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What You Need To Know About Variable Wattage

This article for Spinfuel’s Guide to Vaping – Level Two – concerns taking the mystery out of ‘variable wattage’. There is a lot of confusion outthere in the vaping community about voltage and wattage, especially among the newer vapers, or even vapers who have been using variable voltagemods for a while. So, sit back, get comfortable, and read how easy it is to understand.

Biggest Lesson To Learn: If you went and got yourself a spanking new mod that offers both variablevoltage and variable wattage the first thing you need to know is that it is a “either/or” situation. You doNOT set the wattage first and voltage second, or vice versa. You either decide to use variable voltage orvariable wattage for your current vaping, not both.

You have no idea how many people think you set both parameters. The eCigarette manufactures don’t make it easy either, they assume youalready know this factoid or they allude to it. So, once again, it is an ‘either/or’ situation.

Coming from the world of cig-a-likes all these variables, and all these choices must make it seem like ‘advanced vaping’ is difficult. Compared tousing standard 3.7v mini batteries and prefilled cartomizers it can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Using more advanced mods gives youmany more options to choose from, options you didn’t have in the cig-a-like ‘verse. As I discuss voltage and wattage keep in mind that these areoptions, not particularly things you must know. (but it is good to know them at some point.)

With variable voltage you have the opportunity to use all kinds of eLiquid delivery devices, cartomizers, clearomizers, tanks, etc., and adjust theamount of heat getting to the eLiquid by sending higher voltages to the atomizer. Send too much and you burn out the atomizer and the eLiquidtakes like crap, send too little and the vapor is thin, cool, flavorless. Getting it just right means maximizing all the variables in your favor.

There is a mathematical equation that you can use if you know the exact ‘ohms’ of the cartomizer/atomizer you have on your eCig. The equation iseasy enough to understand and use, from time to time, and it goes like this:

Volts / Resistance (in ohms) = Watts

Example: 3.3v x 3.3v / 2.2ohm = ? Watts (go ahead, solve the problem now)

But, let me ask you something point blank: Do you really want to run a math equation in your head every time you put on a newcartomizer/clearomizer/atomizer/tank on your eCigarette battery? Or, better yet, do you want whip out your multi-meter and attach your battery andcartomizer to make sure that your math will come out right? Just because that box of Boge Cartomizers has 3.0-ohm printed on the box it doesn’tmean that those cartomizers are actually 3.0-ohm’s. They won’t be, they will be either .1 or .2 ohms off, plus or minus. Sometimes even more. Ifyou don’t know that your math will lead you astray.

The “Fiddle Factor”

It has been my experience that most vapers don’t invest in a variable voltage mod in order to do the math. They like to fiddle with the settings.“Start low and work your way up” is what most vapers will tell you, and that’s a good thing to remember and practice. Fiddling with the voltage isalmost half the fun of vaping a VV mod. (not really, but it sounded cool didn’t it?)

Adjusting the voltage allows you to zero in on the amount of flavor, vapor, and throat hit you want. By using the same eLiquid, same eLiquid deliverydevice (cartomizer et al) you can, for the most part, fiddle with your VV mod to find the sweet spot for your tastes and then use those same settingover and over again, as long as the parameters stay the same. Change your eLiquid flavor or brand and you’ll need to fiddle again. Change from aBoge cartomizer to a Vivi Nova and you’ll need to fiddle yet again.

Lastly, even if you test your cartomizer and find the correct ohms, do the math, and set your VV mod, you may not even like what should be theideal setting. Perhaps you want to trade off vapor for more flavor, or flavor for more vapor, or max out the throat hit without regard for the othertwo factors. So, you see, VV Mods are great tools, but you have to want to play around with them, a lot, to get great vapes all the time.

There is an easier way…

Variable Wattage

I’ve been using a VV Mod for many months, and I enjoy the fiddling around that comes with variable voltage settings. But, after reviewing theVAMO, (review) I decided that Variable Wattage was something I wanted to add to my vaping experience. The VAMO has both. If I want tofiddle around I have the VV part to fiddle with, but if I don’t want to fiddle around I have the Variable Wattage to make use of.

Advanced Vaping Made Easy

Basically, the idea behind variable wattage is that you can set your wattage setting to suit yourpreferences and when you change up your eLiquid delivery device you don’t have to fiddle withthe voltage. The advanced Mod will read the resistance of your atomizer in your cartomizer orVivi Nova, or tank, and, as long as you have your mod set to Variable Wattage, it will adjust theamount of power going into the device, either up or down, to best reflect your personal vapingpreferences.

Example: I’m vaping my favorite eLiquid using my advanced mod and a Vision Vivi Nova

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(MyVaporStore), equipped with a very nicely wrapped and very accurate atty head inside theVivi. If I manually set my wattage to 8w the VAMO will adjust the volts to make sure I vape atwhat it discerns is my ideal vape. I can take it up to 9w or down to 5.2w and the VAMO willreadjust its setting for the voltage. Nice, right?

But, it get’s better. Let’s switch up and this time use a Joyetech eVic, a very advancedVV/VW mod.

The nice thing about a device like the eVic is that it will make recommendations for me when Iattach a new cartomizer, clearomizer, Vivi Nova, etc., based on the readings it takes. Let’s sayI’m using a 2.4-ohm atomizer on the eVic. Within a short moment the eVic decides that the bestwattage to use is 5.2w. If I want the vaping experience that the eVic wants me to have I simplydial in 5.2w on the device and start vaping. For me, this works about 90% of the time.

Disregarding the Recommendations: Fiddling around with the voltage setting is almost mandatory. While the math can give you a supposedideal value to use in voltage it doesn’t take into consideration the particular eLiquids viscosity, or a host of other possibilities, including coils that are‘off’. So, you tweak and tweak, fiddle and fiddle, and discover on your own. But, for Wattage, it’s harder to do.

Yes, when you attach a device to the VW mod it suggests a wattage setting that will usually give you a great vape. Ignoring that setting andincreasing the wattage only tells your VW mod to make further adjustments to the voltage.

Wattage Fiddling?

You’ll notice that most, if not all, of the variable voltage mods on the market now advertise that they can go up or down the VV line at .1 increments,usually between 3-6v, (the eVic can go 3v to5v). That’s some pretty wicked fine-tuning going on there. But, wattage is different, for now, becauseyou can only adjust the wattage by .5w per click. You can move the wattage scale like this: 5.0w, 5.5w, 6.0w, 6.5w, and so on, from 2w to 15w withthe eVic.

If your mod tells you that the ideal wattage setting is 6w and you decide to take it up to 7w then, if the mod and the atomizer can handle it, the modmakes an adjustment to the voltage setting, keeping you within the same vicinity to where you were vaping before you upped the wattage. So, whybother right?

Well, to a point, yea, why bother? But if the user wants to increase the wattage beyond what the device can adjust for then he or she changes thevaping experience, usually for the worse, but who knows, maybe the eLiquid is particularly thick or something. But for most cases, changing thewattage keeps the voltage changing so the vaping experience stays the same.

Why is this a good thing?

As I mentioned above, not all 3.0ohm attys are the same. Ohm varies widely depending on the coils, among other things. Here’s a pretty goodanalogy to explain why using wattage instead of voltage is often the way to go.

Julia and Jason are both using the same VV/VW mod and the same STV Vivi Nova, as well as the same eLiquid. Both of them test the atty outand find that the 3.0-ohm attys are spot on. (Hey, it can happen).

Julia decides to use Variable Voltage and Jason uses Variable Wattage…

Julia does the math and comes up with 5.5v for the ideal setting. (Remember the equation from above?) This setting puts out right about 10watts of power. Jason, using wattage, lets the mod make the suggestion and it chooses 10w for the setting. So far so good, both Julia andJason are experiencing the same amount of flavor, vapor, and throat hit.

As long as Julia and Jason continue using the atty and eLiquid their experience will remain identical. And because they are both using advancedmods with nice booster circuitry they needn’t worry about the amount of power left in the batteries. Both mods will output at the same powerlevel throughout the battery charge. (This is not possible with the less expensive mini-battery cig-a-likes)

But a couple of weeks later their attys die out and they have to change them. This time, leaving the setting where they were, Jason is stillenjoying a great vape but Julia’s vape is terrible. The eLiquid tastes like burnt plastic, and the vapor is way too hot. Yet, all things remained thesame, same mods, same atty type, and same eLiquid. So why was Jason able to vape “well” and Julia couldn’t?

The answer lies in the Variable Voltage choice. Since neither one bothered to test the resistance of the attys with their multi-meters they didn’trealize that Julia’s atty wasn’t living up to the 3.0-ohm claim, and it was putting out only 2.6-ohms, a very likely scenario with cheaper attys.

Because Julia used the same setting with an atty that was using a lower resistance, more power (wattage) was reaching the atty, somewherearound 11.3 watts. Way more than needed, hence the burning eLiquid. In order for Julia to have the same experience as before she wouldhave had to adjust the voltage down to 5.1 or 5.2v instead of 5.5v. The atty was doing less resisting of the power (wattage) coming out of thebattery so by lowering the voltage to 5.2v Julia is actually holding back some of that power, reducing the heat at the coil.

Because Jason was telling his mod to deliver 10w of power to the atty it did the math itself. When a newer atty was attached and found to bedelivering the same 2.7v of resistance Jason’s mod regulated the wattage making sure to continue to deliver “just” 10 watts, no more.

So, for this particular situation, Variable Wattage wins the day. And as you can see, using VW is obviously easier than using VV. Less work,less math, less screw-ups.

And…

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I don’t want to add more confusion here, but as you can also see, hopefully, that all the advanced electronics help a great deal. Since both modswere equipped with circuit protection, battery protection, and so forth, none of the settings, no matter what they might have been, would haveproduced an unsafe vaping experience. But we’ll get to that at another time.

In conclusion

Many people find that using Variable Wattage is easier and more consistent than using Variable Voltage. To get an ideal vape going from the firstdrag onward Variable Voltage requires you to do a little math, or a lot of fiddling. Using Variable Wattage tells your mod to output at THAT wattageno matter what, so if your atty falls short of ideal ohms it will make the adjustment it needs to make in order to continue to put out that samewattage.

There are plenty of times when you might want to override the voltage setting on your VV device, and to be perfectly honest, most of us love tofiddle with the mods anyway, discovering our own sweet spots without doing a lick of math.

The choice between VV and VW is yours, providing you have a mod that offers both. John Manzione, the editor, currently uses a ProVari, a modthat offers Variable Voltage only. For him, the math is the fun part. For me, not so much. Not to mention that the man loves to fiddle with thatbutton!

Oh, and remember, its an EITHER/OR situation. Don’t go set your wattage and then switch and set your voltage. It doesn’t work. All you are doing isgoing from “voltage” TO “wattage”. But don’t worry, unless someone tells you that, it’s pretty normal to think that you can set both.

Tom McBride

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StaffThe Spinfuel Writ ing Staff consists of Julia Hart ley-Barnes, Jason Litt le, Tom McBride, John Manzione, Keira Hart ley-Barnes, John Cast le

and Steven Kaderabek. Feel free to leave comments on just about anything for the ent ire staff or the part icular author of this

review/commentary/tutorial, or whatever. ;) Special thanks to contribut ing authors Mark Benson and Chris Balme.

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Roman September 2, 2013 at 12:29 am

I actually did a lot of research before I bought my first Variable Voltage/Wattage device (which was an Innokin Itaste SVD). I searched and searched, trying

to understand what the difference was between sett ing the voltage and wattage, and after a few days, I was worse off than I was before I started.

Then I read this art icle…

And it all made sense. Seriously, thank you so much. I w ish more reviewers/people who give tutorials/t ips would write everything in a much simpler manner.

Something that everybody can understand. I am not dumb either, but sometimes people just write so much technical jargon in their art icles, you leave

more confused than before. So again, thank you very much for this art icle , and I hope to read more by you

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Staff September 2, 2013 at 6:52 am

Thank you Roman, I feel the same way you do. When I was learning all of this the people who taught me made me work for it , through all the

tech talk and discouraging words about how “tough” it was. When explained simply and logically, I hope to inform vapers that it doesn’t *have*

to be hard, only new. – Tom

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PeteC2 June 18, 2013 at 8:29 pm

Way cool, thanks! I just got my first ADV and really didn’t quite get the significance between vv and vw. THis helps me quite a bit , glad that I looked back

for this art icle.

REPLYREPLY

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Spinfuel Staff June 19, 2013 at 7:23 am

Thank you Pete! This is the biggest reason I favor being an online “e” magazine rather than a print magazine. Every art icle is available w ith a

couple of keystrokes instead of having to dig through past issues. – Jason

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stephen June 9, 2013 at 11:54 am

Love this art icle. Very informative in helping me to learn about my wattage sweet spot w ith my vamo. Thanks a lot!

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