The electronic cigarette’s most important component is the battery.
Over the years, the e-cig batteries have evolved from looking just like a tobacco cigarette to looking like something you’d find in a research facility at NASA.
The industry has evolved, and there are different colors, lengths, styles, and modifications of electronic cigarette batteries. We’ve decided to highlight all types of electronic cigarette batteries, from the standard, conventional batteries to the very bizarre and bold.
An E cig battery is not just one but many things to different people. The sort you see on TV is usually a cigalike battery which, when connected to a cartomizer, is the right length to replicate the general appearance of a cigarette. Its weight and circumference are about right too.
There are eGo batteries that connect to clearomizers and form longer and wider e cigs. Bigger batteries are tube-shaped or are built into box-shaped mods. The last sort of battery isn’t really an e cig battery so much as a regular one that fits into mods.
E Cig Batteries
The first group is threaded to fit with certain cartomizers (atomized cartridges for e liquid). That threading determines if competing brands connect comfortably with each other. Two such threads are 510 and KR808D-1 or D-2.
The mini cig battery can be as small and weak as 90 mAh or as powerful as more than 300 mAh, but manufacturers don’t generally go past this point in the mini cig market because that would sacrifice the aesthetic qualities associated with cigalikes, which are important to new vapers. They find it helpful if a battery weighs little more than a cigarette and fits as neatly between their fingers as analogs would. Convincing their minds to accept change is easier this way. If the colors are right too (white and/or tan), that makes it even easier to switch.
Changing the color of a battery is easy enough: most e cig companies offer black, white, or silver alternatives. Some go for bright colors like red, orange, and pink too. The end is tipped with an LED light that glows as the user puffs it.
Draining Practice
Consumers love e cigs at first, but find it draining (literally and figuratively) to rely on those tiny batteries. Their power runs out too fast. They need to be charged every few hours and spares kept on hand. At this point, the logical option is to use an eGo e cig. These devices operate using an on/off switch which activates the atomizer and turns off the battery when vaping is postponed or finished. This button doesn’t do anything else.
A number of brands also make variable voltage versions of these batteries with knobs on the bottom they twist to alter voltage, but there isn’t a screen indicating what level has been reached.
Batteries of this sort vary in length. They are wider than mini cigs generally (with a couple of exceptions, like the Cigavette), but always longer.
Advanced Uses
Later, the batteries become more sophisticated. They can change voltage, perhaps wattage, and remember what voltage you last chose. Battery protection is built in too. Instead of a knob, they feature one or more buttons.
Several of these advanced devices are boxes with built-in batteries: box mods, as they are known. The Innokin iTaste MVP 2.0 is the most popular and among the most affordable such devices. Other electronic mods like the Vaporfi Rebel are telescopic, meaning they can change size to accommodate small or large batteries depending on the user’s comfort level with a big e cig.
Pricing Batteries
There is no replacement for excellent quality and plenty of reasons to be wary of cheap garbage. If you buy a cheap e cig there’s a good chance it won’t hold a charge, will die sooner rather than later, and isn’t protected. Mini cig batteries that cost a little more but are worth your while include the South Beach Smoke Supermax and the V2 Standard or Long battery. The G6 by Halo is pretty good too.
Mini cig batteries come in two forms: automatic or manual. An automatic battery is activated by the consumer taking a puff and is always ready to work, but that drains the battery quickly. A manual battery takes a short time to get used to, but the atomizer doesn’t work until that button is pressed.
Kanger, JoyeTech, Smok, and Vision make excellent eGo batteries, as does Halo (the Triton), Volcano (the Inferno), and Vaporfi (the Pro). Their sizes generally start at around 650 mah and go up to 1300 mAh. Anything in between the mini and eGo styles (like the Air by Vaporfi) is hardly worth bothering with.
Mods like the MVP use 2600-mAh batteries, but the Rebel can operate on 600 mAh or 2600 mAh.