Guys,
Can someone please let me know the actual plain differences between the ego style, less-expensive units versus the more expensive units, like say istick 50 W with like a kanger subtank mini? which was recommended in another recent thread.
Is the taste better? Or is it purely about battery life and bigger clouds?
You're half right
On top of the wonderful information above I am going to drop a little technical knowledge about it. Ego batteries quite simply don't have the power output that their bigger mod brothers and sister's have. All Ego batteries have either a very small ICR or Lipo style Lithium Ion battery hardwired to their small chipset inside of them and to the tube they're encased in itself. Therefore when the battery dies the whole unit is done. Also, because of their compact nature, if they battery itself is limited to this, then the chipset regulates them to a 2.5 to 3.5 amp output power level for safety so you're limited to what kinds of atomizers you can run on them because most ego's can't run anything with a resistance below 1.2 (most of them 1.5,) and the few that can run down to 1 ohm will have such a power loss from voltage drop from the battery working it's hardest that it defeats the point of running that low of ohm on them in the first place. Yes that's right, I said voltage drop...just like you read about and have on an unregulated mech or box mod. There several types of eGo batteries....there are unregulated ones that start out putting out as close to 4.2 volts under load if it can like a unregulated mech mod and as you use it and the battery drains the power out lessens till it's chipset won't let it fire and tells you to recharge it. Then there are constant voltage eGo's that are set to a constant power output like 3.7 volts and the little chipset does it's best to produce that result. And then there are Variable voltage eGo's that supposedly put out the voltage you set them to with either up and down buttons, clicking the fire button a certain number of times, or the ever loved "twist" or "spinner" style.
But the reality is that the small chipsets these batteries that their main job is to turn the battery on and off, prevent over draining the battery and letting you know when it's time to charge, and prevent discharge of over the 2.5/3.5 amp limit. They're not that great at regulating voltage under what would be a "heavy" load for what these types of batteries are....therefore like I said...putting a coil with a resistance below 1.5 ohms on them stresses them out defeating the purpose because of the voltage drop. The high end more exspensive eGo styles have a little better chipsets and fair better than your cheap generics and clones but I've done in line voltage test with several brands of eGos I've owned (and I had close to 30 of them at one point to get a fairly good pool to do this research with,) but what I am saying it's pretty much true.
Now the lower end regulated mods like the Eleaf Isticks and even the Smok Xpro 80 have a much bigger battery with a much higher Amp output capability so you can run a much wider variety of tanks and atomizers with a greater range of builds. The chipsets in these are much higher quality with greater function do a much better job of regulating things as well. The downside to these mods is also one of their strengths. Generally, not all mods that have unreplaceable batteries, but most have a LiPo (Lithium Polymer) type of battery pack in them. The advantage to LiPo batteries is they have a much lower internal resistance than their 18650 cousins and are much more efficient because of it. Generally a 2000 mah LiPo pack will outperform a 2000 mah 18650 battery if all other conditions are equal. But, as
@UncleRJ has said...these mods are kind of "rent a mods." As great as these mods are, eventually the battery reaches the end of it's service life and if the company that makes it doesn't have a battery swap service (like Vaporshark does with it's small DNA mod,) or you have the skills to buy and replace the battery it's self...once the battery is dead so is the mod. You save money because you don't have to buy replaceable batteries and a charger for them but you'll eventually have to replace the mod....it's not a matter of if, but when...depending on the build quality that could be in a matter of years or months.
Now...with replaceable battery mods you get all the features of their fixed battery cousins, but you have to buy a good smart charger and the proper 18650 batteries to match your mods out capabilities. The advantage of this is you can have several sets of batteries and when the batteries die in the mod you can just swap them out for a fully charged spare set instead of having to wait for the mod to charge giving you the possibility of indefinite run time depending on your proximity to your charger and number of spare batteries on hand.
But sadly, even with swappable batteries eventually the chipset will fail in all mods and when the chip goes the mod is dead, replaceable batteries or not. However...the quality of the newer chipsets once they've got the bugs worked out of them are much higher than the older regulated mods we used and I've got some that have lasted a couple years and are still going strong and I expect them to last for years more....far longer than any battery for them. Like my Vaporshark DNA30....there's no problem with the chip, works just as good as the day I bought it...however, I've had to have the battery replaced in it once already and I am sure by the end year since it's my daily mod I'll probably have to have it replaced again.
You shouldn't be worried about the chipset in a regulated mod going out, this wasn't meant to scare you...just pass on general information about how things work.
I hope this wasn't confusing and answered more questions than it caused....that's the brief run down on eGo's vs. bigger regulated mods. Hope this helped. Happy vaping!
