Electronic cigarettes are taking off. There are even recent reports that they’re actually much safer than traditional cigarettes, despite the increasingly common belief they’re not. Accordingly, the market is being flooded with a ton of products, and it’s getting increasingly hard to decide which one to pick. In this review, we’ll be taking a look at the Juul, a sleek device from the same people who brought you the insanely popular Pax Vaporizer. If you’re looking for an electronic cigarette to help you quit smoking, you can stop looking: the Juul is fantastic. It’s a game changer. It is, without a doubt, the closest experience to a real cigarette we’ve ever come across, and we suspect it’ll be explosively popular. Here are our thoughts.
The Hardware
The Juul is a sleek, elegant device that measures about 3.5 inches in length. Its angular design is modern, and the fit and finish speaks of quality craftsmanship. The first thing you’ll notice upon taking it in your hand is just how light it is. It’s ridiculously light, in fact. However, its brushed aluminum construction feels solid despite its lack of heft.
The device uses interchangeable liquid pods that contain all the necessary hardware to vaporize. They come in four flavours: Fruut, Miint, Tabaac, Bruule. The coil, the wick, the mouthpiece pipe, the draw sensors… everything is contained in these tiny pods about 1″ X 0.5″. Changing them is super easy; just pull it out and insert the new one in. There are no buttons to press; to draw you simply pull and a sensor will fire up the coil and vaporize the liquid. Internal temperature controls ensure a consistent puff. One pod is the equivalent of a pack of cigarettes.
The USB charger is magnetic, which is cool because you can plug Juul in even if its sideways. A full charge takes about an hour, but will last almost through an entire pod. An LED indicates battery levels, which you activate by tapping the device twice.
The Performance
The main feature of the Juul is how it delivers its nicotine to your bloodstream. Unlike traditional e-liquids, the company “used nicotine salts found in leaf-based tobacco as the core ingredient. By extracting and using those salts, Pax as able to create an experience that is more like smoking than other e-cigarettes on the market. That includes offering up two times the nicotine strength and three times the vapor quality of competing products.” In other words, when you puff on Juul, the feeling you get is extremely similar to a real cigarette. It spikes up and comes down slowly, whereas traditional e-cigs slowly build up and don’t give you that lightheadedness and alertness that smokers crave. The company even commissioned a study on this, with the results below.
Performance is stellar. Puff after puff is consistent, never getting too hot. The only negative point is that on some pods, when you first start pulling, you may experience a little sprinkling of liquid onto your tongue. This is unpleasant, since there’s nicotine in there and it creates a burning sensation on the tongue. The company assures us that the issue has been resolved and the pods that ship now don’t do that. Even if that wasn’t the case, it was a minor issue to start with, that presented itself only when first firing up a new pod.
Conclusion
I’ve been vaping for a couple of years and I’ve come across a LOT of products. In this world, there’s a niche for everything and there’s even a cultural aspect to vaping, which this caters to perfectly. You see, Juul is not for the big plume aficionados, nor is it for the flavour enthusiasts, although the pod pack flavours are just fine. This is not a recreational device, although it can be used that way (as it is with me). It’s for current smokers wanting to quit. It’s an elegant tool, a device with a function, not strictly a toy. This is the closest experience to smoking a cigarette that I’ve ever come across on an electronic product. It’s light as a feather, vaporizes on a draw rather than on a button press, has convenient self-contained liquid pods, and more importantly, hits your bloodstream in exactly the right way as to recreate the buzz felt by and craved so much by smokers. I mean this from the bottom of my heart, so believe me when I tell you that for the very first time since picking up vaporizers of any kind, I feel like I’m smoking a real cigarette, without nearly as much of the guilt that comes with the real thing. That’s nothing short of amazing.
A starter pack is $49.99, which includes 4 pods, a charger and the device itself. Additional pods are $15.99 for 4. It’s cheap, considering the quality and sophistication of what you’ll be getting.
PROS
+ Elegant, modern design
+ Simple to use
+ Consistent pulls with precise internal temperature controls
+ Excellent nicotine delivery very similar to real cigarettes
CONS
– Occasional e-liquid spittle on new pods
[ Juul Vapor ]
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