I'm with the
@kingfisher this device is adaptive and it will just work with whatever style you want to get down with if you want to get down like that.
Examples:
MFLB finishing grind, pixie dust consistency, vapes insanely well but does not require and shouldn't be 'thumb-packed'. Insanely even, thorough extraction. Increasing the surface area of the material exponentially increases the amount of heat availability to the overall mass, stirring is effective for regaining rapid cloud production though non-essential. Without stirring there's minor polarisation of colour consistency however an even hue gradient with both sides satisfyingly vaporised.
You can fit a good amount of herb in and this'd be good for day-packers.
SLX v2 Ceramic Coated 4pc, fluffy but small-medium even grind consistency. Partially shredded, partially chopped. (a really good grinder). It's basically the same story, but the material surface area has shrunk. So, although there is enough material by default to get good clouds, you extract less of the essential oils via direct convection heating, and rely on conduction heat transfer within the material to vaporise the oils found beneath the surface. The hopper chamber is really well insulated, so this drastically aids all of the heat transfers.
Can you tell the difference?
You can argue plasma or LCD all day. Whatever you get down with, it just works, there's not enough difference to care. Subtle nuances are fun though, but more fundamental between strains.
Personally, I'd say you get more flavour off an MFLBfin grind, but flavour dies along with the bowl, which can sometimes be slowly if using directly.
In everyday use it really just comes down to convenience, MFLBfin does produce amazing pixie dust but at what time cost? It's some form of strange treat for me basically. Some kind of how much did I spend on this tiny inconvenience kinda rationalisation
Not so with the SLX. Maybe a larger super fine grinder would be best, but really, anything that produces even size particles is going to give you the best results.
Also
This official video gives a very accurate example of what a typical small-medium grind will end up as. Fine grind is the same.
and for other mediums:
pinches of bud, great for initial flavour sampling of a strain. Keeping all crystals intact gives a fucking delicious flavour. So good. And if you take big rips you can vaporize the whole nug. Stirring, which aids rapid cloud production after some use, is easy, it just breaks apart in the upturned chamber, but you eventually get the majority from a solid piece anyway. The chamber is a convection oven, passively forced. It works really well, more like a furnace.
and then there's
hash! I tried some bag hash, and it worked well to some extent. I think I needed hotter temps or more thermal mass for it to properly heat up. Medicinally speaking it worked fantastically, but the piece I put in just wanted to stick around. I don't have much experience with hash, I would usually just put it on a combustion bowl and blast it in a hit. It worked well enough with the hopper, strong effect, but a bit lacklustre for what hash is.
I feel
dabs would be similar, and I have read that HL are planning a conduction based front-end adapter which would basically address the low mass concentrate dilemma.
Kief is where this thing kills it though. Like any other vaporizer. Kief is da bomb. And hopper kief bombs are a real treat that will soon deplete your kief.
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Also, just found out via grasshoppervape.com, my hopper has been with HL warranty since the 7th, so I should have it soon. Kinda surprised, no email and I only now just logged in. Siiiick.
This thing is the shit. And I can't wait to get it back!