The cigarette-shaped vaping device called a cigalike has been a staple of the vaping industry for more than a decade, and it’s still the type of device that you’re most likely to see sold by conventional tobacco retailers in areas like Europe, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Vapers in Australia need to import their nicotine, and when they do, they often rely on sellers of traditional cigalikes such as V2 E-Cigarettes UK.
So, are you a new vaper who selected a cigalike as your first vaping product? If you are, this article is for you. A cigalike can provide a wonderful vaping experience. As long as vaping has been around – and with all the technological leaps that the industry has made over the years – there is still no vaping device that feels more like a traditional cigarette than a cigalike.
Here are the things you need to do to have a great vaping experience with any cigalike.
Choose a Cigalike That Offers as Many Flavours as Possible
Almost everyone who buys a cigalike chooses tobacco- or menthol-flavoured cartridges to include with their first purchase. Naturally, you hope that your first e-cigarette will replicate the flavour of a tobacco cigarette as closely as possible. Most people who vape, though, eventually decide that they prefer other e-liquid flavours like grape, cherry or mango.
That change happens for two reasons. First, you’re going to discover that no e-liquid truly tastes like a cigarette. That’s simply impossible since e-liquid doesn’t burn or produce smoke. Second, you’re likely to gravitate toward other flavours eventually because, once you switch fully to vaping, you’re going to realize that you never actually liked the flavour of tobacco very much in the first place. Rather, you forced yourself to like the flavour because you enjoyed the effect of the nicotine. As soon as you understand that nicotine and smoke don’t have to go hand in hand, your flavour preferences will begin to change.
With that in mind, it’s a good idea to buy a cigalike from a company that offers as many different flavours as possible. Try every flavour until you find the one that you like most.
Buy the Highest Available Nicotine Strength
In most cases, cigalikes are available in several different nicotine strengths such as 18, 11 and 6 mg/ml. The manufacturer of a cigalike might say, for example, that the 18 mg strength is for smokers of full-flavoured cigarettes, and the 11 mg strength is for people who smoke lower-nicotine cigarettes.
Most long-term vapers will tell you, however, that you should go straight to the highest available nicotine strength unless you smoke significantly less than half a pack of cigarettes per day. Even with a nicotine strength as high as 18 mg/ml, you’re still going to get less nicotine per puff than you would get with a tobacco cigarette. Make the adjustment as easy as possible by buying the highest nicotine strength and switching to a lower strength later if you’d like to reduce your nicotine intake further.
Keep Your Battery Charged
Most cigalikes work on a system called direct voltage output. That means the battery isn’t regulated to operate at a specific voltage and instead outputs the battery’s full available voltage at all times. With a vaping device that uses direct output, you’ll get the best vapour production when the battery is fully charged. For the best experience, you should top up the battery’s charge level after a lengthy vaping session.
Consider Buying a Portable Battery Charging Case
If you want to keep your battery topped up when you aren’t using it, one of the easiest ways to do that is by buying a portable battery charging case. A portable charging case is a great replacement for the pack of cigarettes that you’re used to carrying now. It protects your battery and usually holds at least a few extra refill cartridges. The best aspect of a portable charging case is that it has an internal battery. When you connect your e-cigarette battery to your portable charging case, the case’s internal battery tops up the charge on your e-cigarette. It’s a perfect solution for keeping your e-cigarette charged on the go and ensuring that your e-cigarette always produces big, satisfying vapour clouds.
Always Carry a Spare Refill Cartridge
Many e-cigarette cartridges are opaque on the outside, which means that you have no way of knowing how much e-liquid is left until the cartridge is nearly empty. At that point, you’ll notice that the e-cigarette has a muted flavour or that it produces smaller vapour clouds than usual even when the battery is fully charged. There’s no warning before that happens, and you don’t want to find yourself caught without e-liquid at the beginning of a work shift or when you’ve just left the house for a long drive. Always make sure that you have at least one extra e-cigarette cartridge when leaving the house.
Learn to Inhale Properly
Aside from buying e-liquid with the correct nicotine strength, the most important thing you can do to ensure that you’ll have a great experience with a cigalike is this: Learn to inhale properly. A cigalike usually has an airflow sensor that triggers when you puff on the device. When you inhale, you draw air through the device, tripping the airflow sensor and causing the atomizer to begin producing vapour.
The airflow sensor in an e-cigarette is usually very sensitive and doesn’t require a major change in air pressure to detect that you’re using your device. An e-cigarette, in other words, requires much less air pressure than a tobacco cigarette.
If you puff on an e-cigarette with the same air pressure you’d use when smoking, you won’t have a good vaping experience because you’ll draw e-liquid into your mouth. Use your e-cigarette’s indicator light as a guide. Use just the amount of air pressure necessary to make the light turn on. To enjoy bigger and more flavourful puffs of vapour, inhale more deeply.