This is a long-winded, near-worthless entry riddled with opinion, so you might want to avoid reading it.
I've had tobacco smokers see me vape and have asked me how to make the switch to e-cigs. Below is close to what I'd tell them if we had all the time in the world.
Them: “Hey, what e-cig should I buy?”
Me: [Sigh.] Well, with any other product, I'd only have to ask you what your budget is and give you a suggestion or two. For example, a stud finder. Easy. Avoid those and get a couple rare-earth magnets. An opener for wine bottles? Get a double-hinged waiter's corkscrew or pony up some cash and get a Rabbit. Want a high-end blender? Vita-mix. Professional power tool? Dewalt. Want an AV receiver for your surround sound system? You can probably narrow it down to Sony, Pioneer, Marantz and Onkyo and then decide on a model that isn't overkill.
But for e-cigs, you're screwed.
Buy an inexpensive, ubiquitous variety invading convenience stores and you run the risk of instantly hating e-cigs. Buy one of the bazillion starter kits available and you might get ripped off or not like the setup. For example, you might find you hate what are called “cartomizers” or the annoyance of playing with the separate parts of cartridges and atomizers. You might need a decent “throat hit” and find your brand can't cut it because the battery isn't powerful enough. You might have to go through various juices before you find a favorite flavor and strength. On top of all that, you might run in to cheap knockoffs if you don't shop carefully enough and your e-cig can catch on fire. Just when you think you got it right, you notice people giving you stink-eye if you vape anywhere other than the gutter or in a dark alley. I vape at work, but lock myself in a bathroom stall. My secret is safe to this day.
Personally, I'm on my fourth setup. My first was a low-end type that sucked all around. My second was one from a company called Joyetech and the parts all failed to quickly or didn't supply enough power. My third try was Green Smoke, which was highly portable, convenient, and refilling the cartomizers was easy, so it was relatively affordable. But at about the same time the company was bought out by the mega-corporation Altria, many of the cartomizers started failing before I could even refill them once. I know a girl who places $200 orders on Green Smoke cartomizers and now has enough to fill more than three quart-sized jars. She'd rather spend all that money than deal with anything else.
Now to my fourth setup. I had finally found a good juice supplier and recently asked them if they could suggest something. Both the customer service rep and the owner use Kanger Mini Protanks with cigar-sized Joye batteries. The parts are from different companies, but fit together because they run on similar threadings. The only problem I've had so far is that my atomizers were blowing out in a day. The customer service rep said, “I bet you're not letting them sit for 10 minutes to soak in the juice before you're using them, right?” I paused. She said, “Yeah, I know you're not.” [Sigh #2.]
This is when I need to mention there's plenty of help online. Too much, actually. Some websites or forums are from companies that want to sell you something, proclaiming that their creation is the most innovative, successful product on the market. Some help is from forums so massive you get dizzy. E-cigarette-forum is so stunningly large that I don't even bother with it directly. I Google what I'm looking for and a thread from the forum usually pops up as one of the top returns.
I decided to Google my former atomizer problem and found out from ECF that I can rebuild them. I was online 6 hours and still couldn't decide how to proceed. Because e-cig users are like snowflakes; all of them are different. They all have different tastes and they all have too many products too choose from and they all have too many rebuild methods at their disposal. Just for rebuilding a single, specific type of atomizer, there are a stunning number of wicks and gauges of wire and tools you might need. You end up time-traveling back to college learning about ohms. Do one of your rebuilding steps wrong and you might have to troubleshoot numerous issues.
So as you probably noticed, the deeper you dive into the e-cig world, the more complicated it becomes. You read Top 10 lists and find out that a brand you hate is near the top of the list. You read another list and every product they pick is different from the previous list. You read about political efforts that would curb e-cig use and put some companies out of business. You read about VG and PG and some juices that come from China that taste terrible by the time they get to America. You read about possible health problems like allergies to certain juices or lung issues from people afraid that silica wicks can do damage to your lungs. Suddenly you're paranoid. You're on a forum and read about a product you're interested in and there are dozens of replies from people snorting about using anything other than what they own. Watch them on YouTube bragging about their “mods” and blowing giant plumes of smoke into the camera. Suddenly you feel like giving up and going back to regular cigarettes, despite the confirmed health risks and the nasty odor that clings to you like a tick.
Back to the question. In short, I've been using e-cigs for years, so I'm totally capable of answering it: I have no freaking idea what you should buy. Good luck.
I've had tobacco smokers see me vape and have asked me how to make the switch to e-cigs. Below is close to what I'd tell them if we had all the time in the world.
Them: “Hey, what e-cig should I buy?”
Me: [Sigh.] Well, with any other product, I'd only have to ask you what your budget is and give you a suggestion or two. For example, a stud finder. Easy. Avoid those and get a couple rare-earth magnets. An opener for wine bottles? Get a double-hinged waiter's corkscrew or pony up some cash and get a Rabbit. Want a high-end blender? Vita-mix. Professional power tool? Dewalt. Want an AV receiver for your surround sound system? You can probably narrow it down to Sony, Pioneer, Marantz and Onkyo and then decide on a model that isn't overkill.
But for e-cigs, you're screwed.
Buy an inexpensive, ubiquitous variety invading convenience stores and you run the risk of instantly hating e-cigs. Buy one of the bazillion starter kits available and you might get ripped off or not like the setup. For example, you might find you hate what are called “cartomizers” or the annoyance of playing with the separate parts of cartridges and atomizers. You might need a decent “throat hit” and find your brand can't cut it because the battery isn't powerful enough. You might have to go through various juices before you find a favorite flavor and strength. On top of all that, you might run in to cheap knockoffs if you don't shop carefully enough and your e-cig can catch on fire. Just when you think you got it right, you notice people giving you stink-eye if you vape anywhere other than the gutter or in a dark alley. I vape at work, but lock myself in a bathroom stall. My secret is safe to this day.
Personally, I'm on my fourth setup. My first was a low-end type that sucked all around. My second was one from a company called Joyetech and the parts all failed to quickly or didn't supply enough power. My third try was Green Smoke, which was highly portable, convenient, and refilling the cartomizers was easy, so it was relatively affordable. But at about the same time the company was bought out by the mega-corporation Altria, many of the cartomizers started failing before I could even refill them once. I know a girl who places $200 orders on Green Smoke cartomizers and now has enough to fill more than three quart-sized jars. She'd rather spend all that money than deal with anything else.
Now to my fourth setup. I had finally found a good juice supplier and recently asked them if they could suggest something. Both the customer service rep and the owner use Kanger Mini Protanks with cigar-sized Joye batteries. The parts are from different companies, but fit together because they run on similar threadings. The only problem I've had so far is that my atomizers were blowing out in a day. The customer service rep said, “I bet you're not letting them sit for 10 minutes to soak in the juice before you're using them, right?” I paused. She said, “Yeah, I know you're not.” [Sigh #2.]
This is when I need to mention there's plenty of help online. Too much, actually. Some websites or forums are from companies that want to sell you something, proclaiming that their creation is the most innovative, successful product on the market. Some help is from forums so massive you get dizzy. E-cigarette-forum is so stunningly large that I don't even bother with it directly. I Google what I'm looking for and a thread from the forum usually pops up as one of the top returns.
I decided to Google my former atomizer problem and found out from ECF that I can rebuild them. I was online 6 hours and still couldn't decide how to proceed. Because e-cig users are like snowflakes; all of them are different. They all have different tastes and they all have too many products too choose from and they all have too many rebuild methods at their disposal. Just for rebuilding a single, specific type of atomizer, there are a stunning number of wicks and gauges of wire and tools you might need. You end up time-traveling back to college learning about ohms. Do one of your rebuilding steps wrong and you might have to troubleshoot numerous issues.
So as you probably noticed, the deeper you dive into the e-cig world, the more complicated it becomes. You read Top 10 lists and find out that a brand you hate is near the top of the list. You read another list and every product they pick is different from the previous list. You read about political efforts that would curb e-cig use and put some companies out of business. You read about VG and PG and some juices that come from China that taste terrible by the time they get to America. You read about possible health problems like allergies to certain juices or lung issues from people afraid that silica wicks can do damage to your lungs. Suddenly you're paranoid. You're on a forum and read about a product you're interested in and there are dozens of replies from people snorting about using anything other than what they own. Watch them on YouTube bragging about their “mods” and blowing giant plumes of smoke into the camera. Suddenly you feel like giving up and going back to regular cigarettes, despite the confirmed health risks and the nasty odor that clings to you like a tick.
Back to the question. In short, I've been using e-cigs for years, so I'm totally capable of answering it: I have no freaking idea what you should buy. Good luck.
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