The world is changed.
I feel it in the water.
I feel it in the earth.
I smell it in the air.
When vaping started, it was just a bunch of hobbyists talking the bulbs out of tube torches, and replacing them with coils. Vaping still has relics of these, in tube mechs that are still being produced to this day.
‘Sub-ohming’, or vaping on a device with a sub 1 ohm coil, was the golden standard for vaping for a long time; the lower you went, the ‘better’. But times change, and now it’s the less powerful, more humble devices that are changing the world, and getting people away from the stinkies.
Enter the Mi-pod, the latest device from Smoking Vapor (SV), which is causing a big splash in vaping circles. SV is an American-based company, meaning all their products are designed in America, though they are manufactured in China.
The Mi-pod is a small all-in-one inhale activated pod system, with some really cool designs available, and from what I’ve experienced, fantastic quality.
Here are the manufacturer’s specs for your perusal:
- Dimensions: 51mm * 13.5mm * 60mm
- Output Voltage: 3.0-4.2
- Maximum Current: 15A
- Cartridge Resistance: 1.3ohm
- Battery: Built-in 950mAh Square High-Drain Lithium Battery
- Pod Size: 2mL
And what you get in the box:
- Mi-pod mod
- 2 of Mi-pod refillable pods
- Lanyard
- Micro USB charging cable
- User manual
Technicalities aside, lets jump into my impressions, starting with my immediate thoughts upon taking it out of the box.
The device looks great. I’ve got no problems with the way it looks. I chose the heat-treated version. On a lot of devices, these come out looking like a rainbow, and though the Mi-pod does have some yellow and blues on it, it’s mainly purple. I don’t know if they all have this, but all of the Mi-pods I’ve seen carry a sweet Lord of The Rings ‘Blackspeech’ engraving around two of the sides. On one side, it apparently says ‘One vape to rule them all’, and the other says ‘Designed by SmokingVapor’. Pretty cool.
I decided to charge it before use, to get an idea how long one charge would last for. I’ll get back to this later.
Upon filling the first pod, I see that it wicks incredibly fast, and the clips holding it in, though they’re just plastic, hold the pods in place extremely firmly. I also really dig the slight wings on either side, to help you easily remove the pod when you need to.
The device only has a single button, which is not used at all for firing the device. 5 Clicks turns it on, while holding the button down can access stealth mode, turning off the LEDs which usually light up while the device is firing.The LEDs can display 3 colours. Blue for full charge, purple for middling, and then red for low charge. I found it a little hard to see the LEDs while vaping on it, as they’re positioned really close to the mouthpiece, making determining the charge of my Mi-pod a little more difficult than I feel it should have been. That’s a very minor complaint though, it’s definitely possible to see the colour of the LEDs.
I like pod systems like this, ones that you can take out of the box and just use, but this a bit fancier than ‘when you pull the pod out it turns off’, which is what I’ve seen in some other pods like the Rofvape Peas or the Smok Fit, which have no other means of powering the device off.
SV have developed a special dual air flow design, called Oil and Air Separate (OAS), which keeps the airflow and the e-liquid reservoir separate. This means that it’s near-impossible for one of these to leak. You’ll need to seriously mistreat a Mi-pod to have it leak on you.
The construction of the Mi-pod appears to be mainly plastic, with a metal sheet bent around the two largest sides of the device. It doesn’t feel as weighty or tough as I would like, but that’s not a concern for everyone. To be fair, with how light the device is, I think you’d have to throw it at something really hard to cause a problem, and they’re far too light to damage themselves just from being dropped a couple of times.
Quite often, I find lighter devices tend to feel cheap, like they’re hollow, or the device is bigger than it needs to be, to compensate for the lower-quality components. I do not find that to be the case with this device, all the interior seems to be packed in firmly, and there’s no rattly parts or loose fixtures. Maybe after I drop it a few (more) times though...
The conclusion I continue to draw from this device is that every part of it that could have been improved, has been improved, to the point that there’s very little that could have been done to make this a better device.
I mentioned the battery, something that became a bit of a hot topic in the office this past week. That’s because, since charging the device upon receiving it, it ALMOST lasted the full week. Now, I did have the power indication LED turned on the whole time (not stealth mode), and the hit did start to fall off a bit on day 6, and it did finally die at about 4pm on day 6, but goddamn. That’s a battery folks.
Now I can’t promise yours will last most of a week, because I had a sub-ohm device going at the same time, but I can assure you I was using this wee thing a lot, more than my sub-ohm device on most days.
I can however quite comfortably say that this device will last you a full working day without breaking a sweat.
As for vape production, and vaping experience; you can actually get legit clouds from this thing if you want, and the air flow is wide enough that you can vape on it pretty much however you like. I will say, however, that the OAS dual air flow does feel a little weird at first. I got used to it after a day or so, and didn’t find it unpleasant.
If I’m comparing this with the other pods that I’ve tried, it honestly just leaves them choking in the dust. In terms of build quality, vaping experience and looks, I’ve yet to see better.
SV have done an excellent job with this one, and I think it’ll help a lot of people who have been struggling to find the right device for them.