I want one just because it goes so well with the provari but I don't understand what makes it cost $30 less than the Provari itself. The AGA-T is $25 and doesn't looks much different. Same goes with other similar things where they cost $80-$150~.
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Why is the Z Atty so expensive?
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I think it's probably just supply and demand. The Z-Atty has been sold out with more coming soon for months now.
The Z-Atty is a nice rba and have one on my Provari. Also have 3 AGA-T2s and they vape equally well. In fact I prefer them because they don't get gunked up as quickly and the cap doesn't tilt off all that easily. Damn good workhorses. I haven't used my ZAP in a while now, but the AGA-T2s are up and running 18/7. Also, unlike the ZAP which utilizes a spring in the positive electrical leg, the AGA-T2 has a solid post and won't experience any electrical contact issues as long as they don't leak ... and they don't leak.
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Because much like the Provari it works, it's easy to set up, and it looks great.
I don't have an Aga-t but I do have an Rsst and there is no comparison the Rsst uses a plastic cup and a screw with a spring for the positive pole. Personally I believe the Zap is worth a lot more of it's $150 than the $30 I paid for the Rsst. I just wish Zen would go to a dual top oring like the Fogatti and if I recall correctly the aga-t.
If the Aga-t would come out with a brushed/satin made of all stainless and Pyrex I would buy a few but you still need a ring/hippo to make it look right. Honestly if this is all about money why would you even buy the Provari to begin with? I am sure a Vamo with an Aga-T would get you where you need to be a lot cheaper. To me it is not about the money at all. I have three mini2.5's with 2 Zaps, next one will be a polished stainless with you guessed it another Zap that will be polished to match. I believe in Provari. I believe in Zenesis. Buy what you feel;Vape on.
I don't have an Aga-t but I do have an Rsst and there is no comparison the Rsst uses a plastic cup and a screw with a spring for the positive pole. Personally I believe the Zap is worth a lot more of it's $150 than the $30 I paid for the Rsst. I just wish Zen would go to a dual top oring like the Fogatti and if I recall correctly the aga-t.
If the Aga-t would come out with a brushed/satin made of all stainless and Pyrex I would buy a few but you still need a ring/hippo to make it look right. Honestly if this is all about money why would you even buy the Provari to begin with? I am sure a Vamo with an Aga-T would get you where you need to be a lot cheaper. To me it is not about the money at all. I have three mini2.5's with 2 Zaps, next one will be a polished stainless with you guessed it another Zap that will be polished to match. I believe in Provari. I believe in Zenesis. Buy what you feel;Vape on.
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You can't compare US made (or Greek, Filipino, Finnish, etc) products to China made products.
First of all, there is the massive difference in labor costs. From what I understand, Zen has a machine shop in his area manufacture the parts for his devices. The cost of having it machined here in the US is already higher than China, which contributes a lot to the increase in price, but in addition the machine shop he uses is ALSO profiting off of the machine work they provide (obviously) so there is even more cost.
Then the materials. Surgical grade stainless steel isn't cheap, AFAIK no other attys use the same type of SS that Zen uses, likely because it's too expensive.
Then take into account R&D costs. Zen didn't just randomly start having his stuff made. He spent his own time and money developing his products, that money needs to be recouped and he deserves to be compensated for his time, so even more cost. The chinese stuff is mostly just cloned off other designs with some slight tweaks.
Then you have to consider the quantities these are made in. There are probably more AGAs produced in a week, then there have ever been zen products made in total. When you increase the scale of production, production costs per go down and there is less total cost.
If you want to make a fair comparison, compare zen's stuff to other high-end, non-china-cloned products. Then the zen isn't so terribly expensive anymore, and the difference in cost is easy to explain with the use of more expensive materials.
There might be some supply and demand issues contributing to cost, but from what I've gathered watching zen speak about various things, he does NOT want to take advantage of vapers and shake them down for money. He specifically said he was upset that people were re-selling hard to get items for profit, because he wants customers to get their product without being ripped off due to rarity.
If we actually knew the total cost to produce a given zen product, and subtracted it from the retail cost (remember, retailers ALSO are taking a cut of the money, which means you pay more) the profit on each unit is likely a lot less than most people thing.
First of all, there is the massive difference in labor costs. From what I understand, Zen has a machine shop in his area manufacture the parts for his devices. The cost of having it machined here in the US is already higher than China, which contributes a lot to the increase in price, but in addition the machine shop he uses is ALSO profiting off of the machine work they provide (obviously) so there is even more cost.
Then the materials. Surgical grade stainless steel isn't cheap, AFAIK no other attys use the same type of SS that Zen uses, likely because it's too expensive.
Then take into account R&D costs. Zen didn't just randomly start having his stuff made. He spent his own time and money developing his products, that money needs to be recouped and he deserves to be compensated for his time, so even more cost. The chinese stuff is mostly just cloned off other designs with some slight tweaks.
Then you have to consider the quantities these are made in. There are probably more AGAs produced in a week, then there have ever been zen products made in total. When you increase the scale of production, production costs per go down and there is less total cost.
If you want to make a fair comparison, compare zen's stuff to other high-end, non-china-cloned products. Then the zen isn't so terribly expensive anymore, and the difference in cost is easy to explain with the use of more expensive materials.
There might be some supply and demand issues contributing to cost, but from what I've gathered watching zen speak about various things, he does NOT want to take advantage of vapers and shake them down for money. He specifically said he was upset that people were re-selling hard to get items for profit, because he wants customers to get their product without being ripped off due to rarity.
If we actually knew the total cost to produce a given zen product, and subtracted it from the retail cost (remember, retailers ALSO are taking a cut of the money, which means you pay more) the profit on each unit is likely a lot less than most people thing.
speaking generally here about any of the "why does XXXXXXXX cost so much"
It's 99% because of supply and demand. Limited run boutique sort of items are like that.
Build quality has little to do with it, IMO. That all comes down to design (which only has to be done once, after a bit of prototyping) and QC which is either good or bad but doesn't really add substantially to manufacturing costs.
Labor on most of this stuff is also generally very small. most of the parts are machine made and either hand or machine assembled with very low levels of technical training required.
Materials has almost nothing to do with it. If you take a look at ANY of the things used in vaping, unless someone is using a precious metals, these things have a material costs in the $1-10 range. That goes for attys, mods, anything, really. The price difference between something made of copper vs surgical grade SS, in the sizes and quantities used is negligible. Material costs would factor in more if things like Titanium (much harder to work with) or precious metals like gold, silver or platinum.
fundamentally it's a case where people will pay a premium to have something that few others will.
edit: I'll qualify this with a little more, I guess. The biggest cost in making any of these small production quantity objects is at the front in. The design, tooling and prototyping stages. Some of this can be substantial, especially if things are designed well. Another thing that could factor in is if people are also offsetting the cost of insurance. Anyone smart about this stuff, if they are manufacturing in a litigious place like the US would want to get an insurance policy in the event that they get into issues with lawsuits because some idiot uses a product wrong and burns themselves, or their house down or in 10 years decides that it was the last few years of vaping and not the previous 30 years smoking analogs that caused their cancer.
after all that, the per-item cost is usually nowhere near the end product price. a big part of the reason the chinese knockoffs can be so damn cheap isn't because they have much cheaper materials (though they do, to a degree) or much cheaper labor (which they certainly do, but again, it's a small factor in most of this stuff), but instead because they don't have to invest anything substantial in design or prototyping, and pretty much nothing into insurance.
It's 99% because of supply and demand. Limited run boutique sort of items are like that.
Build quality has little to do with it, IMO. That all comes down to design (which only has to be done once, after a bit of prototyping) and QC which is either good or bad but doesn't really add substantially to manufacturing costs.
Labor on most of this stuff is also generally very small. most of the parts are machine made and either hand or machine assembled with very low levels of technical training required.
Materials has almost nothing to do with it. If you take a look at ANY of the things used in vaping, unless someone is using a precious metals, these things have a material costs in the $1-10 range. That goes for attys, mods, anything, really. The price difference between something made of copper vs surgical grade SS, in the sizes and quantities used is negligible. Material costs would factor in more if things like Titanium (much harder to work with) or precious metals like gold, silver or platinum.
fundamentally it's a case where people will pay a premium to have something that few others will.
edit: I'll qualify this with a little more, I guess. The biggest cost in making any of these small production quantity objects is at the front in. The design, tooling and prototyping stages. Some of this can be substantial, especially if things are designed well. Another thing that could factor in is if people are also offsetting the cost of insurance. Anyone smart about this stuff, if they are manufacturing in a litigious place like the US would want to get an insurance policy in the event that they get into issues with lawsuits because some idiot uses a product wrong and burns themselves, or their house down or in 10 years decides that it was the last few years of vaping and not the previous 30 years smoking analogs that caused their cancer.
after all that, the per-item cost is usually nowhere near the end product price. a big part of the reason the chinese knockoffs can be so damn cheap isn't because they have much cheaper materials (though they do, to a degree) or much cheaper labor (which they certainly do, but again, it's a small factor in most of this stuff), but instead because they don't have to invest anything substantial in design or prototyping, and pretty much nothing into insurance.
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you are delusional if you think the cost of a billet of surgical steel is 10 bucks.....it is much much more. the tooling alone for this grade of steel is in the 200-300 dollar range and needs to be replaced quite often. i would venture to guess the materials and machining is half the cost. he is at best making 20 bucks each after everything is paid(labor, machining, insurance, shipping, packaging, supplier's cut) o i forgot, he bought the machines for the machine shop, like 3 of them, they aren't cheap and need to be paid for
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Z-Atty-Pro - Rebuildable Tank System V2.1
They are not sold out... Provape has had this batch up for weeks, the market finally got flooded enough.. Im not a fan...to big-heavy and bulky for my taste....
The fact that it is a companion to the equally expensive Provari. Already invested close to $200 in a Vari? Why fold to another $100 now?
Im not going to comment on the material and build quality. The real question is, does it do the job it was made to do better than a China clone? And if yes, by what margin?
If that margin exists (i do not believe it does, but hey) and is worth the price difference to you, buy a ZAP. If its not, be like me and swear by China made. Easy game.
Im not going to comment on the material and build quality. The real question is, does it do the job it was made to do better than a China clone? And if yes, by what margin?
If that margin exists (i do not believe it does, but hey) and is worth the price difference to you, buy a ZAP. If its not, be like me and swear by China made. Easy game.
I will throw in on this one, materials are EXPENSIVE, even cheaper materials like alum begin to add up when you figure each piece is machined out of a solid piece. My brother is a machinist and we have been looking into making a few things for ourselves. And when you are looking at getting bulk material your looking at thousands, otherwise you are overpaying for smaller amounts of stock.
However my ZAP that I have is a phenom, not that my aga or agi aren't. They just dont have the build quality of the ZAP and not to mention my ZAP was a hit on the very first coil I built. It doesnt hurt that they have an insulator in the wick hole, but it's little things like that, that make it superior product.
For the comment about 2 o rings instead of 1, the size of the o rings in the dual setup are smaller than 1 oring on the Zen. It is much harder to get the top cap off the ZAP than the AGA(again because of build quality and tolerances).
However my ZAP that I have is a phenom, not that my aga or agi aren't. They just dont have the build quality of the ZAP and not to mention my ZAP was a hit on the very first coil I built. It doesnt hurt that they have an insulator in the wick hole, but it's little things like that, that make it superior product.
For the comment about 2 o rings instead of 1, the size of the o rings in the dual setup are smaller than 1 oring on the Zen. It is much harder to get the top cap off the ZAP than the AGA(again because of build quality and tolerances).
The label "surgical stainless steel" always makes me chuckle. There is no "surgical stainless steel". Stainless steel used in manufacturing implants is simply type 316L, or sometimes 316LVM, which are both grades of stainless steel that are used in many other non-surgical applications, and are readily available.
I generally don't factor in the cost of purchasing machines, since most companies farm out their manufacturing to companies who already own the equipment, even very large companies do this. That falls under labor and manufacturing expenses, not material costs. If you're suggesting that all these companies that charge for "premium" devices went out and bought all their machining equipment then I don't know what to say, because as far as I can tell from most of the discussions they have about waiting for parts to come in, most of them don't.
By surgical steel I assume that means one of the variations of 316 SS that Rule62 mentions above me. That's the grade that gets used in most implants due to it's corrosion resistance. A billet, which isn't a term used any time I've had things made... as far as I can tell, billet is a generic term for a bar of metal, which doesn't mean anything when you go to manufacture something, it's not a unit of measurement. The only place I can find common reference to manufactured metals, using the term billet, is in reference to relatively high grade corrosion resistant aluminum, not steel.
Anyhow, I wasn't claiming that an unspecified arbitrary quantity of metal costs $10. I was saying the material used in any given product was about that much. Example: a 12" x 24" x 1.5" plate of 316 SS costs about $1500 if you get it from the US and don't price-hunt that hard This would be a small quantity, so not be very cost effective. If you're machining properly, that will equate to about 288 pieces that fit within a 1x1x1.5" volume lets say most attys are 2 pieces. So that'd be 144 units at about $1500 in raw material costs. Yes, that's over $10... by 41 cents. I was just guessing before, but my estimates are not "delusional". I'd guess it'd go a bit over if there are some duds, or mishandled, lost in shipping, whatever, but to call that delusional I think is a bit dramatic. I don't know if all the SS gear out there is using 316 or if they use 304 or what, but 304 is even cheaper, and if using copper or brass, even cheaper than that.
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He can charge whatever he wants for a, "custom unit".
pet rocks used to cost 25 bucks lol
the hellfire mini is a similar zen unit @ 150-200$ made in the UK
it may or may not be a copy,
the genesis style atomizer is a redundancy in design
by anyone making an upright wick tank
the only thing mattering is continuity of electrical conductivity and wick hole
then you add in the attention to detail, tank, material, oring seat bevels, etc. --=price
some seem to think it's like a miracle atomizer
its not, its a simplistic design
Zen's is well built to last many lifetimes
pet rocks used to cost 25 bucks lol
the hellfire mini is a similar zen unit @ 150-200$ made in the UK
it may or may not be a copy,
the genesis style atomizer is a redundancy in design
by anyone making an upright wick tank
the only thing mattering is continuity of electrical conductivity and wick hole
then you add in the attention to detail, tank, material, oring seat bevels, etc. --=price
some seem to think it's like a miracle atomizer
its not, its a simplistic design
Zen's is well built to last many lifetimes
I used to not appreciate my Zen Atty's, then I got an AGA-T2. AGA's are good for $30 but it feels cheaper, I don't like the screwing together with the glass in the middle design and the top design is a mess.
The Z-atty is better in every way. Is it $110-$120 better...that's subjective.
The Z-atty is better in every way. Is it $110-$120 better...that's subjective.
I own a z-atty pro and have been using it for about two weeks, relatively new to vaping but loving it. Just wondering how often do I have to tweak the coil by 'brushing' it to ensure I get an even glow (without any hotspots etc)?
Keep your eyes on the ECF classifieds, I've seen ZAPs sell for as low as 80 dollars.
There's always a cheaper way to everything...
Take an AGA in one hand and a ZAP in the other. If you don't feel goooood holding the ZAP in your hand it would be a crime not to go for the AGA. Sometimes it all boils down to how you feel about it. If you can't feel it, chances are you'll live a longer and happier life.
Take an AGA in one hand and a ZAP in the other. If you don't feel goooood holding the ZAP in your hand it would be a crime not to go for the AGA. Sometimes it all boils down to how you feel about it. If you can't feel it, chances are you'll live a longer and happier life.
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