Right upfront, let me make it totally clear that I have no commercial relationship with www.squaresmoke.com other than to note that I purchased eight (+ one free) of their product for full price plus shipping from their website.
DESCRIPTION: This is a disposable PV meant to retail for about $9.00-10.00. It comes in either of two flavors, "original red" (black and red) and "menthol" (black and green). Here's what you get:
(The analog cigarette included in the picture is 100 mm. so you can judge the dimensions.)
The box contains a hard plastic tube. In the plastic tube, which has soft vinyl plugs at each end, you find the PV itself. The black end contains the battery, switch and lights; the red end has a cartomizer. The cartomizer cannot be separated from the battery (maybe with a pair of pliers you could). The box mentions a pull tab you have to remove to reveal a little ventilation hole in the cartomizer and an unobtrusive plastic plug sealing the business end of the cartomizer. Pull the tab, remove the plug, and you're ready to punch the button and vape. Here's a picture showing the PV ready to go:
The box claims up to 500 puffs (claimed to be the equivalent of two packs of analogs) and cautions you to take no more than 15 puffs per hour.
REVIEW: When you depress the button, you get a whole light show. The end, the button itself and a transparent ring separating the battery from the cartomizer all light up. This is not an unobtrusive PV!
I only bought the "original red" flavor, so I can't comment on the menthol version. The original red is tobacco flavored with cigar-like overtones and produces lots of vapor with a decent throat hit. I very much enjoyed the taste. My non-smoking wife says the room note is more tobacco cigarette-like than anything else I've blown at her. My guess is that the nicotine level is 24 mg./ml. or so, but it's only a guess. The cartomizer is virtually gurgle-free, a plus.
I tried twenty long drags within about ten minutes. Toward the end of this stress test, vapor production and flavor had declined considerably, and I started to get a slight hint of a "burnt" taste. But after letting it rest for an hour or so, the vapor production and flavor returned and the hint of burnt taste disappeared. I do not know if you really can get 500 puffs out of one of these, since I haven't tried to vape it dry.
You want to retain the little end-plug: the cartomizer will leak a bit if the PV is stored cartomizer-down. The tube will not store a standard-diameter PV battery: it's meant solely for the Square Smoke or other skinny PVs. The end-cap on the cartomizer cannot be removed, nor can the battery be recharged. When this goes dry or the battery drains, you pitch it.
SUMMARY: The Square Smoke seems to be best as an introduction to vaping for newbies, and as such it does its job very well. It is maintenance free and totally unfussy as to how it is used. Thus it's about as close to a whip-it-out-and-light-it equivalent of an analog as I've found. Taverns in states where smoking is prohibited should sell about a bazillion of these things.
The price of admission is also low enough that I'll be handing out most of the ones I bought to smoking friends — but I'll be handing out business cards of good internet websites and the URL of www.e-cigarette-forum.com as well. The rest of my Square Smokes I'll put in my glove compartment to tide me over in case of battery drain on one of my regular PVs.
DESCRIPTION: This is a disposable PV meant to retail for about $9.00-10.00. It comes in either of two flavors, "original red" (black and red) and "menthol" (black and green). Here's what you get:
(The analog cigarette included in the picture is 100 mm. so you can judge the dimensions.)
The box contains a hard plastic tube. In the plastic tube, which has soft vinyl plugs at each end, you find the PV itself. The black end contains the battery, switch and lights; the red end has a cartomizer. The cartomizer cannot be separated from the battery (maybe with a pair of pliers you could). The box mentions a pull tab you have to remove to reveal a little ventilation hole in the cartomizer and an unobtrusive plastic plug sealing the business end of the cartomizer. Pull the tab, remove the plug, and you're ready to punch the button and vape. Here's a picture showing the PV ready to go:
The box claims up to 500 puffs (claimed to be the equivalent of two packs of analogs) and cautions you to take no more than 15 puffs per hour.
REVIEW: When you depress the button, you get a whole light show. The end, the button itself and a transparent ring separating the battery from the cartomizer all light up. This is not an unobtrusive PV!
I only bought the "original red" flavor, so I can't comment on the menthol version. The original red is tobacco flavored with cigar-like overtones and produces lots of vapor with a decent throat hit. I very much enjoyed the taste. My non-smoking wife says the room note is more tobacco cigarette-like than anything else I've blown at her. My guess is that the nicotine level is 24 mg./ml. or so, but it's only a guess. The cartomizer is virtually gurgle-free, a plus.
I tried twenty long drags within about ten minutes. Toward the end of this stress test, vapor production and flavor had declined considerably, and I started to get a slight hint of a "burnt" taste. But after letting it rest for an hour or so, the vapor production and flavor returned and the hint of burnt taste disappeared. I do not know if you really can get 500 puffs out of one of these, since I haven't tried to vape it dry.
You want to retain the little end-plug: the cartomizer will leak a bit if the PV is stored cartomizer-down. The tube will not store a standard-diameter PV battery: it's meant solely for the Square Smoke or other skinny PVs. The end-cap on the cartomizer cannot be removed, nor can the battery be recharged. When this goes dry or the battery drains, you pitch it.
SUMMARY: The Square Smoke seems to be best as an introduction to vaping for newbies, and as such it does its job very well. It is maintenance free and totally unfussy as to how it is used. Thus it's about as close to a whip-it-out-and-light-it equivalent of an analog as I've found. Taverns in states where smoking is prohibited should sell about a bazillion of these things.
The price of admission is also low enough that I'll be handing out most of the ones I bought to smoking friends — but I'll be handing out business cards of good internet websites and the URL of www.e-cigarette-forum.com as well. The rest of my Square Smokes I'll put in my glove compartment to tide me over in case of battery drain on one of my regular PVs.
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