How to Choose Your First Vape

Your ultimate beginners guide to choosing your first vape. 

Where to start

There is a lot of information out there, and a lot of it is really confusing for a new vaper. You might be asking yourself whether sub-ohm is some kind of meditation practice under the sea. Or if nic salts are something you have on your fish and chips.

Don’t worry, this guide is going to go right back to basics.

Keep it simple

There are lots of vapes on the market with a mind-boggling array of features, most of which you won’t need when you’re just starting out. Pick a vape that’s as simple as possible to start with, so that you can get used to it. This is really important if you’re replacing your 20-a-day habit with a vape — if it’s too complicated at the beginning, there’s a high chance you’ll end up reaching for your cigarettes again.

So, steer away from the mods, advanced kits and anything that sounds like it does everything except boil an egg, and go for something with as few features as possible. The Geekvape Wenax Stylus Pod is an ideal first vape — it has a single button and only 3 different power settings (low, medium and high).

Let’s talk about coils

What exactly is a coil? Essentially, it’s the replaceable part of your vape which soaks up the juice, heats up when you press the firing button or draw on your vape, and then turns the liquid into vapour (hence “vaping”) that you breathe in. Think of it like boiling a kettle — as the water gets to boiling point, it changes into steam which comes out of the spout.

They might be made of different materials, and have different names (like atomiser), but they’re all made up of 3 similar parts — the wicking material, the wire or mesh, and the outer casing.

The wicking material, often cotton, is the part that soaks up your vape juice. 

Thinking back to your school physics lessons, metal conducts electricity, and this is what the wire or mesh part of your vape does. As it conducts electricity, it heats up, vaporising the juice in the wicking material. 

The outer casing holds everything together.

Somewhere either on the coil itself or in the instructions that come with it, you’ll see the recommended wattage range for the coil. It’s important to make sure you stay within this range when you’re vaping so you don’t damage it.

Typically, your first vape kit will come with either one or two coils — keep a note of the coil name and the resistance (ohms) so that you can easily buy replacements.

Is sub-ohm a meditation practice under the sea?

Short answer: no.

Going back to your school physics lessons, ohms are measurements of electrical resistance. The higher the ohm, the more resistance there is. With sub-ohm vaping, the electrical resistance in the coil is less than 1.0, meaning the wire or mesh heats up quicker because it’s a better conductor of electricity.

If you’re new to vaping, you’ll probably want to start with resistance of 1.0 or over, as this is more suited to mouth-to-lung vaping styles. 

You might want to pick a kit that has both 1.0+ohm, and sub-ohm capabilities, so you can start trying it out as you get used to vaping. The Aspire PockeX Kit is a good place to start, and comes with a 1.2ohm coil, and a 0.6ohm coil.

What is MTL (mouth-to-lung) and DTL (direct-to-lung)?

These are two different styles of vaping. 

If you’re a cigarette smoker, you’ll be used to the mouth-to-lung style. This is where you draw the vapour into your mouth, then breathe it into your lungs. Hence, mouth-to-lung.

If you think back to your first cigarette (if you’ve ever smoked one), you probably used a direct-to-lung style. This is where you take your vapour in with one breath straight into your lungs. This style of vaping typically produces more clouds.

To start with, you’ll likely want to use a MTL style, as this will come more naturally to you — especially if you’re substituting cigarettes with vaping.

So, for your first vape, keep it simple. Go for a vape that has as few options as possible. Keep a note of the coils you get with your kit, and opt for something with a resistance of 1.0ohms or higher.