Building Your Best Vape - A Guide To Components And Accessories

This brings us to our second-most important choice to be made; tanks. There are many different types of tanks out there, and for many people, the tank will matter more than the mod they’re using, and as they start to fall in love with a particular tank for its reliability, they’ll only buy mods that is compatible with the tank.

Your tank itself has a lot of moving parts, the most important of which is the atomizer. The atomizer is responsible for turning your e-liquid into vapor, and therefore it plays a critical role in influencing the quality of your hits and your overall vaping experience. Other than that, your tank also determines the amount of liquid you’ll have on-hand, and thus how long your vape can function until you get back to your refill.

Speaking of quantity, your tank also determines the mechanism behind your fluid-to-vape conversion. RTA and RDTA tanks can be filled up to capacity, usually within the 6 ml range, while RDA tanks require near-constant refilling between hits, as they don’t have a reserve store of fluid. Other than this, where your air ducts are positioned also matters quite a bit, not so much on their own but rather more for how they impact another aspect of your vaping experience.

Top airflow tanks have their air intake ducts positioned above your liquid reservoir. This means that you’re less likely to experience a leak since gravity is on your side. Bottom airflow tanks may leak if they’re not regularly maintained, especially as your O rings give out. Leaking fluid can be more of a nuisance than a new vaper might imagine, so you really want to look out for build quality as well and a reliable maker.

Where your tank is the most important aspect to consider when deciding on a mod, coils are your most critical consideration when deciding on a tank. There’s an abundance of manufacturers who’ve been building a reputation with their own respective coils, such as Voopoo’s PnP coils and Smok’s RPM coil series. If you’ve been looking into either as your next go-to coil, you should check out Wotofo’s SMRT coil series, which makes building and replacing your coils easier than it ever has been.

Aside from who’s making your coils and what mods they’re compatible with, you’ll also want to consider what type of coil is in place, as well as how many coils are in use at a time. Mesh coils might increase your flavor consumption quite a bit, but they’ll also give you more even saturated hits that are full of flavor and never taste burnt. Clapton coils can take this a step further even, but they’re usually only compatible with very specific tanks and mods with high power output.

In the case of pod mods and AiO kits, your choice of the coil will decide whether you’re using your vape as an MTL (Mouth to Lung) or DTL (Direct to Lung) device. Sub-ohm coils are meant for DTL use, and they pair well with both low and high-powered mods to achieve optimal flavor delivery and cloud volume. Coils rated for over 1-ohm resistance are usually used with MTL devices; they’re more suitable for people looking to vape discreetly, and smokers trying to kick a bad habit, or people looking to max out their flavor experience while also relying on heavier hits through nic-salt based e-liquids (nicotine salts, for the uninitiated).

Some devices will only be compatible with factory-made pods that feature permanent coils. Even if these pods are refillable (they’re often not), your coil will burn out eventually, and you’ll need to replace the entire pod for a new one. While this might not matter much to people who only vape casually or as a hobby, it might make them less feasible for people who vape a lot because a new pod every few days can add up to quite a drain on your finances as well as an inconvenience. The cost of replacing your coil alone is considerably lower than having to sack an entire pod, and the cost of replacing a coil with a manually rebuilt coil as opposed to a factory-printed one is also considerably lower.

We discussed this briefly early on in the article as well, but they deserve their own mention; battery type and capacity are a game-changer, especially for people who don’t use multiple devices. The type of charging mechanism at work also plays a role; USB Type-C support has started to become the norm recently, as micro-USB ports fade out of fashion. With the arrival of the Geek Vape Obelisk FC 120 earlier this year, we’ve even got 100+ watt mods that charge within 15 minutes. That’s a big step up from the competition; devices sporting this sort of power output and battery capacity usually take at least an hour to charge.

If you’re dealing with a device that doesn’t come with its own built-in batteries, you should also consider what types of batteries your device can take. Many current devices will come with sleeves for your cells, making it possible to use different types depending on what you have on hand. 21700s are slightly larger and denser than your standard 18650s, and while the latter feature capacities between 1000 – 3000 mAh, the former can run you up to 5000 mAh, especially if your device takes two.