Vaporbrothers Vaporizer
| Overview |
Vaporbrothers vaporizer review : Good but still has flaws Posted by woovessacebet on Sep 22nd, 2007 The Vaporbrothers vaporizer is the first vaporizer that I have bought, but not the first one that I have tried. I am reviewing the 2007 hand-free model although it is essentially the same as the non hands-free. I have recommended this vaporizer to many friends and between me and my friends we have altogether bought 6 of these, all off of e-bay. So I have quite a bit of experience with this unit as I have spent countless hours taking vapo hits off of this thing. I will post some tricks I have learned at the end of the review. I will list a few Pros, and then a few Cons and explain them in further detail. PRO -Exquisite flavor out of your herb, using this vapo you get from what I have experienced the best flavor, its absolutely exquisite. Often the medicinal herb tastes fruity. -Can take some monstrous hits once experienced, it takes time to learn how to use the unit but if you know what your doing you can get some crazy draws -Looks cool, classic wooden box design and no two units look the same. Looks especially awesome with the green and blue LED lights on the bottom of the unit, they make this thing look really crazy in a dark room, and also double up as a quick source of light if you lift the vapo off the ground. -Since the new units come with the aroma bulb it is also really easy to conceal the unit now, just attach the aroma bulb and place the bottle of liquid aroma sample beside it and pass off the machine as an electric incense burner. (no combustion means less pollution ;D) -Very efficient vaporizer, once you get the hang of it just a spec of herb will work wonders, the times it is not efficient is during the learning process, and if the herb is not ground up fine enough. -The price is good for what your getting, you can get these shipped on e-bay for $120. $140 for the hands-free. -The vaporizer comes with extra goodies inside. The aroma bulb is a very nice addition and I use it to burn all of my liquid incense now, works great. Also the "herb sampler" that comes with the vaporizer actually has a secret use behind it. Use some of your medicinal herb and while your feeling good pack a couple of bowls of the herb sampler, it will catch on really quick and transform your high into something unique depending on which of the four you get, my personal favorite is the "Balancing Blues" blend, the Damiana really complements well with the Sage and Eucalyptus. CON -The hook up coil is at about a 35 degree angle which makes it harder to get a good hit while hooking up the whip to the unit, often the medicinal herb will fall off the screen and settle unevenly on the bottom of the glass part of the whip, this is what causes the efficiency to receive 4 stars instead of 5. Other times some one will be too high and while they pull the whip off the unit, they also drop a bunch of herb into the machine. -I have my doubts about how good a quality the heating element is inside of this machine. It feels as if it starts to weaken after a couple of months and as a result will take longer to heat up and re heat, you may even find yourself going from 12 O'clock to 1 O'clock after many many uses. -The whip is an absolute bitch to clean and replace the screen. Replacing the screen can take ages to do, and it sometimes feels impossible to get it perfectly in place. Also when trying to clean the hosing this is very difficult too, when you run water through the water ends up getting stuck in the tube. I don't know how to clean the whip well. -The unit is not very durable, it is pretty easy to damage it. When the unit is turned on it is especially sensitive to taking damage to the heating element, and I think this is the biggest flaw when it comes to durability. I assume that when most people complain about the unit breaking it's because they don't realize how sensitive this thing is when it's turned on, if you bump it into a lot of stuff on a constant basis it's going to turn to crap quickly. Unfortunately this is probably the units biggest weakness as stoners tend to be rather clumsy with their toys. -In my opinion there is a rather steep learning curve to truly mastering the use of this vaporizer. While it will still work for newcomers pretty well, to truly use it like a pro takes some work. Your really missing out until you get good at using it. -The reheat time on this thing I do not like either, it feels like once you initially heat it up which takes about four or five minutes which I don't mind waiting (don't listen to the company claiming 1 or 2 that's complete bull shit)you get a couple of good hits, but after a little bit of use it starts to become irritating, I feel like you must wait about 2 minutes between taking giant hits to truly get 100% out of each draw. This is also another one of the big flaws of this vaporizer. -Not the best for getting groups of people high, but for this price range there is no unit that will get that job done, you'll need a $500 Volcano -Herb must be ground up to truly utilize effectiveness -The warranty on this vaporizer isn't as good as some of their competitors. My overall opinion about the Vaporbrothers vaporizer is positive. It is a good vaporizer but has some serious drawbacks that lower its ratings, the main one being the heating element. This is compensated by the price tag though, for $120 dollars you can get a damn fine vaporizer from these guys. I feel like the design of the Vaporbrothers vaporizer is starting to get dated, a couple of years ago this design was easily considered the best for it's class, but with all of the new deigns recently becoming available to the vaporizer community it feels like the Vaporbrothers vapo is quickly falling behind the competition. So I would not be hesitant to look at newer designs and consider what your looking for, if your going to keep your vaporizer at home all the time and not move it, this one will do fine. I would also like to note that there are a lot of bull shit reviews on the internet that promote this vaporizer and rag on ever other one except the $400+ plus ones to make it seem like this is your only good choice for under $400. Don't listen to vaporwarehouse.com, they are directly affiliated with Vaporbrothers and will tell you what you want to hear in order to sell you this thing. Unfortunately I have a feeling the Vaporbrothers are "secretly" going across the internet and making fake review websites to pump this unit up, so beware and don't pay attention to most sites. Also I would like to notes that the other review on this site about this vaporizer is bunk. The reviewer simply states that the heating element is bad, and then gives poor rating in the other fields without explanation. It seems like he's just bashing this unit for his own agenda or he hasn't been using the unit properly. I would pay no attention to what he is saying. I would also like to throw in a few useful tricks that I have found with this vaporizer. -The most important thing with this machine that will increase its performance is getting a grinder that can grind the herb up as finely as possible, it will work amazingly better if the herb is ground up as finely as the pepper coming out of a pepper shaker. -You will know the unit is heated up and ready to give you a nice hit if you can feel the "Sweat spot". There is a sweat spot on the top of the machine that will create a circular warmth area when you place your hand on the wood, with some practice you'll be able to feel this spot and you'll know when it's good to go. -Wait for the unit to heat up completely, and when your about to take a hit, start the suction before connecting the whip to the base unit so the herb does not fall off the screen. -When disconnecting the hands-free unit's whip from the base, tilt the base in a manner to make the heating coil flat with the ground so you don't risk herb falling out on the disconnect. -When packing bowls don't pack a lot, just create a layer of herb that doesn't pile up on its self until you can't see the screen any more. It's much more efficient this way -Take slow and long breaths, and don't get discouraged by the learning curve. Good luck and happy Vaping! d8^) |
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