Besides the desktop vaporizer that we build ourselves, we offer portable vaporizers made by companies that we trust. Most portables on the market don't work well in our opinion, so it's hard to find one that does all of what we want it to.
Our main requirements for a good portable are:
- No plastic smell or taste. Made in America usually helps in this department, but a commitment to safe materials and design are essential.
- Minimal restriction to inhalation. We can't stand vaporizers that require you to sip the vapor super slow, or ones that require you to draw strongly. It needs to be an effortless inhale.
- Dense and flavorful hits that rival our own desktop vaporizer. If an herb portable gives hot and transparent vapor it's not good enough. Only a few herb portables have ever given good hits for long in our opinion.
- No complicated button presses, no requirement to use an app to operate.
- Easy to clean. Clogged parts cause loss of performance.
Overall we consider that portable vaporizers could be divided into 3 distinct groups:
1) Herbal portables (for "loose leaf herbs" or "Flower")
Herb portables are the hardest to design and rarely work well. SSV Sidekick seems to work the best at the characteristics that are important to us with its complete lack of plastic smell or taste, decent vapor hits without air restriction and completely cleanable airpath. Older portables like the Magic Flight or Pax take a lot more effort to get a decent hit, and sometimes give no discernable hit at all. We only carry herb portables that work well for us and are the favorite of past customers.
We're excited to carry DynaVap which is a flame powered device that doesn't make you inhale the exhaust of the flame. It is a true vaporizer that uses any flame to heat to temperature, indicating with an audible click when it's ready for you to take the flame away. Draw slow and steady and get great tasting vapor. The hits are small but the efficiency is extreme, using only a fraction of what other vaporizers use.
2) Portables for extracts (wax, shatter, and other non-liquid extracts), including dab pens
Dab pens often work well with minimal learning curve. Most brands in the market use materials we don't trust to get hot, such as plastic, teflon, or shiny metals that break down during use. Kanboro's E-cube is much larger than a pen and gives a great traditional dab experience using ceramic, quartz, or titanium bowls and is easy to maintain. For cold start dabs, SSV Sidekick has an attachment that works perfectly.
3) Liquid (vape juice, cbd liquid, any liquid that flows at room temperature)
We don't carry any vape pens or accessories that work with liquid solutions. Vape pen liquids work with solutions that are manufactured by dedicated companies, and we are not familiar enough to have an opinion of the best brands or products.
We appreciate that many people have cut down or completely eliminated cigarette smoking by using vape pens with liquid. Sadly, the FDA deems vape pens as "tobacco devices," whether the pens work with nicotine or not. Oddly, the 2020 Omnibus Bill passed by Congress requires sellers of vaporizers that aerosolize liquids to register to pay stiff tobacco taxes in every state and to every tribal entity, which alone will bury a small dealer in paperwork. But worse, the bill attempts to require vape pen sellers to disclose their customer private records, which violates our ethics and likely protections of the US Constitution and our state's corporate code as well.
Since we don't deal in "tobacco products" we can't carry liquid vape pens of any type. If you are interested in vaporizing liquids, we suggest you try a tobacco store or retail "vape shop." If you do visit these stores, please inquire about the materials used inside the heating element and learn all you can about the liquid. Heating element wires should not be Nickle Chromium (aka "NiCr") and the wires shoudl be crimped and welded instead of soldered. As for the liquids, beware that some have been produced with chemicals you don't want to inhale, hence "the vape crisis." In our honest opinion, it's best to vaporize only 100% herbal product using the 2 methods above.