I can't say much more than what has already been said.... but I will anyway...
I'll say it... and I'm sure I'll take plenty of heat over it...
Sub-ohm will never "go away"... Any more than revolvers will go away.... but... In my opinion they are becoming more and more obsolete as new more powerful regulated mods come along...
Here's the thing.... Look around.... Now imagine everything going all wavey and squiggly... you're being transported back in time... You're now in a time when there are no variable voltage mods... You look around the room and see a couple of guys sucking on blu type cigalikes... then there's that one weird kid in the corner running some strange carto contraption that's duct taped on the end of a flashlight... Ahhh... the first mechanical mod...
So you decide to do the same.... But now you've got at best 4.2 volts, and a nominal 3.7 volts coming out of your battery... Slap a 2.5ohm carto on it and you're pushing a grand 5 1/2 watts.... Not exactly blowing clouds are you?
But maybe you're the show off type... You want all the eyes on the room to be on you.... Or maybe you just love that flavor, but really want to strengthen it and make it more rich and dense... Maybe you're just a visual guy and really want to feel like you're blowing out a lot of smoke.... Whatever the reason, you decide you need more... MORE POWER!!! MORE POWER!!!
Now you could go get that 6 cell mag-lite and try your duct tape skills on it instead.... but decide it's going to be more difficult stealth vaping in the middle of Pathmark using that thing.... But you remember something brilliant that nerdy guy down the hall told you once.... E-MC^2.... After realizing that doesn't help you at all... you remember the other thing he told you... P = E^2 / R Yes... that's the ticket.... you know the more heat you produce the more liquid you'll vaporize... more watts means more heat... and the nerdy kid down the hall just made you realize that if your coil was 1.5 ohms instead of 2.5 you'd be pushing 9 1/4 watts... almost double what you are now!
So you run to the kitchen and rip apart the toaster... Grab some of the wire, bend over and make a few wraps around your aglet... You run down the hall to the nerdy kid and ask him to tell you the resistance of this thing... AH HA!!!! 1.5 ohms!!! PERFECT... you were born for this....
You duct tape it to your flashlight and fire it up! HAHA!!!! That's awesome!!!! More vapor... More cloud... More flavor!!!! This is what I've always been waiting for!!!
Oh... But wait... what if it was 1 ohm??? WHOA!!!! That will give you 13 1/2 watts!!!! Now we're talking.... So you take your newly made coil, duct tape it to your flashing and fire it up!
It's brilliant....
But wait... why stop there!!!
Sub-ohm is born.... let's try .5 ohms!!!! WHOA!!! you sit down your calculator with a wild look in your eyes... as you suddenly realize you'll be kicking out 27 watts!!!
But you've noticed something... you're getting nice big clouds now... because of course you've made all sorts of modifications to make sure your coil stays wet... it's not just burning up it's actually producing clouds!!! But you want more... and now that you're down in this "sub-ohm" range, it doesn't take much of a change to make big increases in power!
So it happens... you decide to try a .25 ohm coil... Holy hanna!!! 56 watts!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is going to be amazing!!!!
You fire that bad boy up and it's AMAZING!!! except... what's that smell? An hour later you wake up... At first you wonder if the S.W.A.T. team raided your apartment... You remember white smoke filling the room (tear gas?) then a loud explosion... Was that them kicking in the door? Or maybe they threw in a flash bang?
Nope... it was just your battery exploding... Your nerdy friend forgot to tell you that I = E / R... and that your new .25 ohm coil drew 14.8 amps at 3.7 volts... Exceeding the limits of your 5amp flashlight battery by a mile...
You decide maybe sub-ohm isn't your thing... you buy a new toaster and find out the nerdy kid down the hall just packed up for MIT...
Flashy lights, wavey lines, squiggly dizziness and BAM... you're back here in the here and now....
The first mods were mechanical mods... They had a fixed voltage... The ONLY way to "change" the vape, or get more vapor was to lower the resistance of the coil...
Then variable voltage came along.... Now we have mods that are capable of outputting way more voltage than 3.7 volts... 6v, 9v, etc...
Now let's think for a moment... if we slap a mech mod on a 1.5 ohm coil.... We're going to get just over 9 watts out of it.... If we want more, we HAVE to lower the resistance....
On the other hand, what if we take that 1.5 ohm coil and throw 9.3 volts on it? All of a sudden we're kicking out 58 watts!!!!! We'd have to go down to a .24 ohm coil to try to get that kind of power on a mech at 3.7 volts....
Now what's the difference? Well, let's assume we want to build with 26awg wire....
Let's say we build a dual coil for our mech mod we're going to have to do 4 wraps per coil... That should give us our approx. 58 watts... and as a side note a heat flux of 1070mW/mm2
Now if we build for our regulated mod, we'd have to do 30 wraps for each coil!!!!!!! bringing our heat flux down to 171mW/mm2 for that same 58 watts...
Now that's a bit overkill... but let's say we used 30awg instead... Now down to 13 wraps.. and our heat flux is 688mW/mm2... which is still going to be pretty high... but we'll live with it...
In either case, what advantage do we have over the mech setup? First, we have MUCH more surface area.... The more surface area we have, the more vapor we can produce... Yes, heat is part of the equation too, but you can only wick so fast no matter how good your wicking material... In the end, surface area plays the biggest part in how much vapor you can actually produce... The more surface area you have vaporizing the liquid, the more vapor you get. We also have much less total loss in the legs of the coil, but that's a whole different conversation...
Think about it like this... If you took 5 mods, duct taped them all together and each were running a coil 2mm in diameter and 6 turns, you've just multiplied your vapor production by 5... Because you've multiplied your surface area by 5...
Mech mods will always have their place... Hell I own some myself... But as technology improves and these higher voltage mods get better and better, it won't be long till you'll start seeing "cloud chasing" competitions being won on these devices and not the mechs of old...
In my opinion... and hey, it's my opinion only... nothing more... so take it for what it's worth... sub-ohm is mostly just a hold over from days gone by, and as each day goes by and more and more improvements are made in the regulated mods, I see it becoming the revolver of the firearm world...
What do I mean by that? I concealed carry.... There are many out there who refuse to carry anything but a revolver... Why? Because it's simplistic... It's so basic in it's design that almost nothing can go wrong... They carry it because they know it'll be there if they need it and it won't fail them.... An automatic on the other hand, there's many more pieces in the design... More points of possible failure... More things that can go wrong... But in the end... I'll do my excellent maintenance on an ultra reliable platform and take my 17 rounds (or 23 with an extra mag) over 5,6 or 7 any day...
