Feedback request: Best Portable Vape Rankings & Categories

Greetings and salutations, vape fam!

I've spent several months overhauling my portable vape review page, and I need your feedback.

It started with a spreadsheet of all the portable vaporizers.
I ranked them on a scale of 1-10, and then ranked them again based on the following categories:
- Vapor Potency
- Vapor Comfort
- Portability
- Battery
- Build Quality
- Usability
- Packaging
- Warranty / Brand Reputation
- Maintenance

Question - Do those ranking factors make sense? Is there anything missing?

For my 2025 Best Portable Vaporizer update, I came up with 12 "best of" lists that align with common decision-making factors.
- Best Hard Hitting Portables
- Best Portable Vapes Overall
- Best Value
- Best Vapor
- Best On-Demand
- With Replaceable Battery
- Pocket Friendly Portables
- Butane Vapes
- Best Cheap Vapes
- Portable vaporizers for a bong
- best conduction / stoney high

Question - Do these categories cover all of the major angles? Are any of these categories confusing? What's missing?

Lastly, is the page too big??
Tbh when I started working on it, I had the attitude of "this is my last 420vapezone content" and I wanted it to make it as complete and insightful as possible.
But then it turned into a very big page and I worry that it's too big.
Is it redundant? What can I do to make this page better?

The individual vape rankings are at the bottom of the page here: https://420vapezone.com/best-portable-vaporizers/#All-Portable-Vape-Rankings-Results

Very thorough - I like it. It's big, but with the links at the top I find it pretty easy to navigate.

Really good job. I also find it easy to peruse.

Although the sticky brick fans won't be pleased!

Interesting idea. I've had to do something like this before at work for Source Selection.

• I was going to add a parameter for Stealth (how easy is it to conceal?) or i guess you could combine that with Pocket ability -or- maybe Packaging (although i am guessing you are thinking something else).
• Another parameter might be Readiness. A manual vape that uses a torch and always available would be at the top while a vape with poor battery performance might not be ready when you really want it.
• Someone else who is so inclined might want a parameter to make Giant clouds (not me) -or- best taste.
• Maybe a category selection for desktop or portable , not to rate but to categorize.
• Not sure what vapor comfort is, but maybe it is when the hit is too hot?
• By maintenance i suppose you mean cleaning and the like? If it breaks & needs maintenance somehow that is serious points off.
• almost forgot probably one of the most important parameters : cost

All just some ideas about parameters.

Is this in Google docs? If so you can set up a filter on column so someone could easily find top vapor potency for instance.

The other suggestion i was going to make is each of these parameters you describe could have a Weighting factor. Right now you have it that they are all weighted equally & all the parameters together equal 100 %. You could start with everything weighted equally and then allow people to individually tweek to their liking.

If you allowed these to be weighted for instance in my case Stealth would be a top key performance parameter (KPP) and i might bump that weighting factor up, Giant clouds much lower , Maintaining taste also very high. Readiness for me would be higher because i have so few devices it seems like they are not charged when i want them to be. I guess it all comes down to people's use cases.

so to OP so you have experience with all these vapes? I am impressed. You could throw it out there to see what other people's opinions are and see what the consolidated results are , but the problem is that some people may not have ever tried one of those other devices and cannot rate it. In general i think i would trust the ratings of someone a lot more experienced than me. Thanks

ohmygodimsohigh said:

Greetings and salutations, vape fam!

I've spent several months overhauling my portable vape review page, and I need your feedback.

It started with a spreadsheet of all the portable vaporizers.
I ranked them on a scale of 1-10, and then ranked them again based on the following categories:
- Vapor Potency
- Vapor Comfort
- Portability
- Battery
- Build Quality
- Usability
- Packaging
- Warranty / Brand Reputation
- Maintenance

Question - Do those ranking factors make sense? Is there anything missing?

For my 2025 Best Portable Vaporizer update, I came up with 12 "best of" lists that align with common decision-making factors.
- Best Hard Hitting Portables
- Best Portable Vapes Overall
- Best Value
- Best Vapor
- Best On-Demand
- With Replaceable Battery
- Pocket Friendly Portables
- Butane Vapes
- Best Cheap Vapes
- Portable vaporizers for a bong
- best conduction / stoney high

Question - Do these categories cover all of the major angles? Are any of these categories confusing? What's missing?

Lastly, is the page too big??
Tbh when I started working on it, I had the attitude of "this is my last 420vapezone content" and I wanted it to make it as complete and insightful as possible.
But then it turned into a very big page and I worry that it's too big.
Is it redundant? What can I do to make this page better?

The individual vape rankings are at the bottom of the page here: https://420vapezone.com/best-portable-vaporizers/#All-Portable-Vape-Rankings-Results

Click to expand...

how about bugs category

The worst vape is rated only 11% less than the best at 85 compared to 96 out of 100 by moving the decimal.... Seems like you need a different scale to me otherwise it's pretty much meaningless.

Flotsam said:

so to OP so you have experience with all these vapes? I am impressed.

Click to expand...

Troy is an online vape reviewer, and a member here for some time.

Cheebsy said:

The worst vape is rated only 11% less than the best at 85 compared to 96 out of 100 by moving the decimal.... Seems like you need a different scale to me otherwise it's pretty much meaningless.

Click to expand...

Weighting would help with that

I think this is pretty sensible for us nerds. It's easy to find the relevant sections based on what's most important to the individual user.

Cheebsy said:

The worst vape is rated only 11% less than the best at 85 compared to 96 out of 100 by moving the decimal.... Seems like you need a different scale to me otherwise it's pretty much meaningless.

Click to expand...

This has been my concern as well.
There are a bunch of vapes rates much lower. Maybe i need to include the really crappy vapes on the ratings?

For me xmax v3 nano is already crappy territory, I can't imagine how bad the xs go vapes..
The Anvil ranked less than a v3 pro is quite flawed imho but it's fair since it's your scale.
Inhale Lotus ranked lower than the v3 nano is also very questionable imho.
Solo 3 was 1st until not too long ago, surpassing Venty by 1 point, now I seee that Venty is 1st but I don't see the ranking points anymore.
I would discard "packaging" category.

The problem is with trying to rate something like a vape is any rating is very subjective - also comparing vapes is like comparing apples to pears and perhaps in some cases to oranges. Even the weed your testing with will make a difference as in humidity level, different strain etc Some vapes work better than other if the weed is "wetter"

Its not like your comparing a computer monitor where there are just a set of standard things like resolution, refresh rate power use etc

I personally cannot stand the S&B devices - i own both a digital volcano and mighty+ and both just sit unused - other people rate the volcano as their favourite and before the venty was out a lot of people went for the mighty.

I would reach for the TM2 (over the S&B devices) or even the divine crossing mini 510 dry herb vape (highly under rated device no one seems to realise for what you pay they are pretty amazing)

RustyOldNail said:

Troy is an online vape reviewer, and a member here for some time.

Dry Herb & Concentrate Vaporizer Reviews - 420 VapeZone

Troy is a full-time dry herb vape reviewer and content creator. 420vapezone is a collection of dry herb vaporizer reviews, demonstrations, and comparisons.

420vapezone.com

Click to expand...

Thanks for mentioning Troy. I think maybe i looked at this with my phone and originally missed that comment. Yep i would take it Troy does know all these Devices.

for me taste would be a really important criterion, and would greatly influence any shopping decisions

I don't have one, but many friends absolutely adore their Epicvape E-nano, which I see nowhere on the list. The reason may be that it basically mimics the Tinymight 2 model, but in a desktop form. However, the value for price is exceptional and it's simply a beautiful object, a quality that can't be discounted.

Great feedback so far.

Re Xmax v3 pro - I struggle with this vape's ratings and how they compare to other vapes, too. I'd never reach for this vape because i need more than it can deliver. The overall comparison is geared towards all users and use cases though, and the v3 pro fits a lot of needs for beginners.

I do think weighting some of the categories could help with this, but I worry about making the data more complicated.

The spreadsheet has a column for "bias - this field is the difference between a vape's calculated avg ranking and its manually chosen ranking. These numbers help highlight vapes that may need a footnote of explanation.

Re packaging and presentation: this is an important factor for vape stores who use my data, but I think it's valid for users too. It's especially important for ranking ball vapes.

Re scale of rankings: I don't like that so many scores are close to each other. I plan to rank all of the modern crappy vapes to create more score diversity... but i may have to change the scale at some point

mulciber said:

I don't have one, but many friends absolutely adore their Epicvape E-nano, which I see nowhere on the list. The reason may be that it basically mimics the Tinymight 2 model, but in a desktop form. However, the value for price is exceptional and it's simply a beautiful object, a quality that can't be discounted.

Click to expand...

it's portables, enano es desktop

I'm sure it's tough to rank and display all vapes in such a way that most people could digest easily.

Here's what I think I would do. These would be my vape characteristics:

Price
Flavor
Potency
Portability
Session/On-demand
Ease of cleaning/maintenance
Durability

I like seeing data in a visual way so perhaps the data could best be viewed as a cloud of points in a few 3D graphs with different axes. Like below.



For most people, there will be some combo of their top 3 characteristics that are important to them. Some popular 3D plots might use price, potency, durability as the 3 axes for example. These people want to see a visual map of the cheapest vapes out there that are durable and can get them medicated quickly.

The tasters out there might just want to see a plot of flavor, price and durability. Maybe some tasters have money to burn and want to see just flavor, durability and portability. 3D plots are nice to see this stuff visually. If you don't go for some static plots maybe a web widget could let people graph the characteristics they want to see with some dropdown menus.

TigoleBitties said:

I'm sure it's tough to rank and display all vapes in such a way that most people could digest easily.

Here's what I think I would do. These would be my vape characteristics:

Price
Flavor
Potency
Portability
Session/On-demand
Ease of cleaning/maintenance
Durability

I like seeing data in a visual way so perhaps the data could best be viewed as a cloud of points in a few 3D graphs with different axes. Like below.

For most people, there will be some combo of their top 3 characteristics that are important to them. Some popular 3D plots might use price, potency, durability as the 3 axes for example. These people want to see a visual map of the cheapest vapes out there that are durable and can get them medicated quickly.

The tasters out there might just want to see a plot of flavor, price and durability. Maybe some tasters have money to burn and want to see just flavor, durability and portability. 3D plots are nice to see this stuff visually. If you don't go for some static plots maybe a web widget could let people graph the characteristics they want to see with some dropdown menus.

Click to expand...

OOOOhhh i love this so much!!
Visuals are high on my priority list and I really like the simple 3-axis visuals.
I'd love to make it interactive and customizable for the user, eventually.

Great suggestion!

ohmygodimsohigh said:

OOOOhhh i love this so much!!
Visuals are high on my priority list and I really like the simple 3-axis visuals.
I'd love to make it interactive and customizable for the user, eventually.

Great suggestion!

Click to expand...

You're welcome, enjoy! I still think the numbers do need a bit more separation for the plots to not cluster too tightly.

I really dig your site btw. You might just have the one of the most awesome jobs out there.
Let's see, I get paid to review all the latest killer vapes - and oh - I have to get high to review the vapes! Um, yes please.


Keep fighting the good fight for all of us dry herb weirdos that appreciate the finer things.

cosimo said:

it's portables, enano es desktop

Click to expand...

Sorry, should have noticed that! That said, I think it should be noted that while the TM2 is way at the top of my list, and I've been using the Tinymight since the first one was released, it can be prone to malfunctioning, as all handcrafted items tend to be. The CS is wonderful and very responsive, but I've had to have mine repaired/replaced on a number of occasions. OTOH, I have a Solo III that's as solid as a hammer, and my OG Solo from 15 (?) years back has never, ever failed either.

I'm slightly confused by this. It's an excellent idea, but slightly boggled by how many excellent portables have been missed off. Are brick style devices thought to be too bulky for portable use? Vaphit X, Vaponic and Dani Fusion 2 surely deserve a mention somewhere here as well. A great start, but far too dominated by US and battery powered devices to be of much use to folks like me.