I've been talking about this for a long time, and they get very angry with me here, that I'm bad-rapping Vapage. But it's the truth, and people shouldn't be breathing bad fumes. It's a Chinese QA problem, not reflecting on Vapage's designs, or the Vmods themselves. Though I've gotten 2 superb atomizers of the Uni non BF type, many of their cartos and atties I got were defective. On the atty it takes the form of loose coils, so sections of the wire glow visibly orange for lack of cooling by the
juice, and that decomposes juice. The more VG in your juice, the more Acrolein is produced, and the nastier the burned taste. On the carto it's harder to see. You have to look down the air-tube with a magnifying glass. On a good carto the coil is centered and tightly wrapped around the glass-fiber wick. The wick is stretched across the air-tube, so you can't ever burn anything, like in an Echo. On a bad carto the coil is offset and goes off into the wadding blanket that surrounds the air-tube, and/or there are loose coils again. You get a bad taste from either defect, though the two tastes are different ;-) I have never had good luck with the silos. See below. The atty is incinerating juice as it reaches the orange wire. On the carto you can't even see the coil, it's way off in the wadding, and part of the wire you do see is also loose.
I think it's an industry-wide problem and explains a lot of the variation, and people changing brands. I think people should just return parts that don't work. I'm sure Vapage will exchange them, they don't want you inhaling crap, and they have a good customer service record. For people that are far away, like Smilee, it's great the XL works with just about any carto or atty.