Skycig starter pack review

I have just purchased a sky if starter pack to review from skycig online shop. It took just 3 working days to arrive and came by recorded delivery. I got the skycig on an offer so I got a starter pack priced at £20 for £10. I was also charged around £3 for postage and packaging.

The battery, 3 cartomisers and a USB charger came in the box and there was a separate USB plug adaptor in the envelope. The box states on the back that you should charge for an hour before use.

The box that the kit comes in is a card box of similar quality to a cigarette box but maybe a little bit better. It has a black insert with slots for the 3 cartomisers and the battery and a larger slot for the USB charger.

Skycig Starter pack box and contents

After an hour I took out the battery from the charger, removed the 12mg tobacco flavour cartomiser, peeled off the sticker and screwed it onto the battery.

The assembled e-cig is around the same size as a super king cigerette, it's about the same diameter as a standard cigerette and is a fair bit slimmer than the nocolite ecig.

Assembled Skycig

As the instructions say to take a drag you do a couple of short puffs then a bit bigger one, this warms up the atomiser. It produced a really good amount of vapour. The flavour was a mild tobacco taste with a little bit of sweetness. There seems to be a small amount more resistance when you suck through this compared to the nicolite but it isn't hard at all. All in all I was satisfied with the Experience.

After around 2 hours of moderate vaping I stopped getting any smoke. I looked at the tip and it was flashing blue. This was after a good charge also of around 6 hours. I found this quite disappointing although it wouldn't be much of an issue if purchased with the travel case and a spare battery.

As for the cartomisers, skycig claim they contain the equivalent to around 30 cigarettes  I don't think this is accurate. At least not with the ones that I received, they last me about an evening of moderate vaping and I only smoked around 10 cigs a day. a good point is that they are easy to refill, just follow the same procedure as filling the nicolite cartomisers filling with around 8 to 10 drops of e juice. I have been doing this for a couple of weeks now alternating around 3 cartomisers - refilling as soon as they start to perform poorley or taste burnt. So far all three are going strong and I have not cleaned then at all yet.

Something that I did discover is that the skycig cartomisers fit onto my ego battery, although you have to me careful not to hold the power button too long. But is a use full thing to know if you run out of power with your skycig battery.

Overall I am impressed with the small size of this and the short battery life is to be expected as the battery is only small but it only takes an hour to charge using the wall plug adaptor so as long as you have access to a USB or a plug it shouldn't be too much of an issue. Saying that if your out and about it is more compact and easier to carry than the larger ego VVC that I have. I am going to try taking the skycig out with me and use the ego VVC indoors. I am interested to try the travel charger and when I eventually get one \I will review it.

Thanks for looking and please feel free to share your comments.

How to clean an Ego atomiser

I have tried a few different methods to clean an ego atomiser and have had success with a few of the methods, I have tried soaking them over night in different types of alcohol, Mainly Vodka, Cherry Vodka and some Raki that I got on holiday a few years ago these methods all seem to work but the atomiser performance doesn't last too long.

The best method that I have found so far is putting a shot of Vodka/Raki and a tablespoon or so of vinegar into a pan with some hot water and boil the mixture. It smells quite bad. I then tie my atomisers up loosely in some cloth and drop into the pan.

I boil these for around 20 minutes making sure that the pan does not boil dry. After the 20 minutes I remove the cloth, let it cool and untie it. When the atomisers have cooled a little bit I blow them out and leave them 24 hours to dry out.

Cleaned Ego atomiser

The last thing to mention with the atomiser is to prime it before you use it, i drop 3 drops into the atomiser, one on the top and one in each side. then rebuild and vape away.

My next job id to take apart an atomiser if I can get into one and find out what's inside them.

Please comment if you have tried this and agree also if you have any other methods.

Thanks for reading

Cleaning Nicolite cartomisers

After a couple of refills of the cartomsers the atomiser in the cartomisers become dirty and the amount of vapour produced can be reduced greatly. cleaning the cartomisers can help restore the atomiser to a useable state. I have had some success with this and it is simple and cheap to do.

The first thing to note with cleaning nicolite cartomisers is to make sure that you dont remove the wadding, the way the nicolite cartomisers are made means that if you remove it it is practically impossible to replace it in the correct position. when you refill and refit the cartomiser and take a puff you will get an awfull taste of burning wadding. In the middle of the wadding is some heat sleeving which protects the wadding from the atomizer I have not worked out a way of refitting this inside the cartomiser. If anyone else has I would be interested to know how.

The first time I clean a cartomiser I remove the cap of the cartomiser and keep it safe. Then I run the tap at quite an high pressure into cartomiser and wadding to give it a little pre-wash. I then boil the kettle, pour the boiling water into a container, drop the cartomisers into the boiling water and give them a stir. I then stir every minute or so for around 15 minutes or untill I get sufficianty bored and decide to remove then from the water. To do this I pour the water with the cartomiser in gently through a siv then leave them to cool for a few minutes. When they have cooled I give them a good blow out to remove the excess water. I then stand them on some tissue paper and leave them for a couple of days or untill they are completly dried out. putting them on a radiator or somewhere warm may reduce the drying time but I have small children in the house and prefer to keep them well out of reach.

If you feel that this is not working then boiling the cartomisers is another option. I would advise doing this in a pan because its never a good idea to put metal items into a microwave. this process is the same as above except that instead of pouring the boiling water on and stiring. you wrap the atomisers individually in a hankey chief (or something similar) tie the top and boil for 10-15 minutes. To be honest I dont know the reason for wraping up the cartomisers in a hanky, It may absorb some of the dirt cleaned from the atomiser but I think more likely that it protects the wadding from getting battered and becoming dislodged or coming out completely. I might try boiling some with no hanky and see what happens, I will let you know.

Again make sure that the cartomisers are fully dried out before you refill them with e-juice. If you have any other ways or more tips please leave a comment.

Thanks' for reading.

RY4 E-JUICE (from juicycigs)

As with my e-cig I decided to purchase my first few batches of e-juice from juicycigs. RY4 is a tobacco flavour based e-juice with an addition of caramel and vanilla. It is available in 3 different strengths 12 medium  18 high and 24 extra high. it is also available in 2 sizes 10ml at £4.99 and 30ml at 13.49. There is a small discount for buying the larger bottles but as I wanted to try a few different flavours I opted for the small one.

As I find with juicycigs the my order arrived the following day. I put some in my e-cig, gave it a few minutes to soak in, and gave it a try. the first thing I noticed  was how strong this was. it seemed almost like smoking a cigar and had a very strong taste again similar to a cross between cigars and benson and hedges, so a very strong flavour. It did make an impressive amount of vapour but it felt harsh on my throat. After finishing a cartridge full I decided to try another flavour as it seemed too harsh for me i thought as i haven't been vaping long it may be that i am not used to the strength.

I did find something very useful with this, when i mixed it at around 50/50 with other flavoured ones which didn't seem to produce a satisfactory vape or had a taste too mild for my tastes it did improve them greatly it also performs well if you atomizers are on there last legs.

All in all i would keep one of these with my e-juices. If the strong cigar like taste appeals to you im sure you will be happy with it and if not you can mix it with one which has a poor taste or is too week for your taste which saves wasting the money that you have spent on a juice that you are not happy with.

Please feel free to leave your comments on RY4 as flavour and strength is subject to individual tastes all comments are welcome. please also say where you purchased it from as i am keen to try other suppliers to see how the flavours differ.

Thanks for reading,

Mark.

Ego VVC review

I purchased the Ego VVC from juiceycigs online shop. The ego VVC is known as a tank system as it has a small resovior to fill with the e-juice. I got a starter kit costing around £60. It comes with 2 batteries, 2 connectors, 2 metal bezels, 5 atomisers, a charger and 5 refillable mouth pieces. I also purchased from the same site some e juices which I will review later.
I charged up the battery and fitted an atomiser into the holder, screwed the bezel Over the atomiser and screwed the built up parts onto the top of the battery.

The next step I took was to pierce the hole in the bottom of the tank or mouthpiece as I called it earlier. You can do this by pushing the mouthpiece into the assembly where it sits and the atomiser pierces the cartomiser for you. I was a little nervous that this would break the atomiser but so far I have not had any problems with that.

My next step was to fill the cartridge just over half full with some e-juice and inset it into the atomiser assembly. Once inserted I stood up the e-cig for a few minutes for the juice to soak in.

After a few minutes I am ready for a vape. On the battery there is a small button at the top and a panel at the bottom with some LEDs that indicate the batter status. Also near the small button is another Led that indicates the power level that the batter is set too. Red is low, purple is medium and blue is full power. You can change between each power level by rapidly pressing the small button 5 times. This cycles through the outputs.

I set my output to full power and pressed down and held the button and took a big suck. It tasted quite bad, a sort of burnt flavour. I was so disappointed I looked at the instructions. To my relief this is normal. When the atomisers are made they are covered with a protective oil. This burns off in around 50 puffs but it sometimes tastes bad and other times its not noticeable.

The amount of vapour produced depends a lot on the e-juice although I found that on most occasions I only needed the power on medium to produce a good vapour. The only time I changes this is if the atomiser was a new one I would have it on low for a while and if it was getting old, I would knock it up to full power.

The atomisers can last between 1-2 weeks before I change them. This depends on usage. To give some idea of my use age I have to refill my cartridge every other day. A battery lasts me a full day at this amount of use. I tend to charge over night and I'm good to go come the morning.

Juice selection is important to get a good level of enjoyment from your vape. I have tried allot of the novelty flavours but prefer the tobacco flavoured ones. It can be fun though to mix juices and make up your own flavours.

Overall I am happy with this product. And with the fittings being standardised across a lot of accessories so you can purchase new battery's new parts for it quite easily. although its quite large to transport and if it is laid flat and the cap of the cap of the cartomizer works loose  it can sometimes leak.

After a couple of months the glue became loose on the battery and the battery connection came off. I sent it back to juiceycigs and they replaced it free of charge. The replacement battery is still working fine and the cap seems allot better attached to the battery

I will look at reviewing some of the juices soon but flavours are subject to people's personal tastes which makes them difficult to review subjectively so I have been putting the off .

Refilling Nicolite cartomizer cartridges

I have tried refilling my Nicolites E-cig cartomizers with some e-juice that I purchased from juicycigs.co.uk. I am not sure if this is advised or not but after watching a tutorial online I decided to give it a try. However this is my personal experience and not a set of instructions I think it is safe but I am no scientist or e-cig expert.

I purchased 3 10ml bottles of e-juice from jucy cigs which arrived the next day and I was ready to go.

The first thing that I did was remove the white cap from the end of the cartomizer, The website I found said use a nail of some pliers, as I was  in the kitchen I took the first item to hand that I thought would do the job which turned out to be a fork I just put one of the prongs in the hole and levered the cap out.

Removing cartomizer cap

When the cap was removed I washed out the inside of the cartomizer with hot water, blowed through it to get rid of the excess water then left overnight to dry out.

The next day after the cartomizer had dried I added about half a dozen drops of the e-juice into the cartomizer while rotating the cartomizer to let it soak into the filler material, I think I added too much or did it too quick as it started leaking from the bottom onto my finger, which is is a little concerning as it says on the bottle "toxic in contact with skin" I did wash my hands after and I am not dead yet so that's good.

Cartomizer filled with vanilla e-juice

After this I replaced the plastic cap and tried the cartomizer. It took a few puffs to get it going then it started producing a good amount of vapour. The taste of the vanilla was nice but probably a bit too subtle for my tastes. I am going to try with more flavours and give them a good try and I will review these later.

So far this seems to me like a good way to save a few Penny's and re-use my cartomizers, I don't know how long they will work for before the atomisers eventually die and I think in future if I am adding the same flavour e-juice I will skip the washing out step and go straight to the filling up part.

Update

So far my my experiance with refilling these has not been great, although i do gat some vapour its not up to the standard of the purchased cartomizers. I am going to try drying them for a longer period of time to ensure that the wading is not still damp and diluting the juice.

I have removed the wadding in one cartriddge to try and dry it with a paper towel, this proves allmost impossibl to refit as if you do not get th heat sleeving on correctly you inhale a terrible burning taste. if any one knows th best way to refit these please let me know.

I have also ordered a ego-VVC so I can compere the e-juices against the caromizer flavours. Watch this space...

Introduction

I wanted to try an electronic cigarette to try and cut down my smoking and try and improve my health. I was given this idea after speaking to a photographer at Crystal palace sprint track earlier this year. He was puffing away on one and I was surprised about the amount of vapour that was coming from the e-cigarette that he had.

He did say to me that the one he had was quite an expensive one and that it cost him around £15 a month to smoke using it. He also mentioned that within a week his chest felt better and that he had now been using it for 3 months and had not looked back.

Although I was excited to try one of these and find out what they were like I was loathed to spend £60 on a kit that I might not get on with, so I decided to get a cheap one from a chemist to try it out first.

I went into a local Tesco’s thinking of buying a disposable one to try out but after speaking to the guy at the counter I decided to go with a Nicolites e-cigarette starter kit.