E-Cigarette showdown
Now I am not here to promote or condone smoking, but for those looking for a means to quit you’d would be hard pressed to find a better substitute than an e-cigarette. The question is with so many of them on the market, which one will give you the best chance of finally being cigarette free at the end? I have personally tested three different kinds and will deliver the verdict I came to in hopes I can help you successfully quit, and not have to buy three different kinds to find one that fits your needs like I did. The three main things I looked for in an e-cigarette was consistency, longevity, and price. By consistency I mean that every drag feels the same, and it doesn’t quickly get noticeably weaker. For longevity I am talking about how long it lasts on a charge. It makes it awful tough to quit smoking if your battery dies half way through the day, that’s how you end up bumming smokes to get you by which defeats the purpose. And well price is pretty self explanatory. Factoring in what the initial cost was as well as how much refills and things cost down the road. So lets start with the winner of the competition.
Winner: Joyetech eGo
All purchased for about $65
This was actually the last of the three I tested and by far the best. I actually rated it the highest in all three categories I mentioned above. For about $65 I bought a battery, two atomizers, a charger, a lanyard, and two bottles of the flavored liquid you fill them with. This will depend on your usage but a fully charged battery typically lasted me about 3-4 days before I needed to charge it again. The battery I bought is actually the smallest one they had, you can get ones over double the size of mine that will get you much more mileage. The liquid cost about $7 per bottle, and each bottle should get you about 8-10 fills. They come in over 40 flavors, and have varying amounts of nicotine inside. If you are a pack a day or more smoker of something like Marlboro reds, you will probably want the strongest, if you smoke half a pack of lights, I would start lower and go higher if necessary. The atomizers are $5 each and come in different colors but all essentially do the same thing. They are good for around a month or so of use before needing to be replaced. I bought two so I could change between the two flavors whenever I wanted by taking one atomizer off and screwing the other on. The reason this won the competition by such a margin is simple. I never had to worry about the battery not making it through the day when I left the house. Every drag I took felt just as strong as the one before it all the way until the battery did finally die. Lastly the cost is right in line with everything else on the market, this one just performs much better. So my verdict is this is the one (or one like it) to buy for the absolute best chance of actually getting away from cigarettes for good.
Second Place: Blu
The Blu starter pack cost is about $75
Next up we have one of the more well known brands on the market, Blu. This was my second purchase which I based mostly off of the perceived convenience it would provide. Aside the fact it is all black and lights up blue at the end, it looks a lot like a standard cigarette. You unscrew it to put on a new filter or to charge it. Like the Joyetech there are different flavors although not as many, and also varying nicotine levels to choose from. Instead of refilling a liquid, the filters you screw on are loaded and you just throw them away and put on a new one when it runs out. The convenient part about Blu is that it comes with cigarette shaped box that is about the same size as a real one and opens with a flip top too. That pack holds five extra filters, both cigarette batteries, and the pack itself has a battery built in that actually charges one of them when it isn’t in use so you always have one ready to go. Where everything fell short for me was consistency. With a brand new filter attached and a fully charged battery it worked pretty well. However within just a few minutes of use it was so weak you couldn’t even feel it when you took a puff, even though it would still produce a cloud upon exhale. So even though I never technically ran out of batteries, constantly switching between and charging them was more of a pain than it was worth to me for the result it produced and I found myself back on tobacco pretty quickly.
Third Place: Red Dragon
Red Dragon starter kit costs about $65
Coming in last place we have the fist e-cig I purchased, the Red Dragon. This one is similar to the Blu save for the fact it doesn’t come with a handy pack to tote everything around in. It is colored to match a real cigarette and even lights up red, but that can be a bad thing as it tends to confuse people for the real thing in public which may get you harassed at first. My problems with this one were much the same as the Blu except with a few additional ones. First of all you have to carry around the charger and additional filters which is not at all convenient. Secondly even though it looked like a real cigarette it is was both longer and bigger around which just felt weird to use. One big reason it landed at the bottom for me was that one of the batteries didn’t work right out of the box. So I was stuck trying to keep just one charged all day long. At that point it was again just easier to go to the store and buy a pack of real ones instead of all the fuss of batteries dying and filters running out. The only thing I can say that was better about this one than any of the others was the flavor they used. It was my personal favorite of them all.
Conclusion:
Quitting smoking is never going to be easy, but with substitutes like these it really does help more than any patch or gum I ever tried. The cost of all of them is roughly the same for the initial stuff you need to get going, but the liquid the Joyetech used was cheaper than the replacement filters for the other two. On top of refills being cheaper it just worked better in every way too. A single charge to the battery lasted days instead of hours, each puff taken felt as strong as the one before it, and the plethora of flavor choices dwarfed the selection of the others. All of the above choices can be found at most smoke shops and even in some gas stations, but if you are in my local area (Rochester MN) I recommend stopping into Vapin Midwest to find what you need. That is where I got my Joyetech and where they have the expertise as well as everything you will ever need to buy. Good luck!
Ben Johnson
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