How We Test Vaping Gear: Our Review Method

Every review on this site comes from the same bench, under the same rules. This page documents those rules so you can judge our verdicts — and so a manufacturer who disagrees knows exactly which number to dispute. If we ever change the method, the change gets logged at the bottom of this page.

What we buy, and how units are sourced

We buy units at retail price from the same channels you use, or we borrow them from readers and return them. We do not accept paid placements, and any loaner arrangement is disclosed at the top of the relevant review. Every product in the catalog carries our score whether the brand likes it or not; several products we rate highly did not know we existed until the review went live.

Puff counts: measured, not quoted

Claimed puff counts come from machines that take long, slow, gentle draws under perfect conditions. People do not vape like that. Our rig takes three-second draws with thirty-second rests at a fixed airflow, which mirrors a moderate daily user, and counts until output drops below a defined threshold or the battery dies. We run two units per product and report the average. Across the category, our numbers typically land fifteen to thirty percent below box claims; the rare products that measure close to claim earn explicit mention in their reviews.

Flavour: blind panels of three

Flavour scoring is done blind: labels covered, order randomised, products sampled across their full life — first third, middle, final third. Each of three panellists scores two axes from one to five:

• Accuracy — does it taste like the thing on the label?
• Consistency — does it taste the same at the end as at the start?

Sweetness is recorded descriptively rather than scored, because it is preference, not quality. Where panellists disagree by more than a point, we buy a third unit and re-run. Our disposable flavour notes piece shows this method at full scale.

Hardware: the two-week soak

Pods and devices go through fourteen days of daily use by a rotating roster of testers. We log battery sag (how much runtime fades between charge one and charge twenty), coil life in millilitres vaped before flavour degrades, refill mess, pocket leaks, button feel and connector wear. Anything that dies inside the soak period is noted as a failure regardless of how well it scored up to that point.

Scoring and weights

The final score out of ten is weighted: flavour 40 percent, hardware reliability 25, value 25, convenience 10. Value is computed as cost per day of use at a standard consumption rate, not sticker price — see the disposable field test for how much this can move a ranking. No score is final until both test units have completed the full protocol.

What we deliberately do not do

We do not test health claims, we do not offer medical advice, and we do not rank products we have not physically tested. If a category is thin on this site, it is thin because stock reached us late, not because we are waiting for a sponsorship. And we do not do “best of” lists padded with filler: every product in a roundup has been through the bench, and the ones that failed are named.

Corrections policy

Numbers get corrected, openly. If a manufacturer demonstrates a measurement error, or our re-test produces different results, the review is updated with a dated note describing what changed and why. Scores are never silently edited.

The current rig

For the curious: the puff counter is a microcontroller-logged flow sensor, draws are timed at 3.0 ± 0.2 seconds, rest intervals at 30 ± 2 seconds, and ambient temperature is held in the 20–24 °C band. Battery measurements use a USB power meter between charges. Full part lists are available on request.

Method changelog: v1.0, October 2026 — initial publication of the protocol described above. Earlier reviews (marked as such) used the same rig but a single-unit puff protocol; flagged products will be re-tested as stock allows.