I ordered ten 1.5 ohm dual coil smoketech cartos. They are pretty good (I use them on my provari at around 3.7 volts).
Ive used 2 cartos now and just started on my third so enough that I can form a decent opinion.
First is performance. They are good. Better than the Boge (Ive tried Boge low resistance and regular resistances) or any other carto Ive seen on the market. The only exception is the CE2 ON THE INITIAL FILL (once you refill a CE2, its crap). This likely invalidates my opinion but I really do think the CE2s perform well on their first fill.
One of the first things I noticed is, they hold a decent amount of liquid. I fill 2-3 times a day with about 40 drops each fill so this is a huge plus.
I did some experimenting on the ever popular but often misused and misunderstood 'throat hit'. Using nicotine free, low nicotine (8), medium (16), high (24) and extra high (36) I get that usual burning/tingling sensation starting with the low nicotine content and with the extra high, its insane. You will have no problems with this. However (this was the first time I tried 0 nicotine content), 0 nicotine provides absolutely no throat hit whatsoever. This lead to a discovery, the nicotine causes the throat hit, NOT the device(s) involved. Maybe other people have already discovered this, but I had not.
Vapor production is pretty good. Not the best Ive seen but better than most (including the Boge).
Where these really shine is flavor and this is where one of the drawbacks of these come into play. You can crank the heat on these things and they become too much for me but still maintain the flavor. As I said, I use a Provari and the highest I can set these to is 3.9 volts (anything higher the provari goes into a protected mode, not allowing you to vape until you lower the voltage - supposed to help protect your atties). At 3.9 volts, its hella hot. Too hot for me. I dropped the voltage down to 3.7 and its just fine there.
Now the drawback I mentioned, its really hard to tell when these things are ready for another fill because they seem to hold their flavor so well. Unlike other cartos, there is a distinct flavor that immediately kicks in when it needs to be filled. These do not have that.
The second drawback is, the tips these come with are pure garbage. If you press the mouthpiece down to the point that it sort of snaps in, you get hardly any vapor and on a fresh fill, a mouth full of liquid. If you pull out the mouthpiece enough to get vapor production, the mouthpiece is then so loose that simply turning the device upside down causes the mouthpiece to fall out.
The solution is to simply take the mouthpiece off. They are plenty vapable without any sort of mouthpiece. They dont spit (at least mine havent yet). They do 'pop' but all that seems to be is like a bubble blown with gum that has popped in your mouth,
They are easy to fill. Simply take the mouthpiece / driptip off and drip 5 drops of fluid down the inside of the tube. Rotate 45 degrees and drip another 5 drops down the side. Repeat for two full rotations and wait about 30-60 seconds for the liquid to drain to the bottom of the carto. You can pretty easily tell when they are fully filled if you order the clear ones (which I have). Takes probably about 60 seconds to fill, another 30 to wait, and then looking inside the tube, you can clearly see the parts of the polyfill that are dry and I usually will add two drops to that side of the carto to make sure the whole thing is wet.
Oddly, the key indication that it is time to replace these is not the usual indication that cartos often give (which is usually that the polyfill begins to hold less and less liquid). What happens with these is two things. The bottom of the polyfill begins to darken (ive been vaping a clear, caramel tobacco flavor so it isnt my juice doing this) and it begins to spit just a little bit. So as soon as it starts to spit (only seems to do this on a fresh fill after having been filled 10+ times), I replace it (Ill finish that fill however so that Im not wasting any fluid).
They seem to last about 4 days doing 3 refills a day and that is pushing it maybe 1 or 2 fills more than I should.
Considering they hold about 4 times the amount of a Boge and seem to last 4 days instead of the usual day that a Boge lasts, I would say, right now these are the best thing out there (and I have tried ALOT of cartos/tank systems).
These perhaps may be something I can live with. Not perfect but I can live with them. Good performance, long lasting for the price (I will have gone thru 3 in 2 weeks), and they hold a reasonable amount of juice. Pretty much everything we are looking for in a carto. Now if only they had a mouthpiece that worked... Ill have to scrounge around for my drip tip....
