes through" the power and doesn't use the battery charge. So, say you're at your desk or something and can plug in, you aren't running on your battery at all and save your charge for when you're out and about.

The MVP is popular:

Innokin iTaste MVP V2.0

Some don't care for "box" type units (me, I like "boxy" over "tubular"... it's a matter of taste). But the MVP has the "pass through" ability and a big, big battery. 2600mAh.

By way of comparison, Blu batteries are maybe 80 to 100mAh. So 800mAh is 8 to 10 times more capacity and 2600 is 26 times more (or more). Much, much longer lasting stuff.

(Though I think the "100" style, longer battery Blu has is around 226mAh but that means we're talking 4 times to 10 times longer lasting.)

I started on Blu so I feel your pain. Trust me. Their batteries just can't hold up. Since they're trying to make a "cigarette like" unit, there's just not enough room in there for a decent battery.

Worse, their cartridges are tiny little things that can't hold much juice at all. Frankly, I think that's on purpose. I mean, they want the repeat business eh?

(Despite it all, I actually do have a Blu around. I still, once in a while, get this weird "need" to hold something like a cigarette and... play smoke? I don't use it often but sometimes it's like an itch I can't scratch. I also like several of their flavors. But they are WAY overpriced to be anybody's regular vape.)

 

[Marty163]

Good luck in taking the leap Drop Dead Fred. I also apologise for my spelling. I'm on my phone and the auto correct is more annoying than the wife.

 

[LisaR]

A kit like this would be all you need to get started http://www.myvaporstore.com/Vision_Spinner_Joye_Ego_C_Twist_Combo_p/vvs-c.htm , plus some liquid. I would recommend a 1300 mah Spinner (it's big, but the battery life is long) and a 650 Twist (smaller, easier to drop in a pocket and go) for the batteries, and the Kanger T3S's for the toppers. You will want some extra coil heads, too Atomizer Head for Kanger MT3S, T3S . I get 1.8 ohm, but 2.4 is fine, too. I don't know much about their e-liquid, but you could buy some there to get yourself started. You might want to start with more like 12mg strength liquid. That's pretty average, but it depends on how much you smoked.

Good luck!

 

[tearose50]

First let me begin with a bit of info for you. The cartridge for the blu came prefilled with e-liquid and is next to impossible to refill. So, when it was empty or a dud, the only choice was to toss it. (And, yes, one of the greatest lies in vaping is how long that type of cartridge would last)

Many many of the kits for ages sold on-line have the capability of re-filling whatever atomizing device comes with it. It's pretty simple to fill the device, gives one plenty of options on flavors and strengths of nicotine and also keeps the cost down. In fact, most don't come prefilled these days, so you will also need to separately buy e-liquid.

By the time I've composed this I'm sure you have already had several suggestions on what types to buy. Here's a picture of what I'd recommend, but I don't happen to know of an actual kit for it. The parts will be easy to find, should you choose to do a bit of shopping.

That blue part (the battery) can be bought not so tall, too. You will need one of those and a charger made for it. There are several names for this fatter battery style, Ego Twist and Spinner are two of the most common. You could also get an "ego" battery, which is simply a fatter battery than your blue, but you can get various toppers/atomizing devices for it.

The topper/atomizing device shown is called a Nautilus Mini.

 

[faile]

Ok so the aspire link for instance. That item and a bottle of juice is all I need in order to vape? Looking at the juice I found a few other questions to ask.

How long will a 15ml bottle last approximately? 200 puffs? 300?

What strength does the average former smoker use? Im thinking of going for the 6mg.

And finally, these flavors are kind of crazy. How is anyone supposed to know what unicorn blood or krakenberry tastes like? lol. I'm assuming you can take your tank that you bought from one place, and use liquid from another company, right?

No, with the product in that link you would also need to get a battery, a charger, and replacement coils.

I don't really count puffs, so I can't answer that specific question, but a 15 ml bottle lasts me approximately 5 days. It's going to depend on your usage. What strength blu cartridges were you using? 6 mg sounds really low to me for someone using a clearo-style tank (most here seem to use anywhere from 12-36 mg-- I use 24 mg), but if I were you I'd be looking for something close to the strength you're used to with the blu.

Yes, you can use anyone's liquid in your tank (provided you're either using a pyrex or stainless tank OR if you go with a polycarbonate plastic tank, you avoid 'tank cracker' juices... most vendors will have a warning on the product description if the juice is a tank cracker). When it comes to flavors, I'd second DaveP's advice to go to an actual vape shop so you can try juices. Much simpler to find something you'll like that way.

 

[DaveP]

Drop Dead Fred Said: And finally, these flavors are kind of crazy. How is anyone supposed to know what unicorn blood or krakenberry tastes like? lol. I'm assuming you can take your tank that you bought from one place, and use liquid from another company, right?

That's a good question. Some of these juice names have no relation to actual flavor. I have no idea how it tastes until I try it! Once you get your 5 posts you can venture out farther into the topics and read a massive amount of posts. Juice may or may not taste anything like its name. What someone else likes may taste terrible to you. After all, some love Broccoli and others hate it. Sample packs are available if you want tobacco flavors, dessert and candy flavors, or any number of other types of juice.

This is where it's nice to have a good brick and mortar ecig store near you. They generally have juice bars where you can sample the juices to see what you like. You just move a drip tip from tank to tank and vape a couple of puffs. When you find something good, you write the name down on an order list. Once you are through sampling, you just walk over to the counter and present the list and buy.

Vape shops are also good places to look at and talk about hardware. Just make sure that they are dedicated vape shops and not a pawn shop or other main business with a side counter for vaping. You want them to know more than you when you have questions! Read diligently here on ECF and you will gain an education quickly.

 

[greyfox]

I find the absolute easiest setup, in my opinion, is the Aerotank Mini from Kanger used with a twist style battery; it's extremely simple to fill with juice and highly portable. As to how long 15 mls of juice will last, that's highly subjective and mileage will vary considerably. For me, 15 mls will see me through roughly three days, but I chain vape so I can't give you an estimate for the casual vaper on that score. Here's a link to Ruby Roo's review of the Aerotank Mini in case you want to see more info on this tank: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zC9wuN2bXA

 

[shatteredsoul76]

Welcome to ECF, Im new to this as well and it can be very confusing and the best thing to do is read. There are a ton of good mods and it all depends on your budget and preference. I got a Innokin VV V3 and love it, was only $28 shipped and has a lot of features. If you dont mind having a box style mod the MVP2 is supposed to be good and not overly expensive.

As far as tanks I have a Kanger Aerotank, Aspire Nautilus as well as a few Kanger Evod glass tanks. I really like the Kangers the best and the coils are really easy to re-build if you choose to learn how to do it.

As far as juices the choices are endless and all in personal preference due to your taste, I highly recommend finding a local vapor shop that has a taste bar to let you sample several flavors until you find something you like. I have made 3 orders in 2 weeks from Killer Juice as they have great juice and a weekly 99 cent sale! I also like ITCvape which sells premium juice at cheap prices.

I have learned a ton from this site in the two short weeks I have been vaping and havent had an analog in almost a week, Happy Vaping!

 

[Drop Dead Fred]

Thanks everyone for all the helpful information. To the guy who told me to google a nearby store, I laughed to myself, thinking "in this small town if there was an ecig store I would know about it, Id have to go to the mall in the next county to go to one".

well low and behold, theres a new shop that just opened up 2 mins from my house. going to swing by in the morning so i can do some testing. if i still have questions after i talk to someone there ill be back. Thanks again

 

[DetraMental]

Hello and welcome Drop Dead Fred! You couldn't have picked out a better forum to get you started on the right path to vaping. I wish you the best of luck and am glad you found a B&M so close to ya. Let us know how things turn out for you and by all means ask questions if you have them.

 

[mkbilbo]

A kit like this would be all you need to get started http://www.myvaporstore.com/Vision_Spinner_Joye_Ego_C_Twist_Combo_p/vvs-c.htm , plus some liquid. I would recommend a 1300 mah Spinner (it's big, but the battery life is long) and a 650 Twist (smaller, easier to drop in a pocket and go) for the batteries, and the Kanger T3S's for the toppers. You will want some extra coil heads, too Atomizer Head for Kanger MT3S, T3S . I get 1.8 ohm, but 2.4 is fine, too. I don't know much about their e-liquid, but you could buy some there to get yourself started. You might want to start with more like 12mg strength liquid. That's pretty average, but it depends on how much you smoked.

Good luck!

Spinners (and Twists) aren't actually all that bad in size. I had mine mistaken for a Sharpie style pen while carrying it in my top pocket. Even with a Vision 2 topper. Only problem being they don't have any kind of clip widget so carrying in your top pocket can lead to oopsies.