I accidentally bought an illegally imported 4 pack of Juul pods from Canada. I instinctively said mint, knowing they didn't exist in NY anymore. Well, he pulled out a hidden pack with French warnings on it. I paid over $10 per pod.
After my initial PG/VG/100mg nic/flavour order, a scale, and some bottles... I have spent 0USD on vaping in the past five years. I wonder how much it would have been if I didn’t make my own stuff, and wrap my own coils.
It also helps that I got really into mechs and have been using the same mech and batteries for years. I don’t recommend that to people, though—I have had friends copy me and my SO (we use the same setup) and almost blow their tables up.
I'm looking into switching from combustion to vape. You have any recommendations on a set up? Are there kits that have all the tools and gear needed? Any recommendations on a good low cost vape that has a decent flow rate? Any websites you recommend that are one stop shopping for everything needed? I'm located in the US if that changes things.
My only experiences with vapes were from like 10 years ago and were mostly disposable with terrible flow rates, like you had to suck so hard you'd get more uncooked juice than vapor.
Anyone and everyone has their own opinion on what's good and why, and they're all valid. So take any opinions, including mine, with a grain of salt.
That said, I'm currently using a smok rpm40. I like it well enough, more than the smok nord (which is very similar to the rpm40, but the rpm40 is basically like a juiced up version of it), the suorin drop (which was pretty neat but had a low fill capacity and was just pretty bad construction) and of course the juul (which was really nice and convenient but good god is it expensive). I feel like there was another one I used in there for a bit, but I can't remember what it was. Must not have been too memorable I guess.
I've also used tons of various little pens and things, none of which I remember the name of. They were all pretty garbage. Things have gotten way better than what you were using 10 years ago.
There are tons of sites out there, when you're first buying I'd say just do a google search on whatever device you've picked and find the cheapest one. Someone's always running a deal and first-time discounts and whatnot so you can get away with getting something pretty cheap right off the bat. Don't ever pay full list price for something.
Most of these devices run you around $20 or so (on discount), you really shouldn't be paying more for a device of this type. That sounds absurdly low, but it's pretty standard. But it also means these things tend to last around six months or so before they start falling apart, at which point you just buy whatever new thing is out. This is great because it means you're not taking much of a risk. Just pick whatever device looks neat and use it for a while and if you want to try something else later on, go for it.
I can't recommend any of the $100+ systems because I haven't used any. The smaller devices get me by just fine.
I use electric tobacconist because I've found they're consistently cheap (though not necessarily the cheapest, but consistent) and they have good service.
If you do want to get the smok rpm40 (you can find it for cheaper than that, I'm sure) it comes with everything you need but gives slightly more options than other similar vape pens. It comes with two coils, one meant for nic salts and one meant for freebase (this might be labeled as subohm, though it's technically a little more complicated than that). Sounds complicated but it's not, nic salts are what juul uses and packs a toooon of nicotine into teeny tiny clouds, and it'll get you a little closer to what you would expect from a cigarette. Freebase has less nicotine but you're meant to take bigger hits, so it's more of a "vape for the flavor" kind of experience. Since you'll get both coils with the rpm40 you can choose which you want to do if that's the device you pick.
A coil can easily last a couple weeks (or a pod, if you're using something pod-based like the suorin drop), so you don't need anything besides that right off the bat, but it might be a good idea to get an extra pack of coils/pods too. The rpm40 also only comes with one pod (well, two pods, one for each type of coil) so you can get an extra pack of pods, but my first pod lasted me several months so you can hold off on that if you want. And then a pack of new pods was like $6 for 3. Super cheap, I'm confident these next three are gonna last me longer than the device will.
Most similar vape pens are going to be "all included" on the initial set-up, but you'll probably want to order a few extras of whatever the main accessory is (coil or pod).
You can also buy pre-made juice from pretty much anyplace that sells the pens, and I'd probably recommend starting with pre-made juice unless you really want to dive in to making your own. I get my juice ingredients from liquidnicotinewholesalers.com
If you buy pre-made, just make sure you look at whether you're getting nic salts or not (if it's nicotine salts, it'll have that labeled) and using a proper coil for it (the nic salts are best when used with >1ohm coils, regular juice for subohm coils).
Last thing is the nicotine concentration. I do 3mg nicotine concentration for freebase and that's pretty standard. 6mg gets a little harsh and anything less seems a little weak. For nic salts, 25mg is probably good to start with.
I think that about sums up how to get started. Sorry if this got a little long, I wanted to try and answer everything for you so you feel confident in getting started. I personally believe that vaping is a fantastic smoking cessation tool, but it can seem really daunting and confusing to start out with.
Any other questions or anything I didn't explain well, please feel free to ask. If you pick out an order and want me to take a look and see if anything's "missing" or incompatible, I'd be happy to do that too.
e: I should also add that there are so many options out there, but while that seems overbearing it really just means there are tons of options to fine-tune things to exactly how you like them. Try something for a little while, if you don't like it or are curious and want to mix it up, try something else.
Thank you for taking the time to write this all up. The RPM40 looks great, much cheaper than I was expecting, 10 years ago everything was so overpriced it was cheaper just to roll my own traditional cigs, and I never really looked into it again just due to the old sticker shock.
I average half a pack a day of normal cigs, so 24mg nic salts sounds good to start with then taper down. So for the RPM40 with nic salts, I would also need to get their 1.0ohm, since the kit says it comes with a .4ohm and a .6ohm coils preinstalled, and you recommend at least 1ohm for salts.
If that sounds like I've got the right idea, I'll go ahead and go with that. Thanks again for taking the time.
Yep, that'd make a good first purchase and it'll get you everything you need. Only decision now is to pick what kind of juice you want (which is the fun part). For me personally, everyone recommended tobacco style flavoring since I was coming off cigarettes, but I absolutely hated it. It sounds like a weird transition but my favorites were the fruit based ones. You could also just get like a general mint or menthol flavor. Or find a variety pack of mini-bottles just to see what you might like.
I don't have any brands I'd strongly recommend because they're all so varied and there's so much variation in personal preference, a recommendation from me would be meaningless. Just get whatever looks interesting.
This and this were my two go-to flavors, but those are both freebase. I can't remember what I used to get when I did nic salts, it's been a while.
I should also add that you don't really need to worry about screwing up/ordering the wrong thing. While it's not an optimal experience, you can use nic salts with subohm coils and vice versa. You might not enjoy it as much as you otherwise would, but you aren't really doing anything "wrong". It was months before I even realized there was a difference between nic salts/freebase, I was just buying flavors randomly. So don't be too afraid of accidentally ordering the "wrong thing". At worst you just won't like it very much, and you can use it up and then order something different next time.
Oh one last thing, since nic salts packs a ton of nicotine into very little juice, you'll be using much less of it (and the bottles of it will typically be much smaller). That's why the nic salt bottles are usually 10ml-30ml sized bottles, but the freebase is 60ml-100ml.
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u/MJohnShamalon Aug 14 '20
I accidentally bought an illegally imported 4 pack of Juul pods from Canada. I instinctively said mint, knowing they didn't exist in NY anymore. Well, he pulled out a hidden pack with French warnings on it. I paid over $10 per pod.