E-cigarettes or “vaporizers” have become immensely popular in recent years, and in the past year have seen an explosion of popularity and innovation in the past year. Because the term “vaporizer” is already used to describe personal aromatherapy devices, such as The Pax and The Volcano, we will be using the terms “e-cigarette” or “e-cig” as the general term for this article.
There are multiple types of e-cigs on the market right now, but today we will be focusing on the most common, ego batteries.
Ego batteries are cylindrical batteries, which almost look like pens. As the name indicates, they themselves are the battery that you will be using for your e-cig. They come in multiple sizes, but the most popular right now are 900mAh, 1100mAh, 1300mAh, and 1650mAh ego-twists. Without getting too technical, mAh is short hand for miliampers per hour, an engineering term which basically denotes how long your battery will go between charges. The higher the mAh the longer your battery will last. This also affects the size of the battery, the larger the mAh, the larger the battery.
“Twist” indicates that the battery has “variable voltage.” Which, again, to keep in layman’s terms simply means how much you’re heating the atomizer in your tank. The higher the voltage, the more heat your exposing the atomizer to, which creates more vapor but also causes atomizers to burn out faster and my cause the vapor to taste burnt.
“What is an atomizer?” You may be asking yourself, and the answer is quite simple, an atomizer (or clearomizer) is the part of the liquid tank which absorbs the liquid, usually through small wicks and heats it up. It is the part of the e-cigarette that turns the e-liquid to vapor. There are dozens of types of tanks on the market right now, including the disposable tank that most starter sets come with, to your standard pro tank, to fancier tanks with airflow.
Tanks vary in quality and price, but they all share one thing in common, regardless of quality and price, they all have atomizers that need to be replaced regularly. Most authorities on the subject say that atomizers need to be replaced every two weeks to a month, or whenever the vapor production/quality of your e-cig declines. Disposable tanks, which normally cost $4-$7, as the name suggests are disposable. You replace the entire unit. Nicer pro tanks, or airflow style tanks, you only replace the atomizer, which usually range from $2-$5 for the replacement parts and usually require disassembling at least part of the tank to replace.

J.C.