G4 Cartomizer Review
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Many of the most interesting developments in the e-cigarette industry over the last couple of years have come in the field of cartomizers. Today, you can find stainless steel cartomizers, clear cartomizers, dual-coil cartomizers, cartomizer tanks, gravity-fed cartomizers and many more.
With all of this variety, you can understand cartomizers a little better by classifying them according to the way in which the e-liquid gets to the heating coil. You have polyfill cartomizers in which a cotton or synthetic gauze suspends the e-liquid around the coil, top-coil cartomizers in which heat causes the e-liquid to travel up a wick to a coil positioned at the top of the cartomizer and bottom-coil cartomizers in which gravity pushes the e-liquid to a coil positioned at the bottom of the cartomizer. The G4 cartomizer falls under the last category.
About the G4 Cartomizer
Unlike many cartomizers, the G4 cartomizer has no wick, wires, solder or polyfill that touches the e-liquid, with the idea being that this is a completely clean design that puts nothing between you and your e-liquid. Inside the G4 cartomizer, a long tube leads from the opening in the middle of the mouthpiece through the e-liquid reservoir and finally to the heating coil chamber. When you puff, the vapor travels through the tube and out the top of the cartomizer, while the vacuum created causes e-liquid to travel slowly from the reservoir to the chamber without flooding the coil. It’s quite an elegant design; I can certainly imagine more cartomizers looking like the G4 one day. However, the G4 cartomizer isn’t quite ready for prime time.
Filling the G4 Cartomizer
Filling the G4 cartomizer is a breeze. Simply remove the ribbed silicone mouthpiece, tip a bottle into the cartomizer and drip the e-liquid between the center tube and inner wall. When the cartomizer is about three quarters full, replace the mouthpiece, give the cartomizer a few dry puffs to prime the heating coil and puff away. The G4 cartomizer works fine on any 3.7-volt device. If you have a variable-voltage electronic cigarette such as the ProVari Mini, you can safely dial the power up to about 4.5 volts before you’ll start to get dry puffs.
Using the G4 cartomizer, the first thing you’re likely to notice is that the ribbed silicone mouthpiece feels quite odd if you’re accustomed to smooth plastic or metal drip tips. You can’t use a drip tip, though, as the silicone mouthpiece actually holds the center air tube in place and prevents e-liquid from leaking out the top of the cartomizer. If you use anything else, the cartomizer’s thin and brittle plastic will shatter or you won’t get a proper seal.
G4 Cartomizer Performance
The next thing you’ll probably notice is that there isn’t any vapor coming out of your mouth when you exhale. That’s because the G4 cartomizer never seems to feed e-liquid from the reservoir to the heating coil at the correct pace; most of the time you’re either getting no vapor because the e-liquid isn’t feeding, or the cartomizer is gurgling because it’s feeding e-liquid too quickly. A couple of primer puffs can help in the first case, but if the e-liquid feeds too quickly, there isn’t much you can do. You can blow firmly through the G4 cartomizer to try to clear the condensed e-liquid out of the tube, but if you blow too hard, the reservoir will empty itself through the bottom of the cartomizer.
Occasionally with the G4 cartomizer, gravity will do its job a little too well and e-liquid will start to spontaneously leak out the bottom. This seems particularly likely to happen when the cartomizer is vertical, so if you do try it, I highly recommend placing your e-cigarette on its side when you aren’t vaping. I don’t suggest bothering with the G4 cartomizer, though. To put it bluntly, it doesn’t work. Leaking cartomizers are a relic of the past and today’s e-smokers expect better.
