Sometimes, no matter what you do in life, there always seems to be something more; something you’ve missed. Given how technologically-involved, how gadget-oriented it can be, vaping can feel a little like that for newbies starting out. In many ways, when you get your head around the fundamentals (e-liquid and their ingredients, the different kinds of e-cig devices and what’ll suit you best and the bits that come with them; coils, wicks and tanks), it all becomes a lot clearer.
However, one thing you most definitely must be clear on at every step of your vaping journey is the battery that you’ve installed in your device to give it the requisite – and right – power to enable it to vaporise your e-liquid and, yes, enable you to vape. In short, you don’t mess around with batteries; no vapers worth their salt mess around with batteries. Here then are a few things to consider when it comes to vape batteries…
Moving on to a vape mod?
Certainly to begin with, many a vaper’s happy to vape away via a standard pre-built kit; there’s nothing wrong with that at all – there’s a whole host of excellent vape kits out there with which to launch your years-long vaping journey (no doubt bought from a well-reviewed electric cigarette shop London, or indeed one located anywhere). Yet, in time, it could well be you want to customise your experience a bit, so you achieve exactly the hit that satisfies you. When you reach this point, you might want to think about reverting/ upgrading to an e-cig ‘mod’. Don’t doubt it; for mouth-to-lung (MTL) or direct-to-lung (DTL) vaping or sub-ohming, you’ll likely find yourself turning to ‘modding’ – because it enables personalisation via customisation of your vaping apparatus and, thus, your vaping experience. To wit, you’ll no longer be vaping via a kit that’s off-the-shelf; that’s the bottom line – and that means you’ll have to know exactly the right battery to install in your new, personalised device.
Get your battery right!
Unfortunately, when they make the leap to ‘modding’, not enough vapers think clearly enough at the start about what battery they ought to use and will use on an everyday basis. Many may just dismiss it as far from the biggest priority because it’s surely not the most important thing to concern themselves with at this juncture – it’s all about the wicks, coils, tanks and so on, right? Wrong. The battery remains one of the most critical components in an e-cig device, whatever the e-cig device; the latter has to be fitted with the right one.
How so? Well, think about it this way. The amperage of your vaporiser’s battery determines how much current it will output for the device (i.e. the battery’s ‘load’); higher currents mean a higher load and that means faster, deeper and longer vaping draws – and big plumes of vapour, at that (‘cloud chasing’). Great. But you also need to bear in mind the battery’s ‘milli-amp hours’ (mAh), as this determines its capacity; roughly speaking, how long it’ll actually last (time-wise) between being charged. So, if you’re the sort who’s often out and about and/ or in transit, you’ll doubtless want a battery with a higher mAh value; sure, it tends to be more expensive, but the advantage speaks for itself. All in all then, it’s crucial you familiarise yourself with what batteries do for your vaporiser – and how they do it.
The 18650 battery – why’s it always me?
As far as vaping batteries go, the magic ‘number’ so often seems to be ‘18650’. Why is this? What’s it about this battery type that makes it so universally used in so many e-cig device devices? Well, in truth, it’s not used in all of them, but a lot of them. Certainly in smaller vaping devices with a built-in battery, you’ll find the latter degrades quickly and doesn’t last as long as it might; but then the device itself will be something of a ‘starter’ in vaping terms and so at the cheaper end of the scale. A smarter, more capable, more powerful, bigger vaping device (for instance, a ‘mod’ of some description) will doubtless require an 18650 battery to perform to its maximum potential. And that’s because this kind of battery is all about flexibility and decent power – it can be detached, it can be replaced and it tends to have a very good balance of mAh and amperage. Plus, it’s a battery that’s still nicely affordable. An 18650 battery then is pretty much the perfect source of power for more customisable, more personalised vaping. And you just can’t say fairer than that.
