Well welcome to the world of vaping!
I wanted to chime in because I remember how confusing this was for me, I felt lost and confused and before I found this forum, it was even worse. Lots and lots of what I will call, false advertising. One of our cartrages is the same as a pack of cigs etc. Unfortunately it's not an exact science in converting so it leaves tons of gray area when advertisers try to tell you what you want from an ecig.
That said, there is no same same between e-cigs and analogs. I remember my first puff on my first e-cig, the Blu. My first thought was, hrm, this isn't bad, it's not exactly the same but it's pretty good I can see myself doing this. Now every smoker is different thus why there are so many brands out there, your going to find the same thing in cigs. The problem is e-cigs are really at least 3 or more different items.
You have your battery - determines voltage primarily, life of the battery is also a consideration.
You have your heating element and all the resistances that come along with it.
You have your liquid delivery - sometimes combined in the atty, sometimes a separate tank, or bottom feeding system.
Lastly and very important is your e-juice or flavor.
Each one of these elements has it's own nuances. I started with the Blu and well for me a 3-5 pack a day smoker, the Blu didn't cut it. And unfortunately the Blu didn't give me a lot of ways to test out different fluids. I strongly recommend staying away from systems that force you to use their juices, in my experience they are trying to control too much and well not saying the juices are bad, but they fail to realize smoking is not a one size fits all, never has been thus again why we have all those brands of cigs out there.
I found this forum after getting frustrated with the Blu and put a post out very similar to yours, and I was welcomed by many with lots of information, it helped I was still very confused, but I did get the overall feeling that at the time, most people liked the Joye eGo. I didn't understand exactly what that ment but I bought one, and was very pleased with it. I would recommend this e-cig to any starter and still do to this day, they are relativity cheap, you can get a complete kit from 40 bucks to as high as 60. Puresmoker.com comes to mind as the overall cheapest at the time at 50 dollars, but i've seen a couple places semi recently offering it for 40.
Now what that gave me the ability to do finally was figure out what I liked from a vaping standpoint, i experemented with probably 100's if not a 1000 juices. It was fun and over time after I stopped smoking all together, my taste buds changed and I had to figure out what I liked to vape the most, I started as you probably will with a traditional tobacco flavor, and over time moved away from it.
The next thing I started to experiment with was the liquid delivery system, there are tons of mods out there from polyfill, blue foam, brass screens, even plastic inserts ( was one of my favorites ), cartomizers, tanks, bottom feeders and what I thought I would never fall back onto direct drip! Each one of these mods has an effect on the flavor of the juice, and that dreaded dry hit taste, which i eventually couldn't stand and why I finally went to direct drip. Bottom feeders were probably as good, but they are generally box mods that are bulky, and I honestly haven't found a great box mod that holds a consistent voltage.
Next is your heating element, even if you go with carto's, you need to consider your oHm / Voltage sweet spot, and that's probably the next hardest thing to figure out. Get yourself a cheap multimeter as you run down this road vaping you may need to figure out your sweet spot. As time went on I learned that mAh of a battery simply told me how long the drain would probably last, the higher the mAh the longer the battery lasted, voltage comes in next, most e-cigs are 3.7 volts, and operate generally around the 3.5 volt mark, you'll find vapor production to be good still, but the vapor will be cold. You can go with lower resistance to get a better throat hit. You can also go with a variable volt e-cig so you can play with both.
Ok, to start to wrap everything up, what I'm getting at is don't think that the e-cig you buy today will end up being the only e-cig you will buy, I highly recommend sticking with some of the most common types, mostly the 510 threading on the attomizer/cartomizer is hands down the most widely used and available from everywhere. Normally I would recommend just cutting to the chase and buying the Provari V2 from provape.com, but I understand that price point on something you are not sure about is well very high, I tell people all the time, I didn't start with this ecig and generally I don't recommend people to start with this, you have an adjustment period as you convert from analogs to e-cigs.
I remember constantly losing my e-cig and runing around like a chicken with my head cut off trying to find it. Putting ashtrays around my home so I'd have some place to set it down and only so many places to check. You may find that the lower cost mods, like the eGo's are an acceptable loss if you lose it somehow, I was. Lost one boating, another at a beach. 12 buck battery, 2 dollar cone, 5 buck atty, and a 3 dollar drip tip. 22 dollar loss for being careless, defiantly something I was fine with. I don't use my eGo's anymore at all, I've made some lifestyle adjustments instead because I love the way the Provari hits, not everyone wants to make that change so it might not be for you, so as a starting point, I recommend the eGo style e-cigs or if size is an issue the standard 510 is a great product.
Hope this helps and makes sense, I was trying to address my initial confusion when i started and I hope I addressed your needs.
so what you're recommending is to get a 510 (cause it has longer battery life?) but when I get serious about it (quite likely) I should cut the chase and get me a provari. Sounds to me I can save some bucks skipping the 510...
