SMOK Review for 2020
First Impression
SMOK is a China-based company that produces discount products with immense amounts of power. They have consistently climbed to the top of ratings, and their tanks are well-known throughout the vaping world. You can be sure to rely on SMOK products to function well and deliver dense clouds of vapor. Most off all though, SMOK loves to craft flashy, showy mods in incandescent colors and designs that will grab everyone’s attention.
Above all, they like to brand their vaporizers as bigger and better than anyone else’s products. So while you can find a number of pen-style devices, SMOK caters to the advanced vaper who wants as much as he possibly can get out of each mod. Their mods tend to have advanced settings, variable voltage, multiple 18650 batteries, temperature control settings, and RDA’s and RBA’s. In fact, they hardly have any beginner kits at all, so if you are a beginner, you may want to toy around with some simpler vape pens before trying to attempt to grapple with a SMOK mod. Keep reading our exclusive SMOK Tech review to find out our impressions of everything from vapor production to e-liquid and more.
SMOK Vapor Production
Recently, SMOK has produced a series of high-end mods one producing more vapor than the next. The Alien, the G-Priv, the X-Cube–each one has a power output of 200W or more. Now, we don’t know how many people actually vape at 200W regularly, but there are no limits to these things. SMOK goes out of their way to make sure that their mods can chuck more vapor than any others. Even their mini mods can put out a good amount of vapor. In fact, their mini mods produce as much vapor as most regular mods from other companies.
Their tanks are just as powerful as their batteries. The TFV8 and TFV12, for instance, come with octuple and duodenary coils respectively. SMOK packs more coils into their atomizers than practically any other vaping company I know. The tanks hold 6mL of juice, and while they guzzle a good amount of juice per vape, they sure do produce some heavy clouds. You might even start to interfere with the weather patterns with these SMOK patterns!
SMOK Vaping Accessories
We discovered throughout our SMOK review that the company doesn’t seem to put a whole lot of effort into their accessories section. The only accessory listed under their accessories is their smart battery charger. This charger can charge up to four high-drain batteries and shows the voltage, charging current, charging time, and battery type all on its LCD display.
Otherwise, while you find a wide variety of mods and kits, you cannot find any batteries, special chargers, lanyards, carrying cases, drip tips, etc. Most of their kits come with a USB charging cable and a tank, but you’ll have to find your batteries elsewhere. It seems like they put a lot of energy designing and perfecting their mods rather than putting out акцессорыес.
SMOK E-Liquid
SMOK does not sell any e-liquid. As we mentioned before, SMOK devotes their time to producing high-quality, affordable mods. By specializing, they are able to carve out a niche for themselves in the marketplace. While they may not be able to compete for e-liquids, their mods are so much more powerful than anyone else’s, and their selection is so much larger than their competitor’s selection, that they more than make up for what they lack in terms of accessories and e-liquid.
Battery Performance and Charging
The majority of SMOK mods run on 18650 batteries, so for the most part, you’re battery performance will depend on the batteries you use. A growing number of SMOK mods though require two, three, or even four batteries. That’s how they’re able to put out 350W of power. Besides their mini and pen-style mods, their mods by and large take more batteries. If you purchase a SMOK kit from DirectVapor, they will sometimes throw in a few batteries just to get you started; however, SMOK itself does not sell batteries at all. So, if you order directly from their website, you’re kit will come with fewer accessories.
SMOK Selection
SMOK tends to sell a lot of advanced products. They focus most of their efforts into their box mods, and so you’ll find quite a large selection of heavy-duty mods though very few starter kits. They do offer a number of pen-style devices, but these are still fairly advanced, and many of them can even support sub-ohm coils. Lastly, you’ll always find a very large–perhaps one of the largest–selections of tanks. SMOK is constantly updating their tank designs. They’ll have up to four or five editions of one tank, and then they include those tanks in their other starter kits.
SMOK is constantly releasing new items, so you have an enormous amount of vaporizers from which to select. They don’t keep all of their products available on their website all the time, so the selection they have posted doesn’t adequately reflect the mods available on the market. You can’t find any of these on the SMOK website, but they’re still popular mods among vaping enthusiasts.
Packaging & Design
SMOK always packages up their products in nice black boxes with a clean design. Their product typically look sleek and modern, and they do a nice job of incorporating different textures with carbon fiber decals and opportunely-placed trimming. SMOK does a really good job of offering their mods in a variety of different colors including metallic and rainbow options. We’d never seen so many mods offered in a metallic rainbow design before we’d encountered SMOK. Even the tanks come in rainbow! SMOK also tries to help vapers color coordinate, so they’ll offer colored vape bands in their kits so, for example, the color band around the tank can match the mod itself. Of course, not everyone is so concerned about matching their tank to their outfit and their mod, but those who do will appreciate SMOK’s extra effort to accommodate them.
Otherwise, their designs are fairly simple. SMOK tends to stick with simple, straight lines rather than try to overdo it with too many details. They tend to prefer to offer their mods in a wide variety of colors than styles, and it makes perfect sense to prioritize one over the other. That being said, their styles to vary quite a bit. You’ll find the Treebox outfitted in wood, the T-PRIV decorated with a futuristic, structural design carved into its front and colored in a gradient, and the new Procolor, which is coated in a fluorescent rainbow. Their products do not, admittedly, look all that chic and expensive, but they do come in some wildly interesting colors and designs.
SMOK Warranty
If your product is defective, you can fill out an RMA form available on the SMOK website and send the form, proof of purchase, and the device to their American headquarters based in North Carolina. There is a three month warranty for most of their battery devices, but SMOK advises customers not to send individual accessories that may have been part of a kit as they take no responsibility for missing pieces. You should expect to wait between one to two weeks and between three to four weeks if the parts are out of stock. Customers are responsible for paying the shipping fee to send the product, and if the product needs to be replaced, SMOK will pay the return shipping fee. However, if the product is not deemed defective or if the issue is not covered under warranty, customers are responsible for paying the cost of return shipping if they want their device returned to them. Otherwise, they forfeit their product.
Since their shipping policy is fairly strict, and since SMOK is sold through a number of separate retail stores, we suggest that you purchase your SMOK devices either at your local vaping outlet or favorite online vape shop.
Customer Service
It is a little difficult to get a hold of SMOK just because their Headquarters is in China, so unless you happen to be in Shenzhen for the day and can drop in for tea and a nice chat, you will have to be patient. The main office works on Chinese hours from 8:30am to 6pm, which is from 8:30pm to 6am Eastern Standard Time, so if you send them an email in the morning or afternoon, they won’t even look at it until the evening.
That being said, you can contact them at order@smoktech.com for any official inquiries, support@smoktech.com for any issues after purchase, and marketing@smoktech.com for any promotional issues. In fact, they even have a handy contact button right in the bottom right-hand corner of their website. You can also contact them via facebook, twitter, and instagram, where they do seem to be fairly active and responsive. Even if you can’t get an individual response to your inquiry, they will regularly give updates and feedback. If you want to view their products before purchasing them, you can check out their youtube channel where they review and display their own mods and vaporizers.
SMOK Starter Kits
SMOK has many starter kits, but we thought that we’d mention a few of them here to familiarize you with few of their products. Again, they offer box mods, tanks, and pen-style devices.
TFV8 Cloud Beast
The Cloud Beast, as he is familiarly called, has a tank capacity of 6mL, or 5.5 with the RBA, and a swivel cap to make for easy refilling in this top-fill design. All you have to do is move the top cap to the side and drip your vape juice through the slot on the side of the tank. It has a 510 thread connection port so you can use the tank with most if not all of your sub-ohm tanks, although with a 25.5mm diameter, it may not screw on to every mod without a little bit of overhang. It comes with an octuple and quadruple coil head both with a resistance of 0.15Ω. Though SMOK has remade the TFV8 several times since it originally released it, this remains their most popular tank, and they include it quite a few of their starter kits. As far as flavor and vapor production, this tank has a stunning performance, and it even comes in eight beautiful colors including rainbow.
G-Priv
The G-Priv is one of the first high-powered mods to come with a touchscreen interface. Every other device seems to come with a touchscreen these days, so why not vaporizer too? While there is more than one touchscreen mod available out on the market, we’ve never seen one that is as clear and easy to use as this one here. The mod itself is sleek and slim with a carbon-fiber decal on the back and colored trimming around the edges. The weighted fire-bar is easy to press, and the mod fires at up to 220W, which while impressive in general is standard for SMOK. It runs on two 18650 batteries, so its battery life is twice as long, and the batteries can be inserted into the mod via a handy magnetized battery door. Lastly, it runs on temperature control mode and can therefore support nickel, titanium, and stainless steel coils as well as the standard clapton coil. This mod, with its ultra-modern touchscreen brings us into the next age of vaping.
Stick V8
It’s difficult to be a new vaper because the starting kits for vapers are fairly simplistic, and they cannot provide the same kind of vapor as their more advanced counterparts can. The V8 probably isn’t for a clueless beginner, but it is simple enough for someone who’s at least tried e-cigs. The V8 is a pen-style device that nonetheless comes with 3000mAh and the TFV8 Big Baby, which has a capacity of 5mL. So, it’s simple like other vape pens because the only means of control is the release button, but it will last you all day long unlike other vape pens. You don’t have to manipulate a complex system of controls, but you still get an equivalent amount of power. That being said, the vape pen is also perfect for experienced vapers who want a lighter, more portable device to carry around with them either to work or in the evening if they have to go out. This pen comes in 19, yes 19, stunning colors including pink, camouflage, and four metallic rainbow designs among numerous others. If you want an intermediate vape pen with a lot of power or simply a portable vaporizer with the same power as a box mod, then you’ll love the Stick V8.
The Alien
The Alien fires at up to 220W and is a fan-favorite among SMOK customers. It is built in an oblong shape with pointed corners and a diagonally set front screen whose interface functions much like SMOK’s other devices. It is powered by two 18650 batteries, and also comes in a mini version. You can get the Alien for only about $50, which, for a high-powered mod, is a bargain. This is actually, relatively standard for high-powered SMOK mods though. You can choose between voltage-wattage mode and temperature control mode, and you can even save your favorite settings and come back to them later. You can never go wrong with the Alien, and you even might have an out-of-this-world experience.
Other Products
Even though SMOK is well-known for their high-powered box mods, they have recently been invested in their mini mod collection. While they pride themselves on mixing up batch after batch of beastly mods with power output ratings that go through the roof, many of these mods are, understandably, fairly large and bulky. They are by no means too large to comfortably hold in the palm of the hand, but on the other hand, they aren’t small enough to easily slip into a medium-sized purse or pocket especially if you want to bring e-juice or an extra atomizer coil with you also.
So, SMOK decided that it would take your favorite mods and then just shrink them down to size. So, you’ll find the baby brothers and sisters of your beloved mods and tanks. After we met the TFV8, we welcomed the TFV8 Baby and Big Baby to the Cloud Beast family. We also have the Alien and Alien Baby and the OSUB Plus and the OSUB Mini. These function almost exactly like their older siblings but with less power. You’ll find though that the average SMOK mini mod can produce almost as much vapor as a regular mod from elsewhere. For example, an Alien Baby vapes at up to 80W, but most people don’t ever vape above 80W anyway, so you get the best of both worlds. You get as much power as you need without any of the extra bulk. You may ask, well why do their mods have such large wattage ranges in the first place? Well, that is a good question, but there is certainly a devoted group of vapers that craves the kind of extreme experiences you can only get from SMOK.
SMOK-Tech Review Summary
Well, we hoped you enjoyed our SMOK Review and have learned some valuable information. Overall, we are quite satisfied with SMOK. Though they began as a relatively obscure company that tended to copy designs from other vape shops, now they’re the trendsetters themselves. They’ve grown immensely since they established themselves all those years ago, and now they’re one of the leading manufacturer and distributor of discount vaping products in the world. SMOK can edge out all of their competition in terms of price, and so what they lack in elegance and sophistication, they more than compensate for in affordability.
However, even though they don’t market themselves as a high-end company, their devices are incredibly powerful. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any other mods on the market at all that claim they consistently turn out mods and tanks that can fire at over 200W, and SMOK does it over and over and over again in a relatively brief span of time. They are fierce competitor, and they are always innovating and re-designing to come up with new features to include on their mods. The sheer speed at which they churn out mods helps them immensely to improve because they get more feedback more quickly.
So, if you hadn’t heard of SMOK until this point, then it’s good thing you know now because here at E-Cig Brands, we are devoted to making sure that you know what’s going on in the vaping world. To not know about SMOK in this day and age would truly be a tragedy. So, if this is the first time you’ve heard of SMOK, it’s about time you go check out their products for yourself! Don’t just take our word for it. Go and enjoy them!