Greetings folks.
I just ordered and received my FF2, thought I'd give a brief overview of my thoughts. In general, I am disappointed.
Ordered: Black unit, received shocking fast, just 5 days from order date.
Where Bought: directly from FF.
Packing: The package was sent as cheaply as possible using Priority Mail Flat Rate bubble mailer with no additional padding, for $6.10. Since the internal box acts as a shock absorber, that is fine, but I was surprised to see it not shipped in a rigid packing. That said, it arrived in fine condition and in actuality, I applaud the less shipping box volume waste.
Initial thoughts:
- Battery compartment is poor and chintzy, it feels like plastic but they claim it is magnesium alloy. The fitting is poor and it is easy to slide it on not exactly correctly with one side not fully as snapped down as the other. This detracts from the overall unit's "feeling of quality" and contrasts with its heavy weight. Feels like it would break on first drop.
- Unit is much heavier than expected. I read it was heavy and indeed it is. But since it feels like plastic you don't expect this much weight, which is probably due to the glass and/or battery. I might do some weighings.
- Smell: I am incredibly disappointed here.
I had read somewhere on here that someone had a blue unit with a chemical smell, and a black with no smell.
Since I'd rather not be breathing in any chemical presumably long term noxious heated fumes, I opted for the black unit, solely on the hope that the chemical smell was coming strictly from the lid, the silicon gasket is the current speculation I had been reading. I can confirm the silicon in the lid is of zero consequence and is virtually odor free. All odors are generated in the rear bottom, and are appreciably worse when heated.
Let me preface all this by saying that apparently I have earned very good nose, and often smell things where many other would not. I had life long extreme allergies to many things-- especially pollen and cats, but at some point, switched over to a plant based diet and cut down my wheat intake by say 95% or more. Afterwards all my allergies magically disappeared, go figure, and I was left with a better sense of smell. All of this is to say I would not be surprised if many people think there is no smell at all, or at least those on the Standard American Diet where many have chronic or even sub-perceptual allergies. What I've learned about sense of smell is, I can notice as its improving as I eat better, but when I slack off and eat worse, I cannot notice as it degrades. I tend to think it is just as good as it was, and it is not.
In any case, the sad fact here with the FF2 is that the smell is real and its pretty terrible, and I am pretty disappointed that they did not attempt to seal off the vapor path any better. Also I didn't mean to imply nor do I believe I am so rare as to be one of the few to smell this. I believe the smell is strong enough that most people should be able to smell something from the rear underside of the unit, especially if you heat it up. I also have to believe that FF must know of this smell and deemed it "good enough" to ship. I suspect their thinking must be that the costs or manufacturing design issues required to make it completely odor proof would be large, either financially, or by increasing the units weight and size even further.
How I tested smell:
- Breath slowly and deeply through cold air intake, while empty with no power: clear chemical manufacturing smell. But where is it coming from?
- Rear of unit: Smell deeply around the 2 rear air intake ports. Same chemical smell.
- Lid: Removed from unit. Smell lid itself deeply. Zero smell.
- Repeat deep breath through air intake, this time with lid off. Zero smell. This would seem to indicate that the polycarbonate? mouthpiece is not the culprit.
- Remove polycarbonate mouthpiece. Smell it deeply. No smell.
- Place lips directly to intake port on FF2 without mouthpiece. Breathe deeply with lid on. Same bad chemical smell.
OK, so all of this is enough to prove what smells and what doesn't. The chemical odor is clearly coming from the rear of the unit.
Now I turn it on, at default heat. I hold down the buttons, wait for the glow, and now repeat all the tests above. The smell is *much* amplified at the rear. A hot chemical very unpleasant smell, emanating from the rear of the unit. When I inhale as intended through the front, the odor is clearly in the vapor path.
Heat Issues
- I then held the buttons down for a while, to get how hot I could get the unit if I held the buttons down and how it would impacts smell. In any case, the whole unit got way hotter than I anticipated. Then I put it on Concentrate mode. Granted I was NOT inhaling through the unit, so it presumably could not cool down. That said it was so hot I had to take out the laser temp meter. It measured ~120F near the rear intake and 108-110F in other spots, and the red "too hot" light came on. I may take more heat measurements later. (During these tests, the odor was even more apparent). I checked their manual and they do say it is normal to get hot, and keep in mind I was NOT sucking air in at the time. I did not want to get this hot chemical air into my lungs, it was easy enough to smell this smell at the rear underside of the unit.
I am very disappointed for 2 reasons: For the high cost of the unit, I was hoping for a truly odor free unit. Secondly, because of the mostly glass path and lots of reports of great taste I had high hopes they had strived to achieve zero chemical odor.
I was disappointed to see the internals of the unit, posted on here a bit back. In those pictures, it was very clear the electronics were not cordoned off at all from the bowl. There was some speculation on here that if you breathed slowly enough and did not force any monster rips, that the correct vapor path from the rear would be maintained, and that air wouldn't leak in across the electronics from other directions. That may or may not be true but to me it is seemingly moot. Air traveling through the correct vapor path, from the rear inlets, with long controlled slow breaths, still has a chemical smell.
Air intake volume:
I was quite surprised at the small draw / low air intake volume. This is really a tiny sipper much more so than I thought. This could be a good thing or not. Again, cold, with no herbs, I took long slow breaths ranging from 10 seconds to 45 seconds. My comparison vaporizer is close to an antique now-- a still perfectly functioning 2004 model AromaZap square (so called "log" vape nowadays) with nylon stems. One of the reasons I bought this FF2 was because I wanted a less restricted draw than the AromaZap. I suspect that despite the AromaZap's tiny stems with their highly efficient 0.025g bowl, it might actually be more open draw than the FF2. In the future I will take comparison draw speed measurements. In any case, not terrible, just surprising.
Bowl:
- The Aromazap is conductive so you must remove it and try to finish the bowl relatively quickly, and also refill the bowl often. Whereas the FF2 offers 0.15g or 6x the bowl space with instant on/off, so I would prefer the FF2 strategy, so long as the instant on/off really worked well, which I hear it does. So as long as this is just as miserly/efficient as the AZ, and with less bowl refilling, I would be happy with the FF2.
At this point, I have not tested any herbs through the unit.
As for the smell, there is a fair chance that this smell will "go away" over time. What does that really mean though? My theory is when most people say this, is they just developed odor blindness, like being in the room with an air freshener. After a while, you simply don't smell the odor any more, but it is still there. I suspect the folks working at Harbor Freight, all day long, don't even smell the heavy chemical possibly plasticizer smell after a long days work. An even more interesting question for these employees would be do they smell it the next morning, or after a few days off, or have these receptors turned off?
At the time of this order, I had been considering the Cloud Evo, which I heard had next to no fumes, or perhaps the Volcano, which I hear only once in a while that it has a smell, or the Zion if it exists. In the end I decided to give the FF2 a whirl, because the vast majority of FF2 users wrote glowing reviews commending the cool and flavorful vapor.
There are really 3 reason I wanted an upgrade from the AromaZap
1) I wanted a bigger draw, but at first glance, I don't think this FF2 has one (I will test)
2) I wanted a bigger bowl, less refills. FF2 should be better
3) I was tired of a "wood smell" of the AZ. Although not unpleasant, and the AZ has no electronics odor, I wanted to try one of these newer vapes that supposedly has a clean zero taste from the vaporizer. The internet is abound with talks of how pure the taste is for the FF2, which is why I went for it.
I suspect that if I use some herb with the FF2, particularly very flavorful herbs, the terpene flavors will mostly or even all together overpower the chemical smell such that I may not be able to taste the chemicals any more.
Further, I suspect I may get smell blind to this particular smell/taste. I do not subscribe to the theory that strong initial chemical smells will get "aired out" or will "go away" over time. It suppose it could be interesting to determine further what the smell is with a take-apart with temperature probes on the board and chips while it was heating. But its of little consequence. They needed to really completely isolate the vapor path to avoid this chemical, plastic, or electronics smell, that is magnified once the unit is powered on, with no herb.
This turned out to be much longer than I thought. No so much a -brief- overview :-)
