So you guys are so far above my head with all this that I need the cliff notes. If you were starting all over and buying the lastest and greatest would you buy a HV atomizer, PV with or without resistor and also what batteries?
Sorry I'm a NOOB looking to upgrade and although I enjoyed your technopoloosa I couldn't really grasp all of your points - I am smart enough to recognize it is important tho !!
Let's do *simple*
The atomizer heats liquid which easily transforms to vapor. The batteries power the atomizer. The bigger the voltage from one or more batteries, the more power goes through the atomizer which means more heat which means more vapor.
More power going through the atomizer means that it will burn out faster because that's the way things are, it's physics and chemistry, more heat means more stress on the atomizer and more chemical changes to the metal in the atomizer's heating element.
Sending electricity through things stresses them, heats them up and breaks them down. Sooner or later, an atomizer will fail unless you keep it on a shelf somewhere and never use it.
Mods are cool-looking battery cases with a connector on them. You *could* use an atomizer by taking two leads from a battery and attaching them to the right parts of an atomizer's connecting threads. It would work perfectly and the only thing stopping anyone from doing it is that they would look very strange doing it public. Hence, the shiny 'look-what-*I've*-got,' battery cases.
When it comes to questions of power, vapor and flavor, deciding on a PV is like balancing three glasses on a round tray.:The glasses are the atomizer you choose, the power you choose, and the money you are willing to spend.
For a layman's purposes, the numbers don't matter for the most part. You need only know or care that Atomizers are engineered to take
some electricity from
some battery and turn it into
some heat. Opinions differ, but the market is speaking and the 510 atomizer seems to be the top dog in many people's opinions regarding heat and flavor. Your mileage may vary, but most people who've been into vaping for a while like either the 510, the 901 or the 801 in that order with everything else running behind them.
Batteries provide some electricity and send it through the atomizer. e-cigarettte batteries usually provide 3.7 volts, but they are small and don't have great staying power. Mods use batteries that can provide the same voltage level, but they do it for much, much longer than any e-cig battery. A 510, manual-button, e-cig battery is dead and gone after two hours of heavy use. The big, single battery used by an altsmoke silver bullet will provide high-quality, 3.7 volt vapor for one or more *days* unless you never take the thing out of your mouth.
In this respect, mods are just e-cigarettes done right: they throw away the LEDs and silly-little mechanisms so they turn on when you draw on them and give you high performance instead. Mods are a matter of people who can build things looking at e-cigarettes that look like cigarettes and thinking outside the box.
Two batteries put end-to-end with wires attached to them form one big battery that multiplies their voltage. Two three-volt batteries become a six-volt power-source when stacked this way. Attach it to an atomizer and the PV-experience changes drastically. The atomizer burns much, much hotter than it would with its normal voltage; it atomizes liquid more efficiently producing denser vapor. The flavorings in the e-liquid come alive at higher voltages as more of the flavoring agents are churned into the denser vaporincreasing both flavor and 'throat-hit.'
The downside to all this is that six-volts can be too much. There is only so much an atomizer's parts can stand. Freshly-charged batteries actually produce slightly *more* power than they are supposed to have for a brief time and sometimes they can burn out a dry atomizer instantlyliterally before you can add juice and take your first puff. And even if your atomizer lives survives the power surge from fresh batteries, the vapor it produces may have a 'burnt' taste to it, or it might be too thick and dense for your lungs to deal with comfortably while costing you a fortune in atomizers. People who stick with 3.7 volts can own an atomizer for months. I've been known to go through two or more of them in a week.
Problems like these have led a few mod-makers (e.g, PureSmoker's current Prodigy) to choose five-volts as the best of both worlds; calling it a 'sweet-spot' that combines high-volume vapor and flavor with better battery and atomizer longevity.
This brings us to the choices and the money. Again, mods are battery-cases that look cool and what you end up with will and should be a matter of how much money you have and your own sense of esthetic taste. No one can make that decision for you and no one should try. I can't tell you what to buy, but I can tell you what I've bought and why I bought it.
I own a PureSmoker Protege (3.7 volts), it's small, adaptable to various atomizers, dripping-friendly (what mod isn't?) and if I were always satisfied with 3.7 volts, it would be the perfect e-cig.
I have an Altsmoke Silver Bullet and I always have it with me alongside the Protege. The Silver Bullet gives me the choice of using either one high-stamina 3.7 volt battery or using two three-volt batteries for a portable high-voltage experience.
I own and use The Copper. It's a quirky beast which can give either 3.7 or six-volt experience, but it's look, feel and function are special. Made from a piece of brass pipe and two end-caps, its esthetic and engineering are quirky and sometimes problematic (it can have a stiff draw on a 510 atomizer) but its mouth-operated mechanical switch is like nothing else on the market while its rough-and-ready looks give the impression that you could roll an SUV over it, dust it off, and just keep on using iteither to deliver nicotine or fend off assailants depending on the occasion.
As a new user (that is, one who is even newer than I am), many good options are open to you and you don't have to let yourself be daunted by all the electrical-engineering-speak that's being bandied about in this forum. At the end of the day, your choice won't be a matter of propeller-head, volt-versus-ohms considerations, but one involving the intersection of money and esthetic choice.
I hope this worked for you.
!!
