The longer I exhale a fully saturated vape, the longer I can contemplate on what is good for that moment.
A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
This^^^^
I think because of the gear and the nature of vaping, a lot of people take it further as a hobby and part of their smoking cessation.
I too was looking for an exact replica of a cigarette hit. It was my "Unicorn." I was never really interested in the hobby or cloud chasing at all. Vaping was nice, and I had given up smoking, but it still just wasn't as good as real smoking.
With cartomizers, clearmizers, and RBA tanks it seems to be a bit weak with the short draws emulating a real cigarette. You have to take long multiple puffs way exceeding the way you would of smoked tobacco. If you try to strictly vape these toppers like you would of smoked a cigarette, it's just not there.
I found that sub-ohm vaping on a properly set-up RDA can be dead-on with emulating a real cigarette hit. A nice quick 2-3 second mouth to lung puff that produces thick, warm vapor and lung feel. No primer puffs, no cloud chasing at all.
Sure, you could open up the airflow and chuck it for a good 10 sec and exhale a fog machine.. but set up right it produces an exacting replica of an actual real cigarette hit. Just like you remember: you put it to your lips mid conversation, drag for 2-3 sec, and there it is, that old familiar mouth and lung feel of smoke.. only it's not smoke!
It's like the very essence of our culture , bigger, better, more, more, more .
And while this all sounds cool (at least I think it does), it doesn't at all represent how I smoked analogs. The only analogy to modding in the analog world that I can think of would be a 20-second, lung-buster tobacco hit on one of those water pipe contraption thingies. And, well, I never smoked tobacco that way, and I never met anyone who did.
So, flavor is cool...heck yea, I'm all for that. But is insane vapor volume really that big of a need? (And yes, I realize more vapor is the means by which more flavor is achieved...I get that.) But shouldn't the 'ideal' be closer to something like a 'normal' 3-4 second pull producing great flavor, a good throat hit, and a reasonable amount of vapor (whatever that is)? Maybe most importantly, shouldn't the goal be 'less is more' where a great vape can be achieved without draining 1ml of juice on a single pull?