Posted on September 10th, 2009 by Jack Stone
If you’re considering purchasing your first electronic cigarette, it can be hard to decide which brand to go with because there are quite a few out there and so many options available.
Consider some of these things before you decide to purchase electronic cigarettes:
Price
Price is always one of the biggest concerns for everyone. The good news is that nearly every brand of electronic cigarette offers savings over traditional tobacco cigarettes. Since you’re already spending a good chunk of change on tobacco cigarettes, and you’ll save a significant amount of money switching to nearly any brand of e-cig, I usually recommend purchasing whatever brand is easiest to use and that you’re most likely to stick with and not go back to smoking real cigarettes.
That said, the first thing you’ll need to purchase is a starter kit. Most starter kits range from $40 – $80, although some are still charging over $100. I haven’t tried any brands that I’d recommend over $100…to me, they’re all just overpriced versions of what you can get at $70, and in most cases, the brands charging over $100 for a starter kit are just relying on huge distribution channels to drive their sales and actually have a worse product than the less expensive brands sold exclusively online.
It takes a lot of math to figure out which brand will be the most cost-effective over time, but you can read this article where I reviewed the cost of BluCigs over 1 year in comparison to tobacco cigarettes. In that article, BluCigs ended up coming in about $400 cheaper than traditional smokes.
In summary, price is a bit subjective, because you’ll save a significant amount of money with almost any brand, so it’s perhaps better to pick a brand that you’ll be more likely to stick with, which leads us to our next point.
Ease of use
One of the biggest issues with electronic cigarettes is that they require batteries to operate. At first glance, this isn’t a big deal…a lot of us have an iPod and that requires batteries and it works just fine. True, and while the battery-powered mobility of electronic cigarettes are exactly why they’re such a great smoking alternative, the batteries can also be sticking point and something you should consider when buying your first e-cig.
What most people don’t consider is what happens when you get stuck outside of the house or office and your batteries run out? Well, for me it meant I was going to bum a traditional smoke from a friend, or perhaps several until I could get back to base and recharge my e-cig batteries. What I found out was that 2 batteries (which is what most e-cig starter kits come with) won’t last an entire day of heavy smoking, so you either need extra batteries, a charger for your car, or some way to charge those batteries on the go.
And this brings us to the reason I ended up choosing BluCigs as my brand of choice. Unlike every other e-cig brand I’ve tried, BluCigs comes with a carrying case, built like a pack of smokes, that will actually charge your batteries on the go up to 6 full charges. That means no matter how forgetful I was in charging my batteries the night before I almost always have enough charge in my “pack” to last me the rest of the day. Running out of batteries is a major issue…the last thing you need when you’re trying to satisfy your nicotine habit is anything that will get in the way, and dead batteries for most people means they’re going to smoke a tobacco cig. So, BluCigs made an excellent decision in offering the carrying case that also functions as a battery charger.
The other factor to consider is how easy your electronic cigarette will be to smoke and how easy the cartridges are to refill. There are two aspects of this to consider.
E-Cig Batteries
First, there are two battery types out there…automatic and manual. Manual batteries require you press a button while inhaling in order to smoke. Automatic batteries on the other hand are designed to sense small pressure changes and activate the device automatically when you inhale, so no button to press. I went into automatic vs manual electronic cigarette batteries in the past, so I won’t go into that in detail here, but I will say that the vast majority of people are going to be better off with automatic batteries.
E-Cig Cartridges
Second, you have to ask, how easy is it to replace cartridges when they run dry? Most cartridges are pretty much the same, the only real difference is that some are sold prefilled and some are sold empty and meant to be refilled manually by you. The thing is though, since cartridges are all pretty much the same, you can manually refill even the prefilled cartridges when they run dry. So, that said, for your first foray into electronic cigarettes I’d recommend a brand that offers prefilled cartridges just because you can refill them manually if you decide that’s something you want to do. Otherwise, you can just reorder prefilled cartridges if you don’t want to bother with the hassle of squirting the nicotine solution into the empty cartridges yourself. If, on the other hand, you order a brand that only offers manual refill cartridges and you decide later you don’t want to deal with the hassle of manual refills, you’re out of luck.
That’s about it for this article, I’ll follow this one up with a few more considerations for your e-cig buyers out there.
Posted in Articles, Batteries, Cartridges, eLiquid, Prices | Comments (1)
Posted on September 4th, 2009 by Jack Stone
Electronic cigarettes offer large savings over traditional tobacco smokes. In fact in an article we found that describes the cost savings of electronic cigarettes, a pack a day smoker can save $600 or more by switching to electronic cigarettes every year.
If you want to save even more money on electronic cigarettes, the best way to go about that is by refilling your own cartridges instead of buying prefilled cartridges. In order to refill cartridges yourself you’ll need to purchase eLiquid, which is just a fancy name for the nicotine solution found in electronic cigarettes.
eLiquid comes in a variety of different flavors from O’Reilly of different retailers all across the Internet. The most common size bottle you can purchase is about 10 mL and the bottle is similar in appearance to an eyedropper.
All you have to do to refill your electronic cigarette with the eLiquid is slide the cartridge off of the device and drop 4 to 5 drops of eLiquid into the cartridge. You don’t want to go overboard when refilling the cartridge or you’ll end up getting some of the liquid into your mouth, which tastes pretty bad. Instead, just dripped 4 to 5 drops into the cartridge and then try to take a drag. If the device does not produce enough vapor, drip one or two more drops into the cartridge and then try again. Repeat this process until you feel you’ve adequately filled the cartridge with the eLiquid.
In the event you overfill the cartridge and a bit of the eLiquid leaks out, just take a small piece of paper towel and stick it in the end of the cartridge to soak up the excess liquid. After you’ve done that replace the cartridge and take another drag.
If at this point everything is working well, congratulations, you’ve successfully refill the eLiquid on an electronic cigarette!
Posted in Articles, eLiquid | Comments (0)
Posted on August 28th, 2009 by Jack Stone
If you’ve had the pleasure of experiencing electronic cigarettes as a smoking alternative, you may be to the point where you want to experiment with different flavor nicotine solutions. Some brands’ cartridges are specifically meant to be refilled manually, while other brands’ cartridges, like those from BluCigs, are meant to be ordered prefilled. Although you can refill BluCigs cartridges manually, I’ve been told that it voids the product warranty, although, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure how anyone would ever know you manually refilled cartridges should you need to get the product replaced under warranty. Anyway, here’s a little how to for those looking to save a little extra cash by manually refilling their electronic cigarette cartridges.
Buy Some Nicotine Liquid
The first thing you’ll need to do is purchase some nicotine solution, also known as “e-liquid,” from any number of different retailers online. If you’re looking for something with the strongest “throat hit” – that bite you feel in your throat when you hit a real cigarette – look at Totally Wicked. They ship from the UK, but are a very reputable retailer with a high quality liquid with a strong throat hit.
Some other brands you may want to look at purchasing, all of which I’ve sampled and all are reputable retailers of e-liquid, are PureSmoker, TrueVapor, and LiteCigUSA. My own personal favorite is the Menthol flavor from LiteCigUSA.
E-Liquid is most commonly sold in small eye-dropper bottles of 10ml each, but you can also buy bottles of 50ml or more if you really want to. Stick with the 10ml until you find something you like, each 10ml bottle seems to last the equivalent of around a couple cartons-worth of smoking, so it’s plenty to start with.
Remove the old cartridge
Once you have a liquid, it’s time to remove the cartridge from the electronic cigarette. Most brands are pretty easy, and you probably assembled it when you first got the e-cig, so just slide the cartridge off the device, making sure not to lose the filler material inside the cartridge (usually a cotton swab looking material). That little fabric filler is what holds the e-liquid in the cartridge in contact with the atomizer wick.
Once you’ve removed the cartridge, simply drop four to five drops of e-liquid inside of the large opening of the cartridge so that it falls onto the fabric inside. Anymore than four to five drops and you may suck some liquid into your mouth the next time to hit the cigarette. If you find that four or five drops isn’t enough, repeat this process, adding one or two drops more each time until you get solid vapor production when taking a drag.
If you happen to drop too much liquid into the cartridge and end up sucking some through when taking a drag, just pull the cartridge off and stick a piece of paper towel down into the cartridge to suck up some of the excess liquid.
Replace the newly filled cartridge
Now go ahead and replace the cartridge the same way you took it off, make sure your battery is charged, and take a drag. Start with a really light drag at first to make sure you don’t suck any liquid through as a result of overfilling. Once you’re comfortable that you didn’t overfill the cartridge, enjoy your newly-refreshed electronic cigarette cartridge like normal.
I’ve found manually refilling cartridges to be fairly simple and a bit cheaper than purchasing prefilled cartridges, however, prefilled is the easiest way to go if you don’t want to mess with the manual refill process. The one thing you need to watch out for is dropping too much liquid into the cartridge, as this will end up being sucked through the tip the next time to take a drag. It’s not the end of the world if this happens, it just tastes bad. That’s all there is to manually refilling electronic cigarette cartridges.
Posted in Articles, Cartridges, eLiquid | Comments (0)
