I had long been fascinated by the e-Pipes sold by ePipeMods. While they looked quite beautiful, I was hesitant to spend money on one when I knew there was no possible way they could offer the performance of my usual ProVari Mini. My lovely wife, noting this fascination, decided to make the decision an easier one by buying an e-Pipe and e-liquid assortment for me as a Father’s Day gift. Although I’ll be reviewing the e-Pipe in greater detail in the future, for now I’ll simply say that the experience has been even more enjoyable than I expected.

If you’ve read Tolkien, you know how much his love of pipe smoking permeated his books; he described the relaxing experience of smoking a pipe in great detail, and that’s the inspiration ePipeMods used when creating this “Hobbit-grown leaf” with a “relaxing, full-bodied vape.”

Long Bottom Leaf definitely seems like an e-liquid that was born to be vaped in an e-Pipe. Although the thick, almost all-VG e-liquid would clog some types of small cartomizers, it soaks into the filler material of a wide dual-coal eGo cartomizer easily. The vapor has quite a distance to travel from the heating coil through the pipe stem, but when it reaches my mouth it still feels full and satisfying.

In the bottle, Long Bottom Leaf smells a bit like perfume. I’ve definitely smelled this tobacco base before, and I’m not sure that I liked it. However, the long pipe stem changes the character of the flavor completely, leaving nothing but a savory, almost tea-like flavor to accompany the cool and surprisingly thick vapor. I’ve tried pipe tobacco e-liquids that smelled more realistic than this one, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried one that tasted better.

Is Long Bottom Leaf from ePipeMods an e-liquid that’s going to make you forget pipe tobacco forever if you’re using a more conventional e-cigarette? It’s hard to say; Long Bottom Leaf was clearly designed for an e-Pipe and it’s hard to separate the two. A higher-powered device like the ProVari might accentuate undesirable flavor notes. As an e-liquid for an e-Pipe, though, Long Bottom Leaf has set the standard to which I’ll be comparing all pipe e-liquids in the future.

Click the link above to shop for this product at Vapor Alley. The iTaste MVP costs $65.00. Use the coupon code edripping when checking out for a 5 percent discount on your order.

The Chinese e-cigarette manufacturer Innokin has been getting a lot of attention lately, partly because of the samples they’ve sent to bloggers such as myself and partly because their products simply look cooler than a lot of the other e-cigarettes on the market. I’ve had the Innokin iTaste MVP sitting on the top of my stack of e-cigarette products to review for quite some time. I suppose I’ve been putting this review off because the iTaste MVP is so cool that I’d rather not say anything negative about it. Unfortunately, the iTaste MVP has a very serious problem that’s too major to ignore, and even ignoring that problem it’s a bit limited in performance for the price at which it sells.

About the iTaste MVP

The Innokin iTaste MVP is a box-shaped variable-voltage e-cigarette with threading that fits 306, 510 and eGo atomizers, cartomizers and tanks. It includes two CE4-style clearomizers and a small metal sleeve for protecting certain types of tank cartomizers. The iTaste MVP has a maximum power level of 5.0 volts and a non-removable 2600 mAh battery. Although you can’t remove the battery when it dies, the iTaste MVP does have the ability to operate when connected to a USB port. So, as long as you’re near a computer, you’ll never be unable to vape.

The large battery of the iTaste MVP also makes it possible to add a unique benefit that very few e-cigarette products possess: the ability to charge external devices. Simply connect your own USB cable or the included multi-cable, flip a switch on the bottom of the iTaste MVP and you’re charging your mobile phone, tablet or other device. I tested this feature with my iPad, and the iPad immediately registered that it was receiving a charge. Within a few minutes, however, the iTaste MVP became quite hot and I decided not to complete the charge.

The overall appearance of the iTaste MVP is quite polished and classy. While the unit is admittedly boxy, it’s easy to hold and the fire button is in a convenient location. There’s no need to check the battery charge, as the button changes from green to orange and finally to red as the battery dies. The unit also isn’t too difficult to carry in a pocket, as the smooth metal surface doesn’t tend to stick to things.

iTaste MVP Review

To review the iTaste MVP, I began by filling one of the included CE4-style clearomizers. Innokin’s clearomizers use a design that’s incredibly popular right now; a large tank holds a substantial amount of e-liquid, and wicks carry the e-liquid up to a heating coil near the mouthpiece at the top of the unit. Filling the clearomizer is accomplished by simply twisting the mouthpiece off and adding e-liquid  to the tank. No syringe is needed. This type of cartomizer isn’t my favorite; I find the flavor to be a bit plastic-tinged compared to the Boge cartomizers I prefer. However, I can’t deny that Boge cartomizers are a pain to fill and need to be topped off frequently, especially when vaping at higher voltages. The CE4 clearomizers hold somewhere in the neighborhood of 2 ml and can easily last a full day — although this is partially due to the iTaste MVP’s power limit of five volts.

Therein lies the iTaste MVP’s first problem; although I’m sure that many people never exceed five volts when vaping, I’m not one of them. My preferred setup is a ProVari Mini set to six volts and configured with a high-resistance cartomizer, and I’ve never been able to get exactly the same taste and nicotine hit at a lower voltage simply by changing the resistance of the attachment. For me, then, the iTaste MVP could never be the only device I use. For those who are fine with lower voltages and top-coil clearomizers — and I know there are many of you — the iTaste MVP performs quite well indeed. The included clearomizers are some of the least plastic-tasting I’ve ever used and vapor production is consistent all the way to the bottom of the tank.

The second problem with the iTaste MVP, however, is a more serious one: the included clearomizers leak and the iTaste’s attachment threading isn’t sealed. During the review process, I left the iTaste MVP face-up on a table one night only to discover a puddle of e-liquid on my table the next morning. The e-liquid had leaked through the clearomizer and attachment threading and passed through the entire unit, which isn’t meant to be opened or serviced by the end user.

Although I hate to give an e-cigarette an outright negative review when it has so many other things going for it, this experience seems to suggest that there’s a high chance of ruining your iTaste MVP if you aren’t careful with it. Although I’ve rarely experienced a problem with a leaking Boge-style cartomizer, dripping with an atomizer is certainly out of the question here — and it’s a serious problem when an e-cigarette doesn’t work properly with the cartomizers included in the package.

Innokin iTaste MVP: Conclusion

No matter what type of e-cigarette attachment you use — be it a cartomizer, atomizer or tank — you’re going to go through a lot of e-liquid. Eventually, you”ll use an attachment that ends up leaking; there’s no way around it. That’s why virtually every e-cigarette designed for a variety of attachments has sealed threading; when something does leak, there’s little possibility of ruining your e-cigarette and the spill can be cleaned easily. The fact that leaks can pass through the iTaste MVP is a serious oversight in my opinion, and it’ll be very difficult for me to recommend it until Innokin corrects this issue.

Boba’s Bounty is an e-liquid that people typically say doesn’t reveal its full range of flavors until it’s been vaped for a few days. My experience suggests that’s probably true; I noticed “baked good” taste, reminiscent of a cinnamon roll, the first day I tested it. I didn’t notice that taste again; the yeasty, bread-like notes faded and only a sweet cola or root beer note remained to compliment the tobacco flavor.

In terms of vapor production and throat hit, Boba’s Bounty surpasses my expectations for an 18 mg, all-VG e-liquid. Although VG-based e-liquids aren’t normally highly regarded for throat hit, Boba’s Bounty packs a serious punch even when after hours of vaping. Its performance is really top notch.

In terms of flavor, though, I’m not quite as high on Boba’s Bounty as I am on some of the other high-end tobacco e-liquids I’ve reviewed in recent months. It has a sweetness that’s so prominent, you can smell it. In the week or so that I’ve spent testing it, my wife has asked me nearly every night, “Are you using that Boba Fett e-liquid again? It’s so sweet.” I have to agree; after a few minutes of vaping it, I feel like I’ve exceeded my dessert quota for the day. It’s difficult to say whether Boba’s Bounty has any actual sugar in it, but its thickness and sweetness suggest that something like actual soda syrup may have been used to flavor it.

If you don’t mind the sweetness, you’ll probably enjoy the tobacco flavor of Boba’s Bounty. Given the prominent ashy flavor on the exhale, I suspect that some amount of tobacco extract may have been used when creating this e-liquid. The ashy note offsets the sweetness a bit, creating an overall flavor profile that does resemble real tobacco. It’s much sweeter than the real thing, though. While I can certainly see why some e-smokers are so fond of Boba’s Bounty, the very sweet flavor prevents it from being an everyday e-liquid for me.

Click the link above to view this product at the manufacturer’s website.

Among e-cigarette owners who prefer menthol e-liquids, there seem to be two schools of thought. Some people prefer e-liquids that attempt to recreate the taste of cigarettes by blending tobacco and menthol flavors. Others would rather have the strongest blast of menthol combined with the cleanest taste possible. I fall squarely into the second camp; to date, I’ve found that when an e-liquid tries to do both tobacco and menthol flavors well, it fails at both. For nearly two years, I firmly believed that Volcano Menthol Burst was the best menthol e-liquid in the world. I had tried one menthol e-liquid after another, and nothing came close to its winning combination of clean flavor and extreme level of menthol. Today, however, there is a new champion. Halo SubZero is the best menthol e-liquid I have reviewed to date.

Halo SubZero is a pink, slightly viscous e-liquid with a neutral, minty smell. It has a slight resemblance to Halo’s recently released Kringle’s Curse e-liquid, which is also a high-menthol e-liquid with a candy cane flavor. Where that e-liquid tastes like a candy cane, though, SubZero has a flavor more like that of plain, unsweetened peppermint. It’s an extremely refreshing flavor for someone who doesn’t like e-liquids with a lot of sweetness, but the peppermint flavor is applied with a light hand. In an e-liquid that exists primarily just to provide a cold blast of menthol, the peppermint flavor of SubZero remains far in the background.

When I reviewed Volcano’s Menthol Burst e-liquid, I was blown away by the strong menthol flavor and amazed by the fact that no other menthol e-liquid has come close to its level of strength in the two years since. My understanding is that it’s Volcano’s best selling e-liquid and I have long wondered why no other e-liquid company has attempted to duplicate or improve on the formula. Halo SubZero is the first e-liquid that has managed to approach that level of menthol, and I have to say that it even seems to have more menthol than the e-liquid that might have inspired it. Truly, if you’re looking for the highest menthol e-liquid available, Halo SubZero is now that e-liquid.

SubZero and Menthol Burst are both e-liquids ideal for menthol lovers who want an e-liquid with a taste neutral enough for everyday use. If you’ve tried Volcano’s offering, you might be curious as to how Halo SubZero compares. In this reviewer’s opinion, the taste of Menthol Burst could be characterized as that of artificial mint with slight sweetness, while SubZero tastes more like a hint of plain peppermint extract. It’s a very natural tasting flavor and I have quickly come to love it.

Although I love reviewing tobacco e-liquids because of the incredible variety from one product to the next, menthol e-liquids are what I choose to vape every day. I like nothing more than an e-liquid with a huge blast of menthol and a pleasant, neutral flavor that doesn’t start to leave a lingering sweetness on the tongue with constant use. Halo SubZero delivers on those better than any other e-liquid I’ve ever reviewed, and I couldn’t possibly give it a higher recommendation.

Click the link above to view this product at the vendor’s website.

During the nearly three years in which I’ve reviewed e-liquids, I’ve tasted some remarkably good products that managed to remind me very strongly of real tobacco without containing any of the real thing except for the nicotine. Products such as Freedom Juice by Halo and ECOPure Rich by Intellicig represent everything that can be great about an e-liquid when the manufacturer doesn’t try to make it something it could never be.

On the other side of the coin are abominations like RY4, which essentially combine mystery nut flavors with sweeteners and hope that the nicotine hit will be enough to suggest “tobacco” to e-smokers. The combination certainly works for some people — just about every e-liquid company has an RY4 flavor in its lineup — and the same may be true of Habana Reserve by Decadent Vapours. However, I’ve been testing Habana Reserve on and off since the holiday season and find it so far removed from the flavor of actual tobacco that it’s difficult to derive any pleasure from it at all.

Habana Reserve resembles tobacco most closely when it’s still in the bottle. On the nose, I can detect a faint trace of something that reminds me of a cigar. It’s a bit closer to the smell of the Cuvana e-cigar I reviewed not too long ago than it is to the “barnyard” flavor that all too many e-liquid companies add to their cigar e-liquids, which is a definite plus. Unfortunately, though, that smell doesn’t carry over to the tasting.

Vaping Habana Reserve, I detect two prominent flavors. The first is the vaguely cigar-like note that smells quite like a cigar but doesn’t taste much like one, and the second is a heavy dose of sweetness — far more sweetness than you’d ever find in real tobacco. The overall impression is that of tobacco candy, which definitely isn’t what I want in a cigar e-liquid. If you’ve ever tried a product like Camel snus and were unable to enjoy the taste of the tobacco because of the large amount of added sugar, you probably won’t care for Decadent Vapours Habana Reserve.

Another unfortunate issue with Habana Reserve is the throat hit. I love a tobacco e-liquid with a strong, smooth throat hit, but I find this e-liquid rather scratchy. While it hasn’t made me cough, it often feels like it might.

Overall, this e-liquid isn’t one I can recommend. Although many of the best tobacco e-liquids coming out today derive their flavor from real tobacco extracts, it’s still possible to create some interesting and compelling flavors using creative combinations of other ingredients. With Habana Reserve, though, that approach wasn’t a successful one.

Click the link above to view this product at the vendor’s website or click here to shop in Europe.

A great clove flavor is thought of as something of a “holy grail” by many e-smokers. As someone who used to visit local tobacconists and try new products frequently during the cigar boom of the ’90s, I fell in love with the rich, spicy combination of clove and tobacco. Unfortunately, real clove cigarettes were banned as part of the United States government’s crackdown on flavored cigarettes, which has led many to search for the flavor they remember in vapor form. I believe I found the holy grail of clove e-liquids when I reviewed Ares Black Clove some time ago, but I’m always up for trying something new and added a bottle of Sharks Clove to a recent order from Volcano.

Volcano’s Sharks Clove has a great nose; it smells like a blend of a strong clove flavor and a bit of artificial tobacco flavor such as the one used in Volcano’s Tobacco e-liquid. Although it certainly doesn’t smell like a real clove cigarette, the smell of the clove itself is quite believable.

Unfortunately, Sharks Clove falls a bit flat when you taste it. Although the clove flavor is realistic, it seems to have been achieved without the use of actual clove oil as it lacks the slight mouth-numbing sensation of eugenol, a compound present in real cloves.

If you’re looking for a change of pace from your normal e-liquid and think that you might enjoy an e-liquid with a tobacco-like flavor and a spicy backbone, Sharks Clove might be right up your alley. For me, though, it seems like a bit of a relic from the e-cigarette industry’s past; it tastes fairly artificial and suggests certain flavors without actually tasting like them. There really isn’t much of a reason to buy Sharks Clove when you can get something with real eugenol elsewhere. Volcano will forever be in my personal e-liquid hall of fame for their brilliant Menthol Burst e-liquid, but for future products I hope they’ll innovate a bit more.

Atomizer Resistance Explained

To make the correct decision, you must first understand that “resistance” doesn’t refer to the vapor production of an atomizer or cartomizer; it refers to the amount of power that it allows to pass through. Thus, the atomizer or cartomizer takes the input voltage from the e-cigarette mod or battery, resists some of it and delivers a final power level that you can measure in watts. Because a high-resistance atomizer resists more of the current, it delivers less vapor than a low-resistance atomizer if everything else is equal.

To make the matter even more confusing, some e-cigarette vendors refer to high-resistance atomizers as high-voltage atomizers as if it’s the atomizers themselves that generate the power. This refers to the fact that these atomizers should be used with e-cigarettes that produce more than 3.7 volts of power, but it’s quite confusing to newbies. Thankfully, the practice seems to be disappearing.

If you take one bit of information away from this article about high- vs. low-resistance atomizers, it’s this: if you have a variable-voltage e-cigarette, buy a high-resistance atomizer or cartomizer and adjust the voltage of the e-cigarette to suit your taste. If you have a single-voltage e-cigarette, adjust the atomizer or cartomizer resistance to suit your taste.

Low-Resistance Atomizers

Example: Volcano Lava Atomizer

All common e-cigarette batteries are 3.7 volts and most include atomizers or cartomizers with a resistance of 2.5 ohms. I like to refer to this value as “standard resistance.” With a standard resistance 2.5 ohm atomizer or cartomizer, the output power is 5.476 watts. This is roughly the power level you can expect from all popular e-cigarette brands. By lowering the resistance to 1.5 ohms, however, you can get more power out of a 3.7 volt battery because less of the current is resisted. The output power in this scenario is 9.12 watts. As long as you have a battery large enough to handle the increased load, a low-resistance atomizer greatly increases the vapor production and satisfaction derived from using an e-cigarette.

However, low-resistance atomizers cannot be taken past 4.0-4.5 volts on the Lavatube and most other variable-voltage e-cigarettes without triggering the over-current protection, which knocks the voltage down to 3.7 volts. At 4.0 volts, the Lavatube produces 10.66 watts of power. This is more than what you would get with a standard e-cig battery and atomizer, but still less than the maximum performance the Lavatube is capable of. In addition, you should avoid using a low-resistance atomizer on any cigarette-shaped e-cigarette battery unless the manufacturer says it’s supported. Small e-cigarette batteries generally can’t handle the load caused by low-resistance atomizers.

High-Resistance Atomizers

Example: Boge 510 Cartomizer

A high-resistance atomizer or cartomizer — usually classified as any attachment with a resistance of 3.0 ohms or higher — resists more of the input current, allowing you to use your e-cigarette at high voltages without fear of causing damage. Using a high-resistance attachment, you can operate a device such as the Lavatube at any voltage and experience the full range of the e-cigarette’s power.

If vapor production is ultimately all about watts, you might ask yourself why you couldn’t simply use a low-resistance atomizer and lower the voltage to conserve the battery life of your e-cigarette. The answer lies in the number of amps generated; using Ohm’s law, we arrive at the two scenarios below:

• A 3.0 ohm atomizer at 6.0 volts generates 12.0 watts of vapor at 2.0 amps.
• A 1.5 ohm atomizer at 4.24 volts generates 12.0 watts of vapor at 2.82 amps.

With most e-cigarettes, a load of 2.82 amps exceeds the capabilities of the hardware. This can cause the battery to die early and stop holding a charge. It could also cause the heating element in the atomizer or cartomizer to burn out. For this reason, a high-resistance atomizer or cartomizer is generally the best attachment to choose if you intend to use your e-cigarette at different voltages. However, a high-resistance attachment isn’t the best choice if your e-cigarette only operates at one voltage because the vapor production may be lower than you’d like.

Click the link above to view this product at the vendor’s website. At the time of writing, NJOY is offering free samples of the King — just pay $2.99 shipping.

About the NJOY King

The NJOY King in its creative pack

In all the time I’ve been reviewing e-cigarettes, I’ve never seen a product quite like the NJOY King. Starting around August of last year, NJOY kicked the publicity machine into high gear for the King. Since then, I’ve seen interviews, press releases, features in major print publications and at least one pre-release review that read more like an advertisement than an evaluation of the product. Clearly, NJOY really believed it had a killer product up its sleeve, and they wanted the world to know about it.

Unfortunately, the expected release date of the NJOY King came and went, and it wasn’t until just recently that you could finally buy one. During that time, I thought that Safe Cig beat NJOY to the market with the Safe Cig Aurora, another disposable e-cigarette that touted a soft tip design and big vapor from a small package as its major selling points. When I received the NJOY King, though, I realized I was wrong; the NJOY King is even smaller. In fact, it’s the smallest and lightest e-cigarette I’ve ever used.

If I understand NJOY’s pre-release material correctly, they believe that smokers haven’t yet migrated to e-cigarettes en masse because they don’t want the rechargeable and refillable products — they want something they can use and throw away, and they want it to look and feel as much like a real cigarette as possible. NJOY has bundled these aspects with some of the most attractive e-cigarette packaging I’ve ever seen, and now they’re waiting to see if smokers will buy. I think it’s difficult to say; the NJOY King carries a retail price of $8.99, making it more expensive than a pack of cigarettes in many areas. Because it’s so small, I doubt it holds enough nicotine liquid to last a full-time smoker more than a day. At this price, it seems to me that the NJOY King may end up being more of a gateway product than something a smoker switches to permanently.

NJOY King Review

The NJOY King (Right) next to the Safe Cig Aurora

Opening the NJOY King, I was first struck by the cleverness of the packaging; the clear case is shaped like a long Zippo lighter and has the same type of flip-top lid — with the same “click” that Zippo owners love. Inside the case is a small information sheet, folded in the shape of a Zippo’s windscreen. All in all, I have to say that the NJOY King should definitely make a better first impression with smokers than most disposable e-cigarettes would.

Before the NJOY King was released, I read a pre-release review suggesting that it would be a breakthrough in the area of flavor — more realistic than any e-cigarette that had come before. In my opinion, the e-liquid in the NJOY King tastes the same as the tobacco e-liquid that all of the other mainstream e-cigarette vendors who source their e-liquids from China are using. There is one rather significant difference, though: nicotine concentration. The NJOY King is available in tobacco and menthol flavors, with the Bold version containing 45 mg nicotine per ml of liquid and the Gold version having 30 mg. Many companies don’t sell anything at nicotine concentrations higher than 18 mg. So, the King definitely packs some serious punch; more than enough to make up for its tiny size. Although the taste is far from the most realistic tobacco flavor I’ve ever reviewed, it’s very satisfying when combined with the strong throat and lung hit of the nicotine.

Although the NJOY King is a bit smaller than the Safe Cig Aurora, the physical design is similar; the battery and LED are encased with a saturated filler material inside a thin plastic tube that gives a little when squeezed. It’s not as soft as a real cigarette, but it is incredibly light compared to other e-cigarettes. It’s easy to hold in your mouth if that’s how you prefer to smoke.

NJOY King: The Bottom Line

Overall, it’s difficult to say whether the King will be the industry-changing product NJOY is hoping for. They and other companies seem to believe that the majority of smokers haven’t switched to e-cigarettes yet because they don’t want to fiddle with cartridges and battery chargers. I think that could be the case, but it’s also true that e-cigarette companies stand to reap much higher profits if their customers exclusively buy disposable e-cigarettes rather than cartridges and e-liquid bottles. If a smoker cuts his or her nicotine intake enough to make one NJOY King last two days, that’s still a $1,600 per year habit. My e-cigarette usage costs less than half of that.

I’m concerned about the high cost of the NJOY King and the fact that its small size means it has very little room for nicotine liquid. If you switch from cigarettes to the King e-cigarette and use one per day, e-smoking would cost more than cigarette smoking in many areas of the country. So, I find it a bit difficult to imagine many smokers switching to the NJOY King for good and never trying anything else. It’s also a drawback that the King uses Chinese e-liquid and doesn’t give you the ability to explore the vast and enjoyable world of American e-liquids. Setting these issues aside, however, the King is a fun product and one that’s quite different from anything else currently available. If you’ve been curious about the hype, I’d say it’s definitely worth a try.