Ok, now I realise this is a divisive subject among the Vape Community but I’m going to talk about disposables and share some thoughts, opinions and experiences.
So for those of you who don’t know, a disposable vape device is exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a completely sealed unit you cannot recharge or refill and when it’s depleted it’s battery or juice, you throw it in the bin and buy another (I say throw it in the bin as most manufacturers don’t provide a recycling service but we’ll get to that later). These devices cost between £3.50 and £6 each to purchase and make claims about 600+ puffs before throwing away. Most people seem to get 24 - 36 hours per device.
The plus sides to disposables are they are extremely simple. You don’t need to refill them or charge them and seem to be able to buy them absolutely anywhere. It’s a device you don’t need to think about, just use and bin.
Downsides, well… I’m afraid these are numerous and go beyond the obvious. Firstly, as I touched on earlier, the makers of these disposable devices, mostly, don’t offer any recycling service so the plastic body, the battery, the plastic coil housing, the wire, the cotton and coil itself all end up in a landfill. At a time when we are encouraged to think about our environmental footprint, this is massively wasteful and for every device that is sold, another is made to replace it continuing the cycle.
You, as a user, are extremely limited on your options. You have a set number of flavours and set nicotine strength. I’ll use a personal experience here and I’m sure my brother won’t mind. He started social smoking, just a few cigarettes when he went to the pub with his friends but we are talking about 10 per week. He decided instead of smoking he wanted to vape, good decision. Next time he was at a petrol station he grabbed a disposable vape. Obviously extremely limited on choice so ended up with a 20mg Nicotine Salt. This is far too high a nicotine level for the amount he smoked and it ended up making him feel sick and light headed. He needed to be on 3mg or even 6mg which isn’t an option with most disposables. For anyone interested, I sent him a UWell Caliburn AK2 and a couple of bottles of lower nicotine liquid, he gets on with this much better.
Cost, well who isn’t thinking about this in our lives at the moment unless your surname is Musk or Gates? As I mentioned, disposables cost between £3.50 and £6 each and will last roughly a day. Over a week this is £34.30 or £137.20 per month. A weeks cost of disposables will get you a very good, reusable device that could last you years and enough ELiquid to last you up to a month. After, you have a device you can keep on using and your liquid cost would be about 10 times less than the cost of disposables per month. That is a huge amount of money saved overtime.
There are other downsides and I could write a novel on them but I feel the need to mention this one. The 600+ puff per disposable device claim. I always doubted this one as a Vaper with over 10 years experience. How on earth does 2ml of Eliquid last that long unless it’s breeding in the container? Well thanks to @Simon G on www.PlanetOfTheVapes.co.uk, my question was answered. Simon conducted a completely non-scientific study by asking people how long a puff was on the device they use. The results seemed to show between 2.8 and 3.2 seconds as an average. I’m personally at about 2.8. So what scale do these disposable manufacturers use to measure a puff? Turns out a lot less than what the average was! Most class a puff as 1.5 seconds! So a device that claims 600 uses is actually far closer to 300 for the average Vaper. On a stressful day I can do that in a morning!
I want to mention finally that anyone who Vapes has made the right decision instead of smoking, no matter what you use to do it but if you use disposable vapes, there as so many better options for you. This little opinion piece isn’t aimed as a criticism, I simply want to give you a few facts so you have more information available to you and hopefully save you some money, save the planet some damage and improve your journey away from cigarettes.
If you want any more information regarding disposables and other, far better, options available to you, visit www.PlanetOfTheVapes.co.uk.
Thanks!